CNN has a story about a website that claims that, for a fee, it can tell prospective home buyers if someone once died in a home those buyers are considering. I’m not vouching for the website, but here’s this week’s question: would you want to know if someone had died in a house under your consideration (or in the house or apartment in which you now live)?
I would be interested in a home’s history, but it would not change a buying decision, I think.
Good morning.
The end of the week will bring scattered showers (a fifty-percent chance) and a high of forty-seven.
On this day in 1512, the Sistine Chapel ceiling goes on public display.
On this day in 1863, a pen magnate is born:
1863 – George Safford Parker Born
On this date George Safford Parker was born in Shullsburg. While studying telegraphy in Janesville, he developed an interest in fountain pens. In 1891 he organized the Parker Pen Company in Janesville. The company gained world-wide acclaim for innovations like the duo-fold pen and pencil. Parker served as president of the company until 1933. Parker died on July 19, 1937. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, p.280]
Scientific American‘s daily trivia question asks about energy. (Clicking on the question leads to its answer.)
About what percentage of the universe is dark energy thought to comprise?
Here’s the seventh annual FREE WHITEWATER list of the scariest things in Whitewater for 2013. The 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 editions are available for comparison.
The list runs in reverse order, from mildly frightening to super scary.
10. Red Foxes. There are few people who don’t find red foxes beautiful; I’d guess that even people accustomed to the bright colors of the tropics would find a red fox’s coat impressive. But when one first appeared on campus, we might have thought that a Martian had encroached on the city, with warnings not to go near it, or feed it, or encourage it to stay.
We’re a rural area; people are familiar with wildlife nearby and know how to conduct themselves. It’s been here for a bit; in time it will move on. We’ll conduct ourselves properly around it until it leaves the area.
Besides, listen to how foxes sound:
9. Planning from Madison. Whether Democrat or Republican, planning from Madison doesn’t work well. When the WisDems controlled state government, Republicans were right to complain that state-initiated planning rested on dodgy ‘Madison Math.’
It did; they were right.
But now the WISGOP’s in Madison, and working on its own state-centric solutions to local issues, and we’re still stuck with planning that doesn’t work well. It’s right-leaning rather than left-leaning, but it’s still planning that’s as ineffectual or counterproductive as it was before.
8. Numbers Policing. Living one’s life with the outlook that every day is another long slog to hold back the tide must be a wearisome outlook. This city has not, and will not, get a handle on property and nuisance crimes until it gives up a perspective that rests on numbers – counting like that simply doesn’t add up.
There’s lip-service to community policing, but little more, by way of understanding or by daily practice. Us against them (with the feeling of us against the world) is a futile approach.
Managing a tide requires one to abandon one’s fear of the water, and to learn to swim in, and through, the ocean.
7. New People. They shouldn’t be scary, but for some they are. That’s too bad, because we’ve no positive future without an influx of new and energetic residents.
6. Consumer Preferences. Tastes change over time. There’s no reason to fear those changing preferences – they’re not imposed from a small elite, but are simply the consequence of thousands of daily, voluntary transactions and encounters between ordinary people.
5. Crony Capitalism & Big Projects. A few, who have much already, use government to amass more for themselves at the expense of common taxpayers. There is nothing good – but much that’s bad – about a Reverse Robin Hood.
Crony capitalism is false capitalism.
It’s not the poor, public safety, or the administration of justice these avaricious few have in mind – it’s their own enrichment.
We could make far better use of this money, with the best option being leaving it with taxpayers who earned it.
Still, all the hours of discussion, hundreds of headlines, and millions of dollars would have been better applied toward working out fusion power, or a cure for a deadly disease, or even a rewrite of the Obstruction rule in Major League Baseball. (By the way, congratulations, Red Sox – the use of that rule in Game 3 didn’t change your happy outcome.)
4. Empty Transit Buses. Just about any project would have been better than this year-and-a-half failed experiment. There’s more about this yet to be decided, and more to be said, next week.
3. Empty Jargon. Somewhere, there must be Rosetta Stone language software for empty jargon (Business-Speaking Made Easy, Conversational Bureaucratese, etc.) There must be, because one hears proposal after proposal where the substance goes no farther than synergy, leveraging, incentivizing, etc.
2. Conditions. For a few, it’s deeply disturbing to read about some of the city’s actual economic conditions. It’s as though citing statistics that describe material life here were akin to spitting inside the Sistine Chapel.
Quick reminder, to those concerned: it’s not like spitting inside the Sistine Chapel.
Anyone walking about knows that we’re a combination of great beauty and occasional economic difficulties. Anyone visiting will see the same, quickly and surely.
1. Fear Itself. I’m no one’s idea of a New Dealer – I think those varied programs actually forestalled better times. (Here I’m writing about economic policy. On foreign policy, it seems clear to me that any president who led America in a war against the Axis powers deserves humanity’s enduring gratitude.)
Still, I deeply admire Roosevelt and the New Dealers’ love for common men and women, their willingness to describe conditions honestly, and their correct assessment that an honest description would lead to better times.
