FREE WHITEWATER

Crime

Update: Vandalism, of Property and Opportunity

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Yesterday, I posted about a lack of information on April vandalism amounting to about fifty-thousand dollars in damage at the Spring Creek Golf Center. (See, Vandalism, of Property and Opportunity.)

Today, fortuitously, there’s a story at the DU with an update about the investigation: Seven Whitewater juveniles eyed in Cold Spring golf course vandalism.

Here’s a quick summary:

COLD SPRING — Seven Whitewater juveniles have been identified as allegedly having been involved in $50,000 worth of vandalism at Spring Creek Golf Center last month.

Capt. Jerry Haferman of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said that, although the reports have not yet been finalized, the Whitewater residents, all under age 17, will be referred to the juvenile court process.

Currently, none of the suspects are in custody, and Haferman said the cases will be referred to the Jefferson County Human Services Department to determine what action to take.

One reads in the newspaper account some positive news, despite senseless destruction:

That showing of support was one of the things that gave [proprietor Mike] Majewski solace during the ordeal.

“We did see the bad in that one weekend, but boy did we see the good, and the good was much bigger than the bad,” he said.

It’s true and reassuring that we’ve many good-hearted people in our community.

Best wishes to the Spring Creek Golf Center and its many patrons for an enjoyable season ahead. 

Film, Nature

Film: The ‘World Beyond the World’

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“In this short film, photographer Paxson Woelber takes us far from any signs of civilization, to the wilds of Northern Alaska. In July of 2013, Woelber set out with Expedition Arguk on a 300-mile journey from the heart of Brooks Range to the edge of the Arctic Ocean. Along the way he captured untouched mountains, sunlit canyons, roaming caribou, and even a distant encounter with a polar bear.

Woelber completed the journey with four other Expedition Arguk team members. To learn more about the expedition and its mission, visit expeditionarguk.com.

Courtesy of Paxson Woelber.”  
 
Via An Alaskan Expedition to the World Beyond the World @ The Atlantic.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.13.14

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Good morning.

Tuesday in the Whippet City will bring a high of sixty-one, and a fifty-fifty chance of scattered showers.

The city’s Parks & Recreation Board meets this afternoon at 5:30 PM.

Adam Ellis of BuzzFeed has 15 Charts That Perfectly Illustrate How To Properly Pet Animals (“Learn how to interact with animals and you’ll have more furry friends than you know what to do with.”).

He illustrates (among others) the petting options for dogs and, by contrast, wolverines:


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On this day in 1940, Churchill declares his commitment:

…as Winston Churchill takes the helm as Great Britain’s new prime minister, he assures Parliament that his new policy will consist of nothing less than “to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.”

Emphasizing that Britain’s aim was simply “victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of terror, victory however long and hard the road may be.” That very evening, Churchill was informed that Britain would need 60 fighter squadrons to defend British soil against German attack. It had 39.

Within a couple of weeks, the conservative, anti-Socialist Churchill, in an effort to make his rally cry of victory a reality, proceeded to place all “persons, their services, and their property at the disposal of the Crown,” thereby granting the government the most all-encompassing emergency powers in modern British history….

Churchill’s powers, like Lincoln’s, were exigencies of war. For those they fought, power and control were the oppressive foundation of daily life.

On this day in 1918, a sensational Wisconsin trial begins:

1918 – Lusk Murder Trial Begins in Waukesha
On this day Grace Lusk, a Waukesha high school teacher, began her trial for the murder of Mary Roberts. Prosecutors alleged a tragic love triangle had resulted in the murder after Lusk’s pleas for Roberts to give up her husband were rebuffed. The trial, a national sensation in the early days of mass media, resulted in a guilty verdict on May 29, 1918. Lusk was sentenced to 19 years in prison but served only five before being pardoned by the Governor. After her release she jealously guarded her privacy; the identity of her husband, known only as “Mr. Brown,” was never determined. [Source: Capital Times 5/13/1918, p.1]

