FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.3.11

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Good morning.

Whitewater’s forecast offers up a mostly cloudy day, with a high temperature of forty-nine degrees.

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

Lakeview school has a PTA meeting tonight at 6:00 p.m., and at the middle school there will be a 7 p.m. Jazz Band and Show Choir concert.

If you’ve wondered how hummingbirds drink, then wonder no more — Wired has the answer for you.  In a post entitled, High-Speed Video Shows How Hummingbirds Really Drink, readers learn that

To discover how hummingbirds drink, [University of Connecticut ornithologist Alejandro] Rico-Guevara and colleague Margaret Rubega built see-through flowers that allowed them to take high-speed, high-magnification video of hummingbird tongues, which flick into nectar up to 20 times per second.

The video (above) shows that, instead of simply drawing in liquid, a hummingbird tongue’s tubes open down their sides when hitting nectar. When the tongue pulls back, the tubes zip closed, carrying nectar back into the beak.

Hummingbirds need lots of nectar, and here’s one of them in action:



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Eleven Fifty-Nine

Eleven Fifty-Nine for 5.2.11

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Good evening.

A new month begins, and off to a pretty good start, I’d say: pleasant weather for Whitewater, with rain only in the evening.

We’re only part way through a statewide recount, and one cannot count how many time’s one’s heard questions about ‘whether it’s worth the cost’ or what a burden it is that we ‘have to go through this.’  Many of those times, one’s hearing a double standard.  The right is sure that Wisconsin needs ballot integrity through photo identification, but doubtful that a margin of less than one-half of one-percent needs a recount.  The law allows a recount, as the law would — if modified — require a photo ID.  Yet there’s more worry about a possible change in law than about the exercise of existing rights, both of which are meant to assure sound elections.

Whitewater has a grand opening ahead this week, of a taxpayer-funded Innovation Center, after two previous celebrations.  No better time than this week to catch up on a few points, and review a few more.

I caught a French film, Don’t Look Back (Ne te retourne pas, for those who are particular), and it’s a dark, suspenseful film — thoughtful, too.  There are no special effects by American standards.  Why is that?  It would be wrong to say that the French are more cerebral than we are — their tastes are no less varied than our own, or other people’s.  In part, it’s that these are the expressions of French culture that make it to America — there’s much more that doesn’t.  In part, too, I think, is the difference in scale between American and foreign productions; there’s no studio abroad with a budget for special effects anything close to a Hollywood studio’s budget.  How we built those larger studios is another topic.

From Hollywood, though, one could do far  worse than The Other Guys, with Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, and Eva Mendes.  It’s not a heavy and serious film, but not every film need or should be.  Wahlberg asks, upon seeing Eva Mendes introduced as Ferrell’s wife, “Seriously, who is that?” It’s funny both because Ferrell’s character, absurdly, doesn’t see much in Mendes, but also because there are real situations where one asks the question in disbelief of a seemingly mismatched couple.

Trailer for Don’t Look Back: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1576011289/

Trailer for The Other Guys:  http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1253639705/

 

Free Markets, Laws/Regulations, Liberty

A Victory in the Food Truck Wars

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I’ve written before about the anti-consumer battle against food trucks, and efforts to deny consumers convenient access to the popular, varied, and inexpensive fare that food trucks offer. See, Institute for Justice Defends the Rights of Street Vendors.

In El Paso, where that city had tried to zone food trucks away from potential patrons, there’s good news:

….the city of El Paso, Texas, repealed a law that prohibited vendors from operating within 1,000 feet (nearly four city blocks) of any restaurant, grocer, or convenience store. This effectively turned El Paso into a ‘no-vending’ zone, limiting vendors to narrow pockets of the city where customers were sparse. The law also prohibited vendors from stopping and awaiting customers, forcing them instead to endlessly circle the block until customers were waiting at the curb.

These regulations had nothing to do with food or traffic safety – such laws have been on the books for decades. Rather, these regulations existed for one purpose: to protect restaurants from honest competition.

Repeal is a victory for consumers and enterprising merchants. Congratulations go to the Institute for Justice for their efforts in Texas, and thanks to them for their larger, national vendor initiative.

See, Food Truck Wars.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.2.11

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Good morning.

It’s a partly cloudy day ahead for Whitewater, with a high temperature of fifty-eight degrees.

In the City of Whitewater today, there will be a Parks & Recreation Board meeting at 4 p.m., and at 4:30 p.m. there will be a meeting of Whitewater’s Community Development Authority.  I’ve linked to the agendas of each meeting.