Politics, policy, and sensible planning demand more than an over-use of exclamation points.
We have no reason to fear looking at hard economic facts; being afraid of the reaction of others, being afraid of what people might say, etc. – simply a general fear – is what’s really scary.
We’ve taken accentuating the positive so absurdly far – out of insecurity or pure vanity – that we’ve abandoned the realistic.
We surely do have a brighter future ahead in our small city – there’s no reason to be afraid to discuss in detail our present position and the road ahead.
Good morning and Happy Halloween.
We’ll have a rainy Halloween this year, but also one of mild temperatures, with a high of sixty-two. Trick or Treat in Whitewater is from 4 to 7 PM this evening.
On this day in 1776, King George III speaks publicly in Parliament, for the first time, since the signing of the Declaration of Independence that July:
….in his first speech before British Parliament since the leaders of the American Revolution came together to sign of the Declaration of Independence that summer, King George III acknowledges that all was not going well for Britain in the war with the United States.
In his address, the king spoke about the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the revolutionary leaders who signed it, saying, “for daring and desperate is the spirit of those leaders, whose object has always been dominion and power, that they have now openly renounced all allegiance to the crown, and all political connection with this country.” The king went on to inform Parliament of the successful British victory over General George Washington and the Continental Army at the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, but warned them that, “notwithstanding the fair prospect, it was necessary to prepare for another campaign.”
Today in 1968 was a good day for the Milwaukee Bucks:
1968 – Milwaukee Bucks Win First Game
On this date the Milwaukee Bucks claimed their first victory, a 134-118 win over the Detroit Pistons in the Milwaukee Arena. The Bucks were 0-5 at the time, and Wayne Embry led Milwaukee with 30 points. Embry became the first player in Bucks history to score 30 or more points in a regular season game. [Source: Milwaukee Bucks]
Scientific American‘s daily trivia question asks about testing. (Clicking on the question leads to its answer.)
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a one-third chance of rain during the day, and a near-certainty of rain Wednesday night. We’ll have a high of fifty-nine.
It’s the anniversary, from 1938, of Orson Welles’s radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds,” at the time causing some Americans to think an actual Martian invasion was under way.
Welles was both director and narrator of the CBS Radio Mercury Theatre on the Air program.
All of this, of course, was an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.
Wikipedia has an article about the broadcast and historians’ differing views of the reaction to it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio).
Scientific American‘s daily trivia question asks about extinction. (Clicking on the question leads to its answer.)
Approximately how many species went extinct every year before human impact?
Much has been said about Brad Lichtenstein’s As Goes Janesville, and it’s usually about how the film depicts Gov. Walker.
There’s much more to the film, though, and particularly interesting to me is how Janesville tries to entice a startup to locate in that city by offering millions in public incentives. The startup, Shine, promises a new method to process a critical isotope for use in medicine. (The isotope is vital and of longstanding use; Shine’s method is new.)
Embedded above is a clip from the film that a YouTube user has uploaded, and I’ve coded the embed to start part way through the film, starting at a scene I find compelling.
As the clip begins, members of the business community and advocates of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation try to persuade Sen. Tim Cullen to support millions in tax credits for Shine.
He’s skeptical, and replies after seeing a convoluted chart detailing how the WEDC will supposedly oversee the tax incentives and other public monies. Looking back at the WEDC, it’s all a bad and sad joke, more even than Lichtenstein probably knew when he filmed the scene.
I’m neither a Republican nor a Democrat, so I’ve no partisan water to carry for Sen. Tim Cullen.
As it’s filmed, though, he’s the only one in the room who exhibits the reasoning that one would expect of a community leader.
It’s the kind of reasoning ordinary people have, but that’s washed away in a flood of jargon – empty, mostly – about synergies, innovations, leveraging, etc.
There’s a dare behind many of these terms, in this context: the speaker tries to awe others into believing that what he’s saying is profound, or prepares to insult others for ignorance if they question what’s being said: Oh my, it’s all so difficult and sophisticated and complicated, I’m not sure I could even explain it in a way you’d understand.
Too funny, really, as a contention like that is a lazy man’s effort to forestall examination and criticism of his (quite possibly) flimsy scheme.
Janesville’s had desperate times, and she’ll not recover quickly. She won’t truly recover, though – nor will we – if proposals are hushed and rushed as too many have been.
Good morning.
We’ll have a mostly cloudy Tuesday in Whitewater, with a high of fifty-two, and winds of 5 to 10 mph.
Whitewater’s Fire and Rescue Task Force meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1929, the stock market crashes:
Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression.
During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929, a period of wild speculation. By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Among the other causes of the eventual market collapse were low wages, the proliferation of debt, a weak agriculture, and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated.
Stock prices began to decline in September and early October 1929, and on October 18 the fall began. Panic set in, and on October 24—Black Thursday—a record 12,894,650 shares were traded. Investment companies and leading bankers attempted to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock, producing a moderate rally on Friday. On Monday, however, the storm broke anew, and the market went into free fall. Black Monday was followed by Black Tuesday, in which stock prices collapsed completely.