Here’s the Tuesday game in Puzzability‘s Just Drop It series:

This Week’s Game — May 12-16
Just Drop It!
Sometimes, it goes without saying. For each day this week, we started with a word that contains the two-letter chunk IT and deleted it to get a new word. The two-word answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer IT word followed by the shorter word.
Example:
Einstein from England
Answer:
Britain brain
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word phrase, with the IT word first (as “Britain brain” in the example), for your answer.
Tuesday, May 13
Eyeshade worn by a tourist

Crime, Free Markets

Vandalism, of Property and Opportunity

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Not long ago, at a nearby golf course, vandals caused tens of thousands in property damage. A newspaper account reported the damage at about $50,000, and included photos of the scene.

I’m not a patron of the course, and don’t know the owners. I have, though, cycled past it many times. The course has always been an early and happy marker on my rides into Jefferson County. It’s pleasant to ride by – golf’s not my sport, but it’s uplifting to see people enjoying their sport.

We’ve had more vandalism in Whitewater than our community deserves, because the right amount of vandalism is none at all. (For an earlier post of the senselessness of property destruction in town, see The Crude Illegitimacy of Vandalism.)

A few remarks seem in order.

Investigation. Since the newspaper account, I know of no official word on an investigation into the crime. The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office. The community has a right to know about the progress of that investigation: (1) are there suspects? (2) has anyone been charged? (3) does that department expect to bring charges?

Property. There’s a waxing movement now to criticize private property, but that’s not seeing property rights correctly. Private property is correctly considered a foundation of liberty, and space from within which one may be secure from the state.

It’s more than that, though: private earnings committed to leisure are expressions of peace, of voluntary, cooperative exchanges. No one gets hurt, no one is insulted, no one denied, in a free and open market. All those people who patronize that course do so with their earnings, there and then spent on peaceful pursuits in off-hours.

So many trendy attacks on property, and the contention that property, itself, is wrong or excessive, ignore this truth: that private transactions on golf courses, at clubs, etc., are free, cooperative exchanges for mutual happiness.

A Teachable Moment. I’m not a Democrat, but I surely respect Pres. Obama’s use of the phrase a ‘teachable moment.’ An accounting of this vandalism affords an opportunity not for demonization but for a teachable moment, of reconciliation to a deeper understanding: that private property in a free market originates from effort and thereafter sustains voluntary, cooperative pursuits.

That teachable moment depends on a public accounting of ongoing investigatory efforts.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.12.14

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be a day of eighty degrees and likely thunderstorms. Sunrise today is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:08 PM. The moon is in a waxing gibbous phase with ninety-five percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets tonight at 6 PM.

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It’s Florence Nightingale’s birthday:

Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC … 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was a celebrated English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence while serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was known as “The Lady with the Lamp” after her habit of making rounds at night.

Early 21st century commentators have asserted Nightingale’s achievements in the Crimean War had been exaggerated by the media at the time, to satisfy the public’s need for a hero, but her later achievements remain widely accepted. In 1860, Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment of hernursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. It was the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King’s College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday. Her social reforms include improving healthcare for all sections of British society, improving healthcare and advocating for better hunger relief in India, helping to abolish laws regulating prostitution that were overly harsh to women, and expanding the acceptable forms of female participation in the workforce.

Nightingale was a prodigious and versatile writer. In her lifetime much of her published work was concerned with spreading medical knowledge. Some of her tracts were written in simple English so they could easily be understood by those with poor literary skills. She also helped popularise the graphical presentation of statistical data. Much of her writing, including her extensive work on religion and mysticism, has only been published posthumously.

Puzzability‘s new weekly series is entitled, Just Drop It! –

This Week’s Game — May 12-16
Just Drop It!
Sometimes, it goes without saying. For each day this week, we started with a word that contains the two-letter chunk IT and deleted it to get a new word. The two-word answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer IT word followed by the shorter word.
Example:
Einstein from England
Answer:
Britain brain
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word phrase, with the IT word first (as “Britain brain” in the example), for your answer.
Monday, May 12
Courteous resident of Warsaw

Local Government

The ‘Movers and Shakers’ Who Aren’t

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I sometimes write about Janesville’s politics, because the more one sees how confused they are, the more one feels obliged to contend for a better way in our own politics.

