FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.27

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Good morning.

It’s a rainy day for Whitewater, with a high temperature of about sixty. The days are growing shorter by a small amount; today is about three minutes darker than yesterday.

Common Council meets tonight at 6 p.m. The meeting agenda is available online.

Scientists in Switzerland have found a way to design and program small autonomous flying robots to flock like birds, an achievement that may make mapping or surveillance easier:

The swarming behavior is based on a three-dimensional algorithm that represents the movements of schools of fish and flocks of birds. The algorithm, developed in 1986 by Craig Reynolds, was first used as a computer graphics tool. In the algorithm, as in real flocks, the individual agents behave simply. They respond to their close neighbors without considering the movements of the group. Yet out of the noise, larger patterns emerge, coherent and beautiful.

“Flocking requires three things. You need to move with the same speed and direction as your neighbors, you need to avoid hitting them and you need to stay close,” said Hauert, who is now a post-doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When programming the robots, Hauert and Floreano added in a fourth ability: migration. With this ability, the robot swarm can travel to a set location, making them more useful as search and surveillance tools.

See, Autonomous Flying Robots Flock Like Birds.

Any yet, still farther to go to match this flock –

Freedom of Speech, Laws/Regulations, Liberty, Taxes/Taxation

Banned Books Week, 9.24 – 10.1

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It’s Banned Books Week, from September 24th to October 1st:

During the last week of September every year, hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events.

The 2011 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 24 through October 1. Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries.

More than 11,000 books have been challenged since 1982.

Here is the arrogance of the state: it taxes from the privately productive, depriving them of their earnings, builds public institutions, and then tells those very same taxpayers what is, or is not, appropriate for reading at those institutions.

Their money was good enough to take in taxes, but their choice of books in publicly-funded schools and libraries? Oh, no, some middling bureaucrat, some starched scold, and more abercrombies than one could shake a stick at – they’ll decide what’s right.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.26

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Good morning.

It’s rain and thunder today with a high of sixty-three for the Whippet City.

The Community Development Authority meets today at 4:30. The meeting agenda is available online.

At Item 11, one sees that the meeting will go into closed, executive session to

  • Adjourn to closed session at approximately 6:00PM to reconvene at approximately 6:15PM per Wisconsin State Statutes 19.85(1)(c) “considering employment, promotion, compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility”

    • a. Pay for the Executive Director Position

    Members of the Authority may set any salary they want, but nothing they say changes the sensible conclusion that the proper level of compensation for anyone currently connected to the Tax Incremental District 4 fiasco is between $1.29 and $1.37 annually.

    If they were deliberating generally – without thinking of a particular prospect now connected to that shameful mess – then the proper level of compensation would be in a range between $1,097,241 and $1,238,876 annually.  The higher compensation for an executive director who’d be an outsider not connected to past, serial failures would be fair compensation for all the Maalox and aspirin a normal person would need to purchase upon realizing what he’d stepped into.

    Twitter

    Recent Tweets 9.18 to 9.24

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    It’s not going away anytime soon A primer on the Milwaukee County “John Doe” investigation @ Dane101 bit.ly/r0GMCj
    23 Sep

    Corruption probe easily WI story of the day/week/month Those not there are nowhere JSOnline bit.ly/of3z3p

    JS hits state corruption probe again: Governor’s spokesman granted immunity bit.ly/of3z3p

    Nothing but the big themes – Chris Rickert: Butter is better, especially in Wisconsin bit.ly/mZXClu
    State Journal makes MacIver’s Day: Wearing out their welcome: Protesters still at Capitol, irking lawmakers bit.ly/qVeNTC

    The real target: Is Scott Walker John Doe? bit.ly/ozUlmQ

    Lawful elections or deadly disease? It’s all the same to GOP’s Robin Vos – Vos says recalls ‘like a cancer’ bit.ly/pYgqk9
    Unemployment actually UP Deceptive Headline of the Day™: Most Wisconsin Counties, Cities See Unemployment Drop bit.ly/p26afm

    AP analysis: Six-thousand jobs Walker Admin touts available for unemployed actually in other states bit.ly/okEXyF

    2nd topic’s even bigger: state wants to withdraw Walker aide’s affidavit on exemptions from collective bargaining law bit.ly/o0Wcsi

    Boston University study: patent trolls have cost innovators half a trillion dollars bit.ly/nfKUVF

    The IMF Expects the U.S. Economy to Get Worse – anemic growth 1.5% ’11, 1.8% ’12 bit.ly/qVx3eq

    Lead Balloon Alert™: Beloit considers referendum to prevent tax *decrease* bit.ly/oOCInv

    Voters in WI reject curtailing collective bargaining rights to achieve state budget reform – on.wsj.com/nhtirV

    Oddly low-key Thompson announcement on running: Thompson tells WTMJ he filed papers for U.S. Senate run bit.ly/qWR6wk

    This Week: Great Music from Ben Sommer bit.ly/qTrsOR

    If politicians already had solid plans, they wouldn’t need summits: Gov. Walker plans jobs summit bit.ly/qFxeLB

    Incipient fire sale: U.S. Postal Service move would delay mailbit.ly/nsysgh
    more >>

    Law, Laws/Regulations, Liberty

    Legislator responsible for Transportation Security Administration says dismantle, privatize the agency

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    Indeed. Long, long overdue. The agency is one of America’s greatest contemporary mistakes.

    They’ve been accused of rampant thievery, spending billions of dollars like drunken sailors, groping children and little old ladies, and making everyone take off their shoes.

    But the real job of the tens of thousands of screeners at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is to protect Americans from a terrorist attack.

    Yet a decade after the TSA was created following the September 11 attacks, the author of the legislation that established the massive agency grades its performance at D-.

    “The whole program has been hijacked by bureaucrats,” said Rep. John Mica (R. -Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

    “It mushroomed into an army,” Mica said. “It’s gone from a couple-billion-dollar enterprise to close to $9 billion.”

    As for keeping the American public safe, Mica says, “They’ve failed to actually detect any threat in 10 years.”

    “Everything they have done has been reactive. They take shoes off because of [shoe-bomber] Richard Reid, passengers are patted down because of the diaper bomber, and you can’t pack liquids because the British uncovered a plot using liquids,” Mica said. It’s an agency that is always one step out of step,” Mica said.

    Via HUMAN EVENTS.

    Music

    I Married a Prostitute from Ben Sommer’s Super Brain

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    Earlier this week, I wrote about the premiere of a track from Ben Sommer’s Super Brain here on FREE WHITEWATER. That’s not, in fact, set for today (I was ahead of things), but I’ve the first video from the album that I will embed. Thanks much to the readers who’ve written with positive comments about Ben’s album.

    By the way, for those who are wondering, Ben offers his view of the song:

    Now…before the prudish sour pusses among you make a single comment please do the following:

    Take the lemon out of your mouth
    Go get a funny bone, and
    Relax

    No – I’m not really married to a prostitute – and I’m not even the “I” in the song title. Clever how that works, eh?

    Anyway – this song dates back to 2002, when I spent an autumn week in solitude at a family friend’s hill-top Vermont home, writing songs all day, hiking in the afternoon, then cooking dinner and getting blitzed by myself on pumpkin beer while I listened to some crappy jazz on the local NPR station. This was pre-cell phone, pre-broadband, pre-kids – pre-everything. So, though I appreciate those things I have now, this song (and the last one – Young Turks) makes me nostalgic.

    Sue me.

    Now I listen to lots of jazz (great stuff that no one plays anymore, radio or otherwise), and I think this is a great song. This free-speech, liberty-loving blog proudly highlight’s Ben’s music.

    Enjoy.