Good morning.

It’s a Wednesday of morning fog, increasing clouds, and a high of twenty-nine for Whitewater.

Whitewater’s Tourism Council meets at 9 AM this morning, and her Zoning Rewrite Steering Committee later today at 6 PM.

How did dogs become domesticated dogs?  There’s a compelling theory that Learning to love grains, potatoes was key to the evolution of dogs:

You know that dog biscuit shaped like a bone but made mostly of wheat? Your dog’s willingness to eat that treat, instead of going for a bone in your thigh, helps explain how its ancestors evolved from wolves into house pets.

A team of Swedish researchers compared the genomes of wolves and dogs and found that a big difference is dogs’ ability to easily digest starch. On their way from pack-hunting carnivore to fireside companion, dogs learned to desire — or at least live on — wheat, rice, barley, corn and potatoes….

The theory’s new, and will need more evaluation, but it’s intriguing.

On this day in 1778, America and France sign a Treaty of Amity and Commerce and a Treaty of Alliance in Paris:

The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognized the United States as an independent nation and encouraged trade between France and the America, while the Treaty of Alliance provided for a military alliance against Great Britain, stipulating that the absolute independence of the United States be recognized as a condition for peace and that France would be permitted to conquer the British West Indies.

With the treaties, the first entered into by the U.S. government, the Bourbon monarchy of France formalized its commitment to assist the American colonies in their struggle against France’s old rival, Great Britain. The eagerness of the French to help the United States was motivated both by an appreciation of the American revolutionaries’ democratic ideals and by bitterness at having lost most of their American empire to the British at the conclusion of the French and Indian Wars in 1763.

In 1776, the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee to a diplomatic commission to secure a formal alliance with France. Covert French aid began filtering into the colonies soon after the outbreak of hostilities in 1775, but it was not until the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777 that the French became convinced that the Americans were worth backing in a formal treaty.

On February 6, 1778, the treaties of Amity and Commerce and Alliance were signed, and in May 1778 the Continental Congress ratified them. One month later, war between Britain and France formally began when a British squadron fired on two French ships. During the American Revolution, French naval fleets proved critical in the defeat of the British, which culminated in the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781.

Google-a-Day asks a question about art: “Many of the cave paintings at Lascaux show the animals with heads in profile, but with horns facing forward. This is an example of what convention of representation?”

Good morning.

Tuesday brings a high of twenty-nine, and light show (with limited accumulation) to Whitewater.

It also brings Gov. Walker to town, at 10:15 AM, for a Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation Announcement:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
The Whitewater University Technology Park Board members have been invited to attend an announcement ceremony on Tuesday, February 5, 2013, beginning at 10:15 a.m. at the Whitewater Innovation Center, 1221 Innovation Drive, Whitewater, Wisconsin. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will be in attendance. It is highly likely that a quorum of Technology Park Board members will be in attendance at this presentation. Notice is being provided to inform the public of this gathering, and to confirm that there is no plan to conduct any Whitewater University Technology Park Board business during this meeting.

Richard J. Telfer, WUTP President

“To whom it may concern’ – that’s too funny, really, but I’d guess the humor’s wholly lost on Chancellor Telfer. There just aren’t a lot of people who publish a public notice about a possible quorum, required to be announced under law for all one’s fellow residents, addressed as ‘to whom it may concern.’

But there’s an advantage in that notice, too: this endless of grabbing of public money, and the Potemkin Village that is the Tech Park and Innovation Center, would not have been possible without Telfer. The city would have made far fewer mistakes, wasted far less grant money, taken on far less public debt, and inspired far fewer ridiculously exaggerated press stories, had Telfer not pushed crony capitalist ‘partnerships,’ ‘innovations,’ etc.

There’s much more to write about the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, yet to come.

Later today, at 6:30 PM, Common Council meets.

On this day in 1937, Pres. Roosevelt announced his (later failed) court-packing scheme:

The President suddenly, at noon today, cut through the tangle of proposals made by his Congressional leaders to “bring legislative and judicial action into closer harmony” with a broadaxe message to Congress recommending the passage of statutes to effect drastic Federal court reforms.

The message- prepared in a small group and with deepest secrecy — was accompanied by a letter from the Attorney General and by a bill drawn at the Department of Justice, which would permit an increase in the membership of the Supreme Court from nine to a maximum of fifteen if judges reaching the age of 70 declined to retire; add a total of not more than fifty judges to all classes of the Federal courts; send appeals from lower court decisions on constitutional questions, direct to the Supreme Court, and require that government attorneys be heard before any lower-court injunction issue against the enforcement of any act of Congress.

