13 Dec
24-Year-Old Asks Facebook For His Data, Gets 1,200 PDFs – Slashdot bit.ly/rznTVt
13 Dec
Editor: Headline wrong Suspicious recall signatures, with proper dates and locations, [may!] will be counted bit.ly/s2C03e
12 Dec
Sadly, sounds like Floyd Landis & every pro cyclist ever caught: Probable Braun defense strategy – bit.ly/tzc60P
11 Dec
Odd: State Journal website offers nothing prominent about Ryan Braun suspension pic.twitter.com/2JHb1aRx
Over a month ago, I asked in a Poll & Comment Forum: When will Whitewater see its first accumulated snowfall this season? The standard was at least one inch, and I think we’re close enough today for Saturday, December 17th to be Whitewater’s first snowfall. It’s not much snow, but it’s enough to be noticeable, and easily more than just frost. (There’s an imprecision in a poll like this that’s harmless; it’s not bridge-building or automotive engineering.)
The largest group of respondents was on the money: the first snowfall was between 12/16 and 12/31, as they predicted:
(I was way off: I’d predicted November 28th; it would have been better to stick with the sharp prediction of over 42% of respondents.)
We’ve had five straight months of job losses in Wisconsin, with another 14,600 jobs, including 11,700 in the private sector, lost last month.
You know, and I know, that Gov. Walker insists that Wisconsin is open for business. I’m sure it is; I’m equally sure that when most people use that expression, they’re not thinking of a fire sale.
Arguments over recall petitions notwithstanding, we’re sure to have a gubernatorial recall election, and among the many issues will be our poor record on employment. Gov. Walker can expect considerable criticism from the Left (the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future among them), as found in a flyer I’ve embedded below. He’ll need an answer, a convincing one, to their critique.
For Christmas or Hanukkah, what was your favorite toy?
Here’s a poll with some choices from the 50 most popular Christmas toys from the last 100 years, and a space for comments below.
My favorite, of all time: a finely-crafted product from Tonka.
Via YouTube.
Good morning.
It’s a sunny day for Whitewater, with a high temperature of thirty-two degrees. In Lincoln Manor, Maryland, it’s a partly sunny day ahead, with a high temperature of forty-six.
The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this day in 1922,
….James Davidson died. He was born in Norway in 1854 and emigrated in 1872. He became a leading merchant in Soldiers Grove and served as village president, village treasurer, assemblyman, state treasurer, and lieutenant-governor before becoming governor of the state from 1906-1911. As governor, he introduced the law providing for bank examiners and promoted legislation giving the railroad commission jurisdiction over most public utilities. He is buried in Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers, edited by Sarah Davis McBride]
I had not heard of him, or his accomplishments, until I saw the entry on the Historical Society’s website. It’s a reminder to me that most officials, no matter how accomplished in their time, will fade from popular memory. Perhaps this is less true in a time of video recording, but I think it still – mostly – applies. I’m sure, though, that it will not apply to Gov. Walker. One way or another, he’s sure to be remembered.
Google’s puzzle for today asks an historical question, of a time long before Wisconsin’s history: “One of the earliest uses for glass bottles dates back to before 1000 B.C. What group of people is credited with the first use of glass for perfume bottles?”
Yes, they do. Transparency is no better, if not worse, at the state level.
See, Feds get low marks for online spending transparency, and Legislative Audit Bureau plans state’s Contract Sunshine website.
Good morning.
It’s a windy day in store for Whitewater, with a high of forty-degrees, but falling temperatures later in the day. In Naples, Florida, it will be mostly sunny and thirty-eight degrees warmer.
Looking for a sample from a comet? If you were, you might do what NASA is considering — using a six-foot crossbow to harpoon the comet:
1847 – Wisconsin’s Second Constitutional Convention Convenes in Madison
On this date the first draft of the Wisconsin Constitution was rejected in 1846. As a result, Wisconsin representatives met again to draft a new constitution in 1847. New delegates were invited, and only five delegates attended both conventions. The second convention used the failed 1846 constitution as a springboard for their own, but left out controversial issues such as banking and property rights for women that the first constitution attempted to address. The second constitution included a proposal to let the people of Wisconsin vote on a referendum designed to approve black suffrage. [Source: Attainment of Statehood by Milo M. Quaife]
Source: Wisconsin HIstorical Society.
Google’s puzzle for today asks an uncommon question about something well-known: “This famous copper-clad statue in New York Harbor is an early example of what type of construction?”
Good for him:
Sheboygan teenager and potential recall mayoral candidate Asher Heimermann said he intends to ignore a cease and desist letter from Sheboygan Mayor Bob Ryan to take down a fake Twitter account claiming to be Ryan, saying the account complies with the social media websites rules for parody and does not rise to the level of identity theft.
