Good morning.

Whitewater’s week ends with a partly sunny day, with high temps in the mid eighties.

You’ve probably wondered (and who hasn’t?) what a tarantula’s heartbeat looks like.  Wired Science has the answer for which you’ve been patiently waiting, in a story entitled, “Tarantula MRI Reveals Strange Double Heartbeat.” Danielle Venton explains:

Spider hearts may contract in a unique double beat. By placing tarantulas in a magnetic resonance imaging scanner, biologists from Edinburgh University made a video of a living spider’s beating heart.

“In the videos you can see the blood flowing through the heart and tantalizingly it looks as though there might be ‘double beating’ occurring; a distinct type of contraction which has never been considered before,” said Gavin Merrifield in a press release. Merrifield presented the research at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Glasgow last month.

See for yourself, in these photos, and the video link (above) —

Image credits: Gavin Merrifield

Good morning.

It’s a partly cloudy day today with a high of eighty-three for the Whippet City.

The draft’s never been popular, and sometimes unpopular even in wartime. The Wisconsin Historical Society writes about how Wisconsinites reacted in 1862:

1862 – War Department Order Prompts Riot

On this date the War Department issued General Order No.99, requesting by draft 300,000 troops to reinforce the Union armies in the Civil War. This action reinforced public sentiment against the draft and prompted the citizens in Port Washington, Ozaukee County to riot in protest.

Here’s a brief video describing economist and libertarian Milton Friedman’s role in ending the draft during Vietnam (an end that made America freer, stronger, and safer with a professional, volunteer military).

Good morning.

It’s a partly cloudy day for Whitewater today, with only a small chance of rain, and a high temperature of eighty-six.

There’s a meeting of Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission this afternoon, at 5 p.m., in the city manager’s conference room at the municipal building. The agenda is available online.

Danielle Venton, writing at Wired Science, asks “Can Planting Vegetables in Vacant Lots Save Cleveland?” Cleveland needs help, as

Ten percent of Clevelanders have been diagnosed with diabetes, as compared to the national average of 8 percent, and more than a third are obese. Among cities with a population between 100,000 and 500,000, it is the seventh most dangerous, according to one crime ranking. Growing tomatoes and beans, and keeping bees and chickens, would change all this, [Parwinder] Grewal said. Studies have shown that gardens improve community health, reduce crime and increase property values.

Grewal is

….co-author of a study ?Can cities become self-reliant in food?? published July 20 in Cities.

?I was motivated to show how much food a city could actually produce by using this land,? he said. ?We could address global problems through this way of gardening.?

Urban gardening improves health, reduces pollution, and creates local businesses, Grewal said. The population of Cleveland, what Grewal considers a typical post-industrial city, peaked near one million in 1950, and has been declining since. Today scarcely half a million people call Cleveland home.

Previously, Drew Carey proposed libertarian solutions to help spark a renaissance in Cleveland. See the series, Reason Saves Cleveland with Drew Carey.

Gardens, including vegetable gardens, will always be an improvement over vacant, junk-filled lots, and can be an improvement over ordinary lawns, too. That’s why the war against gardens, or natural lawns, is more than just dull, middle-class bureaucrats trying to impose their ill-developed, uncreative sensibilities on others – that war holds down a city’s health and prosperity in proportion to its restrictions on liberty.

English garden via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s thunderstorms ahead for Whitewater today, with a high temperature in the lower nineties.

There’s a Common Council meeting tonight, at 6:30 p.m. The meeting agenda is available online.

The Wisconsin Historical Society marks this day in 1832 as the end of the Black Hawk War:

On this date the defeat of Black Hawk and his followers at the Battle of Bad Axe, ended the Black Hawk War. Black Hawk led the American troops northward while the rest of the Indians constructed rafts and canoes to facilitate an escape over the Mississippi river. The plan was successful initially but eventually General Atkinson realized the ruse. In the battle, women, children and the elderly hid behind rocks and logs and American soldiers often could not or did not differentiate between warriors and the women and children. Atkinson sent Wabasha and his Sioux warriors, enemies of the Sauk, after the approximately 150 members of the British Band that made it to the Western bank of the Mississippi. The Sauk, “escaped the best they could, and dispersed“, but only 22 women and childern were spared. Black Hawk escaped, but the Battle of Bad Axe marked the end of the war. [Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail by William F. Stark, p.142-153]

Good morning.

It’s a warm and humid Monday for Whitewater, with a chance of afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of ninety.

There’s a meeting of the Park & Rec Board today at 4 p.m.  The meeting agenda is available online.  At 4:30 p.m., there’s a meeting of the Community Development Authority, with that meeting agenda also available online.

In news of the Black Hawk War, the Wisconsin Historical Society writes that on this day in 1832

On this date the armed steamboat the Warrior reached the British Band on the Mississippi where they hoped to cross the river and escape the American troops. After being guided by a Sioux Indian, the ship which held an artillery piece, dropped anchor, making the Sauk escape virtually impossible. Black Hawk attempted to surrender to the Warrior, waving a white cloth, but the crew either did not understand or did not accept the message. The ship and its men opened fire, killing a number of unprepared Indians. [Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail by William F. Stark, p. 140-141]