Like so many Americans, and many billions more throughout the world, I heard of Bin Laden’s death last night.  The president’s speech, announcing Bin Laden’s demise to the nation was, I think, the finest single speech Pres. Obama has delivered (and like Reagan before him, Obama is a gifted speaker).  It’s a speech I’ve heard twice now, and well worth hearing yet again, for its clear expression of America’s fortitude in the pursuit of justice.

Here at home, and over at the Gazette, there’s a good story about one of Whitewater’s hidden treasures, a series of tribal effigy mounds far older than any other human effort in our city:

“Whitewater is one of the best-preserved in that part of the state,” said archeologist Robert Birmingham, who has authored books about effigy mounds in Wisconsin. “(They) really are an archeological world wonder.”

Birmingham estimates Whitewater’s mounds were built between 700 and 1100 A.D. Among them are thunderbirds, “panther-like water sprits,” snakes and a mink.

He said almost all sites were built near natural springs, a representation of life.

Efforts to preserve this site, the hard work of a dedicated group, are particularly commendable.  See, Whitewater hopes to restore historical effigy mounds.

Twitter

Recent Tweets, 4.24 – 4.30

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@bensommer Oh yes – the whole idea’s so nutty it’s fit for the Onion (a fine paper, really)
27 Apr

RT When Wisconsin Watch lists their donors, they’re doing something that Franklin Center/Wisconsin Reporter won’t http://bit.ly/mjHuAE
27 Apr

Libertarian Party’s List of Recent Federal Mistakes | FREE WHITEWATER http://bit.ly/gX0gj0
26 Apr

Why the MacIver Institute’s Not Libertarian | DAILY WISCONSIN http://bit.ly/h4g8d6
24 Apr

RT @dailywisconsin: Milwaukee Community Journal Publishes Pastors’ Easter Greetings | DAILY WISCONSIN http://bit.ly/ht2iw2
24 Apr

City, Press Release

Informational Forum: Potential Local Impacts of the Proposed Wisconsin Budget, Wed., May 4th, 7-9 PM

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The League of Women Voters of the Whitewater Area presents

Potential Local Impacts of the Proposed Wisconsin Budget: An Informational Forum

Wednesday, May 4th, Cravath Lake Community Center, 7 – 9 p.m.

How will the proposed Wisconsin budget likely affect Whitewater and the surrounding area? On Wednesday, May 4th from 7-9 p.m. at the Cravath Lake Community Center, the League of Women Voters will be holding an informational forum on the potential impacts of the proposed Wisconsin budget on Whitewater and the surrounding area.

Featured speakers include:

· Kevin Brunner, Whitewater City Manager

· Suzanne Zentner, Whitewater Unified School District Superintendent

· Richard Telfer, UW-Whitewater Chancellor

· Tim Cullen, 15th District State Senator

· Evan Wynn, 43rd Assembly District Representative

· Julian Zelazny, Executive Director, Wisconsin Land and Water Conservation Association

· Linda Seemeyer, Director, Health and Human Services for Walworth County

· Dr. Jolly Emrey, UW-Whitewater Associate Professor of Political Science

· Thomas Drucker (moderator), Vice President of the League of Women Voters

Other elected officials have been invited, but have not yet confirmed.

This forum is designed to inform citizens about how the budget will likely impact city services, local schools and UW-Whitewater. Additional speakers will address the likely impacts of the proposed budget on the agricultural sector as well as how the proposed budget may impact health-related programs and services. The hope is that citizens of all political persuasions can become better informed about some of the implications of the proposed budget on the local area.

Economy

Business Insider: Don’t Mean To Be Rude, But The Economy Sucks

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Yes, it still does. It went bad under the last administration, has been slow under the current administration, and looks as though it will be anemic for yet longer. A change of administrations, and a change of majorities in the House, were not themselves – nor should we have expected them to be – guarantors of turnaround.

Blodget’s been wrong about things, but he’s right about this:

In the past couple of months, a disconnect has developed between the perception of the US economy and the reality.

The perception is that everything’s just fine: The continuation of a solid if unspectacular recovery that began in the summer of 2009. Stocks continue to rise. Corporate profits continue to boom. The unemployment rate continues to tick down. Wall Street continues to coin money.

But the reality is that the recovery has never been strong and that many key metrics have recently turned south–despite the fact that the government still has its foot stomped on the stimulus gas….

Blodget lists mediocre GDP growth (1.8%), weak job growth, falling home prices, and waxing inflation. They’re all bad signs, and all reason to focus on simple, fundamental fiscal strategies, to the exclusion of complicated schemes or sideshow initiatives.

Via Don’t Mean To Be Rude, But The Economy Sucks.