After October 29, 1929, stock prices had nowhere to go but up, so there was considerable recovery during succeeding weeks. Overall, however, prices continued to drop as the United States slumped into the Great Depression, and by 1932 stocks were worth only about 20 percent of their value in the summer of 1929. The stock market crash of 1929 was not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it did act to accelerate the global economic collapse of which it was also a symptom. By 1933, nearly half of America’s banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce. It would take World War II, and the massive level of armaments production taken on by the United States, to finally bring the country out of the Depression after a decade of suffering.
Scientific American‘s daily trivia question asks about light. (Clicking on the question leads to its answer.)
On Friday, I posted on child poverty in our area. The Great Recession took a toll on many cities, but undeniably so in ours: from 2007 to 2011, the number of children aged 5 to 17 in families in poverty rose from 9.89 to 17.9%.
The number nearly doubled. Beyond that group, state measures classify an astounding 44% of all school-age children in our area (the city and other towns in our school district) as economically disadvantaged.
A few remarks on the data.
1. These numbers involve only school-age children; they do not include non-working college students.
2. Of nearby communities, the Whitewater area has the second-highest level of child poverty, and the second-highest rate of increase, from 2007-2011 (81%). She’s also the only community whose poverty rate does not abate as the Great Recession ends. Instead, it rises year over year.
3. I’ve picked 2007-2011 for a reason – all communities during this time felt the impact of recession, but in these years Whitewater was also a place of grandiose claims of innovation, development, the exceptional, the unrivaled, etc.
And yet, and yet, for all these many headlines and pronouncements about progress, groundbreaking accomplishments, and world-class achievements, the actual material condition of children in the city grew worse, year over year.
4. Not a single project during these years, not a single government-funded ‘partnership’ with the university or major corporations stopped the rise in our area’s child poverty – the rate rose anyway.
5. ‘Poverty alleviated or prevented.’ As with much spending, one is sure to hear that the situation would have been worse had we not spent on buildings for white-collar projects, or extended tax-breaks and public money to thriving corporations.
There’s neither evidence nor even any compelling analysis for such claims – it’s just airy speculation. The only concrete result of which one can be confident is that Whitewater spent public money for big development projects but the material condition of many residents grew worse.
6. Optimism, in spite of these last several years. For it all, I’m convinced that Whitewater can and will do far better, and that greater prosperity for greater numbers lies ahead. It’s going to take a rejection of ‘if-you-build-it-they-will-come’ thinking and a refocus on projects that make small gains, including for small businesses over corporate and white-collar welfare projects that haven’t produced results for those most in need.
7. Solutions. I’ll write at length In November about solutions that have worked elsewhere, to turn other towns around. (There’s still more to consider before then about Whitewater’s long-term fiscal account, and about particular budget items for the coming fiscal year.)
It won’t be easy, but I believe we’ll make the transition away from big-but-empty in the coming decade. In part, we’ll do so because we’ll embrace new ideas, and in part because we’ll have reached the end of the pretend, with tired, flamboyant claims no longer able to convince anyone.
For tomorrow, though, a story about how desperation (something we certainly needn’t feel about our own situation) clouds judgment.
Tomorrow: What a Film About Janesville Really Says.
Good morning.
Whitewater’s week begins with sprinkles and a high of forty-six. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset will be 5:54 PM.
On this day in 1886, Pres. Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty. The New York Times covered the ceremony:
The statue of Liberty yesterday was seen through a mist darkly. Piercing winds blew around Bedlow’s Island, and the numerous workmen, who were not in any way protected from the weather, worked uncomfortably. The speakers’ stand, and that for the use of musicians above it, were in readiness yesterday. Planks were removed and a semblance of tidiness was given to the island. A big barge, which looked extremely dismal, with its legend in red characters, “Eat, drink, and be merry,” stood at the Bedlow’s Island dock to land visitors. It will be used for that purpose this afternoon.
Sadly, the public could not attend the event on the island:
No members of the general public were permitted on the island during the ceremonies, which were reserved entirely for dignitaries. The only females granted access were Bartholdi’s wife and de Lesseps’s granddaughter; officials stated that they feared women might be injured in the crush of people. The restriction offended area suffragists, who chartered a boat and got as close as they could to the island. The group’s leaders made speeches applauding the embodiment of Liberty as a woman and advocating women’s right to vote.[98] A scheduled fireworks display was postponed until November 1 because of poor weather.[100]
On this day in 1936, a vice-presidential candidate argues against the practices of his era:
1936 – Vice Presidential Candidate Stumps in Janesville
On this date, during a whistlestop speech in Janesville, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Frank W. Knox charged the FDR Administration with corruption and cronyism in an impassioned campaign speech to approximately 1,100 residents. [Source: Janesville Gazette 10/28/1936, p.1]
Scientific American‘s daily trivia question asks about hurricanes. (Clicking on the question leads to its answer.)
During what months does the North Atlantic hurricane season run?
Two classic monster movies will be shown on Tuesday at the Starin Park Community Building, beginning at 12:30 p.m. —