Avoiding both the devices of constitutional amendment and statutory limitation of Supreme Court powers, which were favored by his usual spokesmen in Congress, the President endorsed an ingenious plan which will on passage give him the power to name six new justices of the Supreme Court.

On February 5, 1849, the University of Wisconsin opens:

1849 – University of Wisconsin opens
On this day in 1849 the University of Wisconsin began with 20 students led by Professor John W. Sterling. The first class was organized as a preparatory school in the first department of the University: a department of science, literature, and the arts. The university was initially housed at the Madison Female Academy building, which had been provided free of charge by the city. The course of study was English grammar; arithmetic; ancient and modern geography; elements of history; algebra; Caesar’s Commentaries; the Aeneid of Virgil (six books); Sallust; select orations of Cicero; Greek; the Anabasis of Xenophon; antiquities of Greece and Rome; penmanship, reading, composition and declamation. Also offered were book-keeping, geometry, and surveying. Tuition was “twenty dollars per scholar, per annum.” For a detailed recollection of early UW-Madison life, see the memoirs of Mrs. W.F. Allen [Source: History of the University of Wisconsin, Reuben Gold Thwaites, 1900]

Google-a-Day offers a science question: “What element on the periodic table is named after the European capital where it was discovered in 1923?”

Good morning.

We’ve had a few inches of snow overnight, and we’ll have about one more before the show ends in the early afternoon. It’s a MOnday high of twenty, with 10h 5m of sunlight and 11h 5m of daylight.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board will meet later today at 5 PM.

On this day in 1938, a now-famous animated film meets its public:

“See for yourself what the genius of Walt Disney has created in his first full length feature production,” proclaimed the original trailer for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released on this day in 1938.

Based on the famous fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, Snow White opened with the Wicked Queen asking her magic mirror the question “Who is the fairest one of all?” The mirror gives its fateful answer: Snow White, the queen’s young stepdaughter. Ordered by the queen to kill the young princess, a sympathetic woodsman instead urges Snow White to hide in the forest; there she encounters a host of friendly animals, who lead her to a cottage inhabited by the Seven Dwarfs: Sleepy, Dopey, Doc, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful and Happy. Eventually, in the classic happy ending viewers would come to expect as a Disney trademark, love conquers all as the dwarfs defeat the villainous queen and Snow White finds love with a handsome prince.

Walt Disney’s decision to make Snow White, which was the first animated feature to be produced in English and in Technicolor, flew in the face of the popular wisdom at the time. Naysayers, including his wife Lillian, warned him that audiences, especially adults, wouldn’t sit through a feature-length cartoon fantasy about dwarfs. But Disney put his future on the line, borrowing most of the $1.5 million that he used to make the film. Snow White premiered in Hollywood on December 21, 1937, earning a standing ovation from the star-studded crowd. When it was released to the public the following February, the film quickly grossed $8 million, a staggering sum during the Great Depression and the most made by any film up to that time.

Critics were virtually unanimous in their admiration for Snow White. Charlie Chaplin, who attended the Hollywood premiere, told the Los Angeles Times that the film “even surpassed our high expectations. In Dwarf Dopey, Disney has created one of the greatest comedians of all time.” The movie’s innovative use of story, color, animation, sound, direction and background, among other elements, later inspired directors like Federico Fellini and Orson Welles. In fact, Welles’Citizen Kane features an opening shot of a castle at night with one lighted window that is strikingly similar to the first shot of the Wicked Queen’s castle in Snow White.

Disney won an honorary Academy Award for his pioneering achievement, while the music for the film, featuring Snow White’s famous ballad, “Some Day My Prince Will Come” and other songs by Frank Churchill, Larry Morey, Paul J. Smith and Leigh Harline, was also nominated for an Oscar. The studio re-released Snow White for the first time in 1944, during World War II; thereafter, it was released repeatedly every decade or so, a pattern that became a tradition for Disney’s animated films. For its 50th anniversary in 1987, Snow White was restored, but cropped into a wide-screen format, a choice that irked some critics. Disney released a more complete digital restoration of the film in 1993. Its power continues to endure: In June 2008, more than 60 years after its U.S. release, the American Film Institute chose Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as the No. 1 animated film of all time in its listing of “America’s 10 Greatest Films in 10 Classic Genres.”

Google-a-Day has a basketball question for this morning: “The youngest recipient of the NBA MVP award joined which one of his “Bulls” teammates in receiving this honor?”