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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.3.14

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Good morning.

Our week begins with sunny skies and a high of nineteen. Sunrise today is 7:07 AM and sunset 5:11 PM.

The Super Bowl now over, those of us who thought that Denver would win can at least console ourselves that there’s no second-guessing to afflict us; the outcome wasn’t close enough to inspire alternative theories of the result.

On this day in 1865, Union and Confederate leaders discuss peace:

In January, Union troops captured Fort Fisher and effectively closed Wilmington, North Carolina, the last major port open to blockade runners. Davis conferred with his vice president, Alexander Stephens, who recommended that a peace commission be appointed to explore a possible armistice. Davis sent Stephens and two others to meet with Lincoln at Hampton Roads.

The meeting convened on February 3. Stephens asked if there was any way to stop the war and Lincoln replied that the only way was “for those who were resisting the laws of the Union to cease that resistance.” The delegation underestimated Lincoln’s resolve to make the end of slavery a necessary condition for any peace. The president also insisted on immediate reunification and the laying down of Confederate arms before anything else was discussed. In short, the Union was in such an advantageous position that Lincoln did not need to concede any issues to the Confederates. Robert M.T. Hunter, a member of the delegation, commented that Lincoln was offering little except the unconditional surrender of the South.

After less than five hours, the conference ended and the delegation left with no concessions. The war continued for more than two months.

This day in 1959 is the day the music died:

Bad winter weather and a bus breakdown prompted rock-and-roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper to rent a plane to continue on their “Winter Dance Party” tour. Icy roads and treacherous weather had nearly undermined their performances in Green Bay and Appleton that weekend, so after a show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, 1959, they boarded a four-seat airplane. The three performers and pilot Roger Peterson perished when the plane crashed about 1:00 AM on Monday, February 3rd (“The Day the Music Died,” according to singer Don McLean in his song “American Pie”) . [Source: Mark Steuer; Wikipedia]

Puzzability‘s new game is about television show titles:

This Week’s Game — February 3-7
Horizontal Holds
Everything is edited for television this week. For each day, we started with the title of a well-known TV series and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for letters that spell out a word that’s a clue to the series title. (Those letters may appear elsewhere in the title as well.)
Example:
******,  SH*  **OT*
Answer:
Murder, She Wrote
What to Submit:
Submit the series title (as “Murder, She Wrote” in the example) for your answer.
Monday, February 3
**STE*  ED

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.2.14

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Good morning.

Earlier today, prognosticating groundhog Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, and so predicted six more weeks of winter. In the USA Today story linked above, reporter Doyle Rice connects Groundhog Day to the celebration of Candlemas:

Groundhog Day has its origins in an ancient celebration of Candlemas, a point midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, according to the climate center.

Superstition has it that fair weather was seen as a prediction of a stormy and cold second half to winter, as noted in this Old English saying:

“If Candlemas be fair and bright,

Winter has another flight.

If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,

Winter will not come again.”

National Geographic’s published 9 Things You Didn’t Know About Groundhogs (of the ordinary kind.)

Meanwhile, in Whitewater, we can expect a Sunday of sunshine and a thirteen-degree high temperature.

Friday’s FW poll results are in, and 54.55% of respondents picked Denver to win the Super Bowl, with 45.45% selecting Seattle.

On this day in 1905, professional baseball makes its debut in the Badger State:

1905 – Professional Baseball Arrives in Wisconsin
On this date the Wisconsin State League was formed, bringing professional baseball to five Wisconsin cities. The six-team league began play the following summer with franchises in Beloit, Green Bay, La Crosse, Oshkosh, Wausau, and Freeport, Illinois. The league lasted through 1914, although its named was changed to Wisconsin-Illinois in 1908.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.1.14

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Good morning.

Whitewater’s month begins with a high of twenty-four, and snow throughout the day amounting to one to three inches.

Google has a doodle on its search page today celebrating the life of Harriet Tubman.

Born a slave in 1820, living until 1913, and for that time a life of accomplishment:

As a child in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten by masters to whom she was hired out. Early in her life, she suffered a severe head wound when hit by a heavy metal weight. The injury caused disabling seizures, narcoleptic attacks, headaches, and powerful visionary and dream experiences, which occurred throughout her life. A devout Christian, Tubman ascribed the visions and vivid dreams to revelations from God.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night, Tubman (or “Moses”, as she was called) “never lost a passenger”.[2] Large rewards were offered for the return of many of the fugitive slaves, but no one then knew that Tubman was the one helping them. When the Southern-dominated Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, requiring law officials in free states to aid efforts to recapture slaves, she helped guide fugitives farther north into Canada, where slavery had been abolished in 1834.

When the American Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina. After the war, she retired to the family home in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She became active in the women’s suffrage movement in New York until illness overtook her. Near the end of her life, she lived in a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped found years earlier.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.31.14

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Good morning.

Friday will be mostly cloudy with a high of fourteen.

On this day in 1865, the House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. The New York Times reported news of the House vote:

The great feature of the existing rebellion was the passage to-day by the House of Representatives of the resolutions submitting to the Legislatures of the several States an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery.

