Good morning.

Whitewater’s week ends with a chance of scattered flurries and a high of twenty-four. We’ll have 10h 34m of sunlight, 11h 32m of daylight, with a waxing crescent moon.

On 2.15.1898, a explosion still remembered today, as a prelude to war:

A massive explosion of unknown origin sinks the battleship USS Maine in Cuba’s Havana harbor, killing 260 of the fewer than 400 American crew members aboard.

One of the first American battleships, the Maine weighed more than 6,000 tons and was built at a cost of more than $2 million. Ostensibly on a friendly visit, theMaine had been sent to Cuba to protect the interests of Americans there after a rebellion against Spanish rule broke out in Havana in January.

An official U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry ruled in March that the ship was blown up by a mine, without directly placing the blame on Spain. Much of Congress and a majority of the American public expressed little doubt that Spain was responsible and called for a declaration of war.

Subsequent diplomatic failures to resolve the Maine matter, coupled with United States indignation over Spain’s brutal suppression of the Cuban rebellion and continued losses to American investment, led to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in April 1898.

Within three months, the United States had decisively defeated Spanish forces on land and sea, and in August an armistice halted the fighting. On December 12, 1898, the Treaty of Paris was signed between the United States and Spain, officially ending the Spanish-American War and granting the United States its first overseas empire with the ceding of such former Spanish possessions as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

In 1976, a team of American naval investigators concluded that the Maineexplosion was likely caused by a fire that ignited its ammunition stocks, not by a Spanish mine or act of sabotage.

Google-a-Day poses a geography question: “In the Russian monument of the founder of Moscow, which hand is he holding out to the side?”

Good morning.

Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with a chance of afternoon snow, and a high of thirty-seven.

Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission meets at 6 PM tonight.

On this day in 1929, a shocking Prohibition-related crime:

7 Chicago Gangsters Slain by Firing Squad of Rivals, Some in Police Uniforms

Chicago, Feb. 14 — Chicago gangland leaders observed Valentine’s Day with machine guns and a stream of bullets and as a result seven members of the George (Bugs) Moran-Dean O’Banion, North Side Gang are dead in the most cold-blooded gang massacre in the history of this city’s underworld.

The seven gang warriors were trapped in a beer-distributors’ rendezvous at 2,122 North Clark Street, lined up against the wall by four men, two of whom were in police uniforms, and executed with the precision of a firing squad.

The killings have stunned the citizenry of Chicago as well as the Police Department, and while tonight there was no solution, the one outstanding cause was illicit liquor traffic.

On this day in 1819, a famous inventor and longtime Wisconsin resident was born:

1819 – Typewriter Inventor Born
On this date the inventor of the modern typewriter, C. Latham Sholes, was born. Sholes moved to Wisconsin as a child and lived in Green Bay, Kenosha, and Milwaukee. In 1867, in Milwaukee, he presented his first model for the modern typewriter and patents for the device were taken out in 1868. Sholes took the advice of many mechanical experts, including Thomas Edison, and so claims that he was the sole inventor of the typewriter have often been disputed. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Homes, pg 316-328]

Google-a-Day asks about art: What was the profession of the father of the artist who created the portrait entitled “A Young Hare”?

Good morning.

It’s a mostly sunny day, with a high of thirty-seven, ahead for Whitewater.

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets today at 8 AM.

The agenda posted at the City of Whitewater website for that Tech Park Board meeting is unprofessional and sloppy at best, and legally deficient at worst. Here’s the full text:

MEETING NOTICE
Whitewater University Technology Park Board Meeting Wednesday, Feb 13, 2013 at 8:00 a.m.
Whitewater Innovation Center
1221 Innovation Drive
Whitewater, WI 53190

Agenda
1. Call to Order
2. Approval of Minutes from Jan. 16, 2013 Meeting
3. Review/Acceptance of Jan. 2013 Financial Reports – Clapper
4. WUTP Architectural Review Committee Discussion – Telfer & Clapper
5. Innovation Center Facility / Security Discussion – Ehlen
6. City of Whitewater Seed Capital Fund Update – Knight
7. Whitewater Incubation Program (WhIP) Updates – Ehlen
8. Strategic Priorities and Development and Plan
9. Reconvene into Open Session
10. Future Agenda Items
11. Future Meeting Dates Mar. 20, Apr. 10, May 8, June 19
12. Adjournment

Did anyone bother to review and proofread this notice? At best, there’s a stray entry at item 9: “9. Reconvene into Open Session.” At worst, there’s a missing entry for a closed session, somewhere before item 9, that’s been wholly omitted.