Via Sheboygan Press.
A solid choice:
….In short, 2011 was unlike any year since 1989 — but more extraordinary, more global, more democratic, since in ’89 the regime disintegrations were all the results of a single disintegration at headquarters, one big switch pulled in Moscow that cut off the power throughout the system.
So 2011 was unlike any year since 1968 — but more consequential because more protesters have more skin in the game. Their protests weren’t part of a countercultural pageant, as in ’68, and rapidly morphed into full-fledged rebellions, bringing down regimes and immediately changing the course of history.
It was, in other words, unlike anything in any of our lifetimes, probably unlike any year since 1848, when one street protest in Paris blossomed into a three-day revolution that turned a monarchy into a republican democracy and then — within weeks, thanks in part to new technologies (telegraphy, railroads, rotary printing presses) — inspired an unstoppable cascade of protest and insurrection in Munich, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Venice and dozens of other places across Europe, as well as a huge peaceful demonstration of democratic solidarity in New York that marched down Broadway and occupied a public park a few blocks north of Wall Street. How perfect that the German word Zeitgeist was transplanted into English in that unprecedented, uncanny year of insurrection.
Via Time Magazine.
Ruthelle Frank is no less a citizen than anyone else in Wisconsin.
I’ve posted before about Ruthelle Frank’s disenfranchisement under Wisconsin’s new voted ID law. She’s a citizen, lifetime resident of Wisconsin, and officeholder, but after eighty-four years, she now faces hundreds of dollars in fees to do what she has a right to do by law: vote. (See, The Disgrace of Wisconsin’s Photo ID Law: Rules leave village leader without right to vote.) Fortunately, she’s found representation through the ACLU.
Consider her situation:
Ruthelle Frank, a resident of Brokaw, Wisconsin since her birth in 1927, has none of the accepted forms of photo ID under Wisconsin’s photo ID law which goes into effect at the February primary election. In order to get a state ID card, she needs to prove citizenship, but since she was born at home, she has never had a birth certificate. The state Register of Deeds, however, does have a record of her birth and can produce a birth certificate at a $20 cost. There’s one problem though — her maiden name (Wedepohl) is misspelled in the record. That record can only be amended by legal proceeding, and the combined fees will run Ruthelle potentially upwards of $200. The state will not waive any of these fees, and under the new law, if she cannot obtain a state ID card, Ruthelle will be sent away from the polls.
But that’s not half so bad as the circumstances of many other Wisconsinites:
….she’s actually better prepared to deal with this than many voters without accepted photo ID, who are disproportionately low-income, elderly, and/or minority, and disproportionately marginalized. Despite Ruthelle’s physical disability (she is paralyzed on the left side of her body), she has family that can assist her, savings, education, and familiarity with both the electoral process and local government. Consider the eligible Wisconsin voter with few contacts, low or no income or savings, and much less education. Is that person any less a citizen of this country? That voter is at risk of losing his/her voice in Wisconsin and everywhere in the U.S. that photo ID laws have been enacted. But maybe you’d reply that most people have photo ID in America. Well, the Ruthelle Franks of the world want you to know that “most people” isn’t a democracy.
Below is a copy of the complaint filed on 12.13.11 on behalf of Ruthelle Frank and other representative citizen-plaintiffs.
Good morning.
It’s a rainy day in Whitewater, with a high temperature likely to be around forty-seven. In San Diego, there’ll be partly cloudy skies and a high of sixty.
Whitewater’s Tech Park board meets today at 8 AM. On the agenda, for closed session, is the same item that’s been on prior of the agendas over many months: “Whitewater University Technology Park Executive Director Search & Screen Update.”
They’re bound to find someone eventually, as the U.S. Census Bureau estimates the American population is over 312,773,435, and the world population is over 6,981,195,998. There simply has to be someone who’d run a public project that took millions to shift public employees from one struggling town to another. Considering only those in America, it would take just .00000031972% of our population to find someone, anyone, to take that job.
The Wisconsin Historical Society marks this as a notable day in the history, so to speak, of Wisconsin and (really) American history:
1893 – Frederick Jackson Turner Delivers Frontier Address
On this date Frederick Jackson Turner delivered the “Significance of the Frontier in American History” address at the forty-first annual meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. [Source: SHSW Proceedings, 1893, pg. 79-112]
Thanks, by the way, for the kind messages about yesterday’s baby sloth video; one discovers all sorts of endearing films like that, and they’re a treat to watch.
Google’s puzzle for today is about tiny Rhode Island, but it wouldn’t be a tiny place after what Google asks: “If you turned the entire state of Rhode Island into a farm, how many acres would your farm have?”