It was an epoch in the history of the country, and will be remembered by the members of the House and spectators present as an event in their lives. At 3 o’clock, by general consent, all discussion having ceased, the preliminary votes to reconsider and second the demand for the previous question were agreed to by a vote of 113 yeas, to 58 nays; and amid profound silence the Speaker announced that the yeas and nays would be taken directly upon the pending proposition.

During the call, when prominent Democrats voted aye, there was suppressed evidence of applause and gratification exhibited in the galleries, but it was evident that the great interest centered entirely upon the final result, and when the presiding officer announced that the resolution was agreed to by yeas 119, nays 56, the enthusiasm of all present, save a few disappointed politicians, knew no bounds, and for several moments the scene was grand and impressive beyond description.

No attempt was made to suppress the applause which came from all sides, every one feeling that the occasion justified the fullest expression of approbation and joy.

Puzzability‘s football-themed series concludes today. Here’s Friday’s game:

This Week’s Game — January 27-31
Team Scrimmage
Looks like there’s a gain on the play all week. For each day, we started with a word or phrase, added the letters in the name of one of the two teams competing in this year’s Super Bowl (BRONCOS or SEAHAWKS), and rearranged all the letters to get a new word or phrase. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the shorter one first.
Example:
Ran like crazy; gets clean after playing football
Answer:
Tore; takes a shower (Seahawks)
What to Submit:
Submit both pieces, with the shorter one first (as “Tore; takes a shower” in the example), for your answer.
Friday, January 31
Closes; sweet pastries for Good Friday

New Media, Writing

The Spacing of Words to Come

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The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.  After jumping over the dog, the fox typed into his journal using two spaces between sentences.

Over at Caffeinated Politics that there’s a light-hearted post about whether proper punctuation allows two spaces between sentences, or somehow requires only one space. See, Two Spaces After A Period When Typing A Sentence? 

This is only a topic because a few hidebound people insist, demand, and implore that all the civilized world follow their way.

In his post, blogger Gordon Humphrey comes down on the side of two spaces.  Wisely and well decided, I’d say – many bloggers use the same two-space style of punctuation.  (I’m one of them.)

There are probably a few reasons bloggers do so, but I believe it simply improves readability on the screen.

I’ve a mere hunch that those who favor one space are paper-centric, and pre-digital in outlook.

Yet, for those who insist on one space, and demand that all others follow their rigid approach, there’s this inauspicious trend – it’s not print but digital that will set the century’s standard of punctuation, composition, rhetoric, etc.

They may advocate all they’d like for the propriety of one space, but the future, I’m afraid they’ll find, belongs to those in the digital world who use two spaces.  

These holdouts might just as well become accustomed to a two-space style.

They may not like it.  Nonetheless, two-spaces will prove to be the spacing of words to come.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.30.14

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Good morning.

We’ll have a windy Thursday in Whitewater, with a high of twenty-nine, and about an inch of snow in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, the view from Norway:

auroras-norway

Northern lights from Tromsø, Norway, on Jan. 9, 2014. Photographer Harald Albrigtsen.

On this day in 1948, an assassin murders Mohandas Gandhi.

Here’s Puzzability‘s Thursday game:

This Week’s Game — January 27-31
Team Scrimmage
Looks like there’s a gain on the play all week. For each day, we started with a word or phrase, added the letters in the name of one of the two teams competing in this year’s Super Bowl (BRONCOS or SEAHAWKS), and rearranged all the letters to get a new word or phrase. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the shorter one first.
Example:
Ran like crazy; gets clean after playing football
Answer:
Tore; takes a shower (Seahawks)
What to Submit:
Submit both pieces, with the shorter one first (as “Tore; takes a shower” in the example), for your answer.
Thursday, January 30
Insincere religious talk; one of Canada’s prairie provinces

City, Local Government, Politics

Dr. Kissinger’s Services Not Required

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Henry_A_Kissinger

Yesterday, I wrote about an obvious lack of diligence from members of Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission. Their meetings are an exercise in lack of preparation, sloppiness, and plodding along unenthusiastically. (See, Lack of Diligence, Front and Center.)

Someone asked me, in reply to that post, if I thought that Whitewater’s commissioners, on the PFC or elsewhere, were all to be expected to be like Henry Kissinger.  The question was about Kissinger’s obvious intellect and erudition, not his foreign-policy approach.  (Honestly, the last thing Whitewater needs is commissioners exercising Kissinger-like machinations.)

It’s a false choice – a fallacy of the excluded middle – to assume that we’ve only the two alternatives of lazy commissioners or Henry Kissinger.  

Of course not – we have no need to pine for Dr. Kissinger (assuming anyone would be likely to do so).

Whitewater is filled with thousands of smart and diligent residents as capable as any in all America.  

Some commissions enjoy such members now, and the city is better for it.  

All it takes is their willingness to work hard seriously and thoroughly at their volunteer jobs.  A pencil, paper, some reading, some notes: that’s what we need and deserve.  

When officials fill committees with their entitled-but-light-working buddies, pals, friends, and cronies, they worsen our present condition and discourage sincere people from playing a future role.  