The law requires that a closed session be expressly noticed, and that its purpose be expressly stated, under one of 13 possible purposes. Wis. Stat. § 19.84(2), § 19.85(1).

The notice looks like it was dashed off hastily, but there’s no exception for this public body under Wisconsin law for “I didn’t feel like complying,” “I can’t do any better,” or “I’ll tell the public only what I feel like telling them.”

These are clear and simple provisions, and in any event, gentlemen who’ve taken millions in others’ money should be expected to do a bit of proofreading for their publicly-financed undertaking.

If the minimum standards of law and professionalism are too hard, one may always quit the project.

On this day in 1861, America awards the first Medal of Honor to a soldier:

The earliest military action to be revered with a Medal of Honor award is performed by Colonel Bernard J.D. Irwin, an assistant army surgeon serving in the first major U.S.-Apache conflict. Near Apache Pass, in southeastern Arizona, Irwin, an Irish-born doctor, volunteered to go to the rescue of Second Lieutenant George N. Bascom, who was trapped with 60 men of the U.S. Seventh Infantry by the Chiricahua Apaches. Irwin and 14 men, initially without horses, began the 100-mile trek to Bascom’s forces riding on mules. After fighting and capturing Apaches along the way and recovering stolen horses and cattle, they reached Bascom’s forces on February 14 and proved instrumental in breaking the siege.

Also on this day, in 1935, Wisconsin rejects a true market in gasoline for a fixed and arbitrary price:

1935 – Gasoline Price Wars Quelled
On this date, in an effort to stop gasoline price wars, the state of Wisconsin established a minimum price of 16 cents per gallon for gasoline. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Google-a-Day offers a geography question: “What’s the southernmost province of the country that occupies approximately one sixth of the Iberian Peninsula?”

Good morning.

Today brings mostly sunny skies and a high of thirty-two to Whitewater.

It’s Lincoln’s birthday, and in 1859, while a presidential candidate, he spoke in Milwaukee at the Wisconsin State Fair.  Here’s a part of the text of that address, ostensibly about agriculture (but truly about even more):

The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point. From this point, however, men immediately diverge. Much disputation is maintained as to the best way of applying and controlling the labor element. By some it is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital — that nobody labors, unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow, by the use of that capital, induces him to do it. Having assumed this, they proceed to consider whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent; or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far they naturally conclude that all laborers are necessarily either hired laborers, or slaves. They further assume that whoever is once a hired laborer, is fatally fixed in that condition for life; and thence again that his condition is as bad as, or worse than that of a slave. This is the “mud-sill” theory.

But another class of reasoners hold the opinion that there is no such relation between capital and labor, as assumed; and that there is no such thing as a freeman being fatally fixed for life, in the condition of a hired laborer, that both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them groundless. They hold that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed — that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior — greatly the superior — of capital.

They do not deny that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital. The error, as they hold, is in assuming that the whole labor of the world exists within that relation. A few men own capital; and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital, hire, or buy, another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class — neither work for others, nor have others working for them. Even in all our slave States, except South Carolina, a majority of the whole people of all colors, are neither slaves nor masters. In these Free States, a large majority are neither hirers or hired. Men, with their families — wives, sons and daughters — work for themselves, on their farms, in their houses and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hirelings or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital; that is, labor with their own hands, and also buy slaves or hire freemen to labor for them; but this is only a mixed, and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class. Again, as has already been said, the opponents of the “mud-sill” theory insist that there is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. There is demonstration for saying this. Many independent men, in this assembly, doubtless a few years ago were hired laborers. And their case is almost if not quite the general rule….

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! — how consoling in the depths of affliction! “And this, too, shall pass away.” And yet let us hope it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.