Just Friday, the Gazette‘s editorialist took a stand (subscription req’d) against the false hopes that a big-talking developer and smarmy politician are spreading about the return of GM to Janesville.

The editorial is more than welcome – the developer-politicain duo are a carnival act, a spectacle for gawkers.

Sadly, though, here’s how the editorial ends: “If this idea materializes, we’d be surprised, and so would many other movers and shakers in this community.”

Oh, brother. So the editorialist thinks that an appeal to the authority of many other ‘movers and shakers’ confirms the case against these gentlemen’s hollow promises?

Here’s where the editorialist is lost: (1) the case against false promises stands on its own, (2) an appeal to the supposed authority of others is unconvincing without a sound case, (3) few people are so arrogant as to declare themselves among ‘many other movers and shakers,’ and (4) few people infelicitously use the term ‘movers and shakers’ in any event.

If all Janesville’s self-claimed important people were half what they thought they were, they wouldn’t live in a city filled with bad deals, lies, false promises, white-collar welfare, and alienated residents.

The best one can say is that those movers and shakers are moving in the wrong direction, and shaking for fear that someone will say as much.

Make the good case, on the merits, and defy all opposition thereafter in defense of it.

The rest impresses no one.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.11.14

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Good morning.

Mother’s Day in Whitewater brings a high of seventy-seven, with a four-in-ten chance of afternoon thunderstorms.

On this day in 1947, B.F. Goodrich publicizes a true automotive innovation:

…the B.F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio, announces it has developed a tubeless tire, a technological innovation that would make automobiles safer and more efficient.

Pneumatic tires–or tires filled with pressurized air–were used on motor vehicles beginning in the late 1800s, when the French rubber manufacturer Michelin & Cie became the first company to develop them. For the first 60 years of their use, pneumatic tires generally relied on an inner tube containing the compressed air and an outer casing that protected the tube and provided traction. The disadvantage of this design was that if the inner tube failed–which was always a risk due to excess heat generated by friction between the tube and the tire wall–the tire would blow out immediately, causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle.

The culmination of more than three years of engineering, Goodrich’s tubeless tire effectively eliminated the inner tube, trapping the pressurized air within the tire walls themselves. By reinforcing those walls, the company claimed, they were able to combine the puncture-sealing features of inner tubes with an improved ease of riding, high resistance to bruising and superior retention of air pressure. While Goodrich awaited approval from the U.S. Patent Office, the tubeless tires underwent high-speed road testing, were put in service on a fleet of taxis and were used by Ohio state police cars and a number of privately owned passenger cars.

The testing proved successful, and in 1952, Goodrich won patents for the tire’s various features. Within three years, the tubeless tire came standard on most new automobiles. According to an article published in The New York Times in December 1954, “If the results of tests…prove valid in general use, the owner of a 1955 automobile can count on at least 25 per cent more mileage, easier tire changing if he gets caught on a lonely road with a leaky tire, and almost no blowouts.” The article quoted Howard N. Hawkes, vice president and general manager of the tire division of the United States Rubber Company, as calling the general adoption of the tubeless tire “one of the most far-reaching changes ever to take place in the tire industry.” The radial-ply tire, a tubeless model with walls made of alternating layers–also called plies–of tough rubber cord, was created by Michelin later that decade and is now considered the standard for automobiles in all developed countries.

There were similar designs before, but Goodrich received and successfully defended Patent No. US2859792 A.

On this day in 1955, Milwaukee formally loses a basketball team:

1955 – Milwaukee Hawks Relocate to St. Louis
On this date the NBA approved transferring the financially strapped Milwaukee Hawks to St. Louis. The Hawks stayed in St. Louis until 1968, then moved to Atlanta. [Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online]