All the while, those same officials will bemoan a lack of greater participation.  Their complaints are disingenuous.  For decades, Whitewater has under-performed while politicians and bureaucrats have packed principal committees with their pals, and this decades-long habit is the cause of our lack of diligence now.  

We’ve very many in this city – right, center, left, libertarian – who would treat their responsibilities with more care and seriousness, and offer better ideas, than some of those commissioners one sees now on the city’s leading boards and committees.

We can do this ourselves; Dr. Kissinger’s services are, fortunately, unnecessary.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.29.14

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Good morning.

We’ll have a sunny day with a high of nineteen today.

For those looking for a new hobby, one reads that America is experiencing a falconry revival:

In 1968, when Lars Sego was eight years old, he decided he wanted to become a falconer. He put a hood and jess on a chicken and let it jump off his arm to catch bugs, and so began an illustrious career in bird training. As a teenager, after finally getting a few falcons of his own, one of the birds he’d raised from a hatchling climbed on top of his head and tried to have sex with it. It was at that moment, while being violated by a bird of prey, that he realized he should start breeding his animals on a larger scale. Today, he runs a New Mexico-based falcon-breeding firm with the no-nonsense title ‘Falcons for Sale.’ They raise only 40 to 60 birds per year, but their animals are so prized by wealthy foreigners that few of them stay in America. Residents from more falcon-friendly countries like the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia swoop in regularly and pay premiums for birds they’ve reserved years in advance….

His success is the manifestation of a small, unlikely falconry renaissance in America. Although humans have practiced falconry for thousands of years, it never really caught on in the US. Estimates put the number of active falconers in the country somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 (up from maybe 1,500 in the mid-20th century), whereas in Dubai alone Sego believes there are as many as 20,000. Despite their small numbers, the expertise and care that American falconers put into their craft has propelled them to the forefront of breeding and bird-based innovation. As a result, US birds are in high demand in the world’s more raptorial nations….

On this day in 1936, the Baseball Hall of Fame gets its first five members: “Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson.”

Here’s Puzzability‘s Wednesday game:

This Week’s Game — January 27-31
Team Scrimmage
Looks like there’s a gain on the play all week. For each day, we started with a word or phrase, added the letters in the name of one of the two teams competing in this year’s Super Bowl (BRONCOS or SEAHAWKS), and rearranged all the letters to get a new word or phrase. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the shorter one first.
Example:
Ran like crazy; gets clean after playing football
Answer:
Tore; takes a shower (Seahawks)
What to Submit:
Submit both pieces, with the shorter one first (as “Tore; takes a shower” in the example), for your answer.
Wednesday, January 29
Lounge around doing nothing productive; something often indicated by initials on a love letter’s envelope

City, Local Government, Police

Lack of Diligence, Front and Center

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In the fall, during the 11.6.13 Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meeting, the PFC’s chairperson introduced a draft code of ethics and drafts of procedures for complaints and interviewing candidates for employment or promotion.  

I wrote about that meeting afterward, because the drafts were poorly written, and in the case of the procedures for complaints often ill-considered and seemingly slapdash in design.  See, following that meeting, Policies for the Police and Fire Commission.    

With a week to consider the poor-quality drafts, and the opportunity to make much-needed corrections, what did the Police and Fire Commission do when it reconvened on 11.14.13?   

Four of the five members considered an oath, a commissioner’s code of ethics, procedures for a complaint process, and for a hiring process (one left early for another commitment).  

If all commissioners cannot attend, on significant issues, then the meeting should be postponed.  If that’s too hard, commissioners with conflicts should quit the PFC, thereby affording themselves more time for those other matters of greater interest. 

Watch the video, if you’d like, beginning at 1:21 in the recording, and be embarrassed:

There are (1) mistakes even in the draft for final review, (2) it’s obvious that some members of the commission have not reviewed the documents beforehand, (3) the commission chairperson, Jan Bilgen, isn’t even sure if existing commissioners will have to take the new commissioner’s oath the PFC has just approved, and (4) that same chairperson has to wait for someone to reprint new copies of the documents that were meant for final review, as she notices during the meeting that they’re incorrectly formatted.

The topics that the commissioners discuss at more than a few words – of all the issues of oath, ethics, complaints and hiring processes – are remarking on typos they’ve not noticed before, wondering about the time interviews might take (laughably struggling over what ‘as soon as possible’ means, pondering if that’s one day or perhaps – wait for it – two days’ time), or asking for definitions at the meeting that they should have researched beforehand.

There is one exception – beginning at about 18:51 into the video they address complaints against command staff, and later appeal rights to Common Council, and it’s obvious that even the draftswoman of the process doesn’t understand her draft or the issues involved.  

These processes should have been read well in advance, rather than at the last moment, during the meeting itself.  If that’s the best one can do, one’s ill-serving this community. There’s no honorable service from sloth.

Small wonder that PFC chairperson Bilgen once argued against televised PFC meetings – she’s out of her depth, often unsure, guessing about what might happen, occasionally laughing nervously as the commission stumbles along.  

Whitewater’s police leadership needs all the competent oversight it can get, but it’s an understatement to say it’s not getting it from this PFC.