Public Meetings
Landmarks Commission Special Meeting
by JOHN ADAMS •
Public Meetings
Community Development Authority
by JOHN ADAMS •
Public Meetings
Urban Forestry Commission
by JOHN ADAMS •
Cats
Vigilant Cat
by JOHN ADAMS •
A cat watches vigilantly near the entrance to an old cemetery.
Cartoons & Comics
Sunday Morning Cartoon: Bugs Bunny and Wrong Turns at Albuquerque
by JOHN ADAMS •
Housekeeping
by JOHN ADAMS •
Two quick housekeeping notes for a Saturday morning. First, I’ve adopted a single Twitter feed for my websites, because it seems simpler and less fussy. I’ll be on Twitter @dailyadams.
Second, I’ve added a blog category for Green Energy Holdings, as there will be much to write about that company and its recently-announced proposal for Whitewater.
Cats
Friday Catblogging: Mufasa the Contented Brown Tabby
by JOHN ADAMS •
Poll
Friday Poll: Keep Dog or Boyfriend?
by JOHN ADAMS •
There’s an advice column at Slate called Dear Prudence, to which a reader recently wrote asking what she should do after a boyfriend asked her to get rid of her nine-near-old dog before the boyfriend would marry her.
The dog-owner wanted to postpone marriage until the dog dies. I have a simpler option as a poll question: Should she keep the dog or the boyfriend? Reading the story twice, I think she should keep the dog, ditch the boyfriend, and find someone else who’s dog-tolerant.
What do you think?
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.22.12
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Friday’s forecast is for a day of increasing clouds and a high temperature of eighty-three.
The Wisconsin Historical Society describes a gross embarrassment for the state, on this day in 1943:
On this date future senator Joseph McCarthy broke his leg during a drunken Marine Corps initiation ceremony, despite a press release and other claims that he was hurt in “military action.” Although nicknamed “Tail Gunner Joe”, McCarthy never was a tail gunner, but instead served at a desk as an intelligence officer. In 1951 he applied for medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded to those who had flown at least 25 combat missions. The Marine Corps has records of only 11 combat flights McCarthy flew on, and those were described as local “milk run” flights. Many of McCarthy’s claims were disputed by political opponents as well as journalists.
Google’s daily puzzle asks, “What active volcano sits beneath Europe’s largest ice cap?”
Economy, Foreign Affairs, Free Markets
Expanding Trade with Canada and Mexico
by JOHN ADAMS •
City, Police
Two Quick Points about Meeting Notices
by JOHN ADAMS •
There are two things one can say about the scheduling of a meeting:
- If the meeting is long-planned, there should be long-range notice
- If the meeting is truly important (and one truly cares about community opinion), then the meeting should be scheduled after normal working hours, to allow people to attend
If a presumably important public function like departmental accreditation gets just a day or two of notice for public participation, then either it’s not important or those managing the process don’t think it’s important.
A last-minute announcement tells all one needs to know about a process: that it’s dull, routine, and approached in a perfunctory way.
Animals, City, Liberty
What is Whitewater?
by JOHN ADAMS •
One hears much about the city, of serving the city, and public service. Yet, for all one hears, what is Whitewater?
It’s every resident, of a number now nearly fifteen-thousand. That’s a number far larger than those in city government, those working for the city, or those few who are quite sure that all the city is what they see from their side of a conference room table.
The thousands of residents in the city, and the hundreds of activities and transactions that occupy them each day, constitute the full and true activity of Whitewater.
You may have heard, now and again, the supposedly inspirational saying that ‘none of us is as important as all of us.’ Although that saying may have a value for team sports, it has a value nowhere else. In fact, I am convinced it represents a political misunderstanding about the worth of the individual, and American society.
Each and every person, alone as an individual, has a worth and value that no greater number, no overreaching majority, may trump. To believe otherwise is to allow the few, the different and distinctive, to be swept aside at the whim of the majority. That is neither our law nor, thankfully, our political tradition. Americans are a people of individual liberties, liberties that will not be sacrificed to the caprice of hordes, eager to have their way by force of numbers alone.
This city is one of many thousands, but many thousands of persons, particular and unique, possessing rights no group may trump, the manipulative claims of collective authority & group self-importance notwithstanding.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.21.12
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Whitewater’s Thursday will be one of occasional showers, with a high of eight-one.
New Hampshire becomes the ninth and last necessary state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, thereby making the document the law of the land.
By 1786, defects in the post-Revolutionary War Articles of Confederation were apparent, such as the lack of central authority over foreign and domestic commerce. Congress endorsed a plan to draft a new constitution, and on May 25, 1787, the Constitutional Convention convened at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. On September 17, 1787, after three months of debate moderated by convention president George Washington, the new U.S. constitution, which created a strong federal government with an intricate system of checks and balances, was signed by 38 of the 41 delegates present at the conclusion of the convention. As dictated by Article VII, the document would not become binding until it was ratified by nine of the 13 states.
Google’s daily puzzle tests knowledge of the physical world: “What does the best conductor of heat and electricity do to water?”