In Massachusetts, the state legislature issued a list of the state’s greatest tourist spots. Unfortunately, some were closed, some were closed to the public, and others were listed in the wrong towns.
Fret not, residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It might have been worse; politicians might have tried to pass off a favorable study about an entire county as one about their own small town.
See, from the La Crosse Tribune, Massachusetts Legislature Releases ‘Great Places’ List.
Federal and state job training programs don’t work if the economy can’t create enough private sector jobs.
See, After Job Training, Many Still Scrambling for Employment – CNBC.
I wrote recently about a tour of a tiny house in Wisconsin.
There’s a story and video at Yahoo! about a man who, liking the idea of a tiny house, started a company that manufacturers them. The company is named the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, and the owner is Jay Shafer. In the video, you’ll see that Shafer touts his homes for their sustainability (which would have been called conservation in an earlier time).
Although I don’t support public subsidies for private purchases, government would do more for energy conservation by encouraging tiny home purchases than by making misleading claims about how environmentally-sensitive office buildings, etc., supposedly are. Like Hollywood celebrities who live in vast homes and fly in jets while talking about low carbon footprints, it’s hypocritical.
People are free — mostly — to live in the size home they’d like, and that’s as it should be.
I’ve seen stories about these houses before, and find small homes like this intriguing. They also represent a genuine — and not simply professed — green lifestyle. One hears politicians talking about how important green projects are, but their projects aren’t truly green, and surely not as much as living in one of these homes would be.
Link: http://vitality.yahoo.com/video-second-act-jay-shafer-20910192 more >>
I’ve been a critic of Whitewater’s multi-million dollar, publicly-funded Innovation Center. Unsurprisingly, my invitation for a visit of that project hasn’t arrived, and so I did not participate in a recent bureaucrats’ tour of the construction site. No matter, a simple camera with a zoom lens, I was able to stand in the street and take some illustrative photos.
At first it looks impressive:
Then one sees that for all these millions, it’s not that large:
There are many public school buildings bigger.
There’s much talk about how innovative this Innovation Center is. In funding, there’s nothing innovative about using taxes and municipal debt to pay for a project. In design, talk about how green all this is would be persuasive only to someone who didn’t look a bit farther beyond the construction site:
The genuine green one sees is not at the site, but all around it, in those fields not yet torn up. I’d support private construction, but I’d also be clear that talk about a solar-powered sign, etc., doesn’t change how disruptive a new building is to the environment. This building isn’t green and sustainable; it’s brown and wasteful.
Finally, as a aside, I would note that a bureaucrats’ tour of this site, as though it were the farthest Amazon, is silly. Those touring aren’t working people, and donning construction helmets and vests — in a place on which they’re doing no labor other than spending tax dollars — only highlights how out of place they are.
We’re a dairy state that calls itself America’s Dairyland while banning sales of natural, unpasteurized milk to adults. This ban, and ones like it across America, are harder to justify each day. See, Advocates Say Raw Milk Is Worth The Risk: NPR.
Even an critic of raw milk consumption, like FDA bureaucrat David Acheson would support raw milk sales:
Even though he wouldn’t drink it himself, Acheson says that a total ban on raw milk is impractical, and only drives Reitzig [a milk drinker] and others like her underground.
“I think there’s an assumption [on regulators’ part] that people who drink more raw milk are stupid. No they’re smart. I believe that the vast majority of them know what they’re doing,” he says.
They make a risk-benefit calculation, which many of us do when it comes to smoking or driving without a seatbelt.
I received the following press release that I am happy to post:
Re-enactment of Notable Persons Buried in the Brick Church Cemetery, Walworth
The Walworth County Genealogical Society and the Historical Society of Walworth & Big Foot Prairie are jointly sponsoring a free Re-enactment and Cemetery Walk on Saturday, August 7, from 1 to 3 PM at the Brick Church Cemetery, 3/4 mile west of U.S. Hwy 14 on Brick Church Road, Walworth Township.
The following persons or families will be depicted by relatives or professionals: Cyrus Church, Rev. Reader, and Hone, Featherstone, Worden, Bulger, Pearce, Boorman families. The depicters will be Ruby Harness, Ken Ryer, Debra Ryer Mancusi, Kathryn Worden Shebiel, Rev. Steve Buchanan, Rev. Steve Wessing, Barbara Shreves, a Bulger family member and a Church family member.
Stroll through this beautiful cemetery containing many old gravestones with a map and booklet to guide you and hear the stories of the local early settlers and their families.
Good morning,
Whitewater’s forecast for today calls for a chance of rain, with a high of eighty-four degrees.
The City of Whitewater lists a meeting at 5 o’clock this afternoon of the Indian Mounds Task Force. The meeting is significant for two reasons. First, because Whitewater has a “prehistoric, Native American ceremonial and burial site that dates between 200 and 1000 A.D., and in its relatively small space of 1.5 acres (6,100 m2) has one of the most diverse and unique collections of animal and geometric mounds in the United States.”
Second, because even though we’re a small town (pop. 14,296), we have a task force for just about every situation that the rest of America assumes places like Whitewater can solve without a task force.
Our public school district will hold a regular school board meeting tonight, with open session beginning at 7 p.m.
In Wisconsin history on this date, the Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this date in 1832,
On this date General James Henry and Colonel Henry Dodge
found the trail of the British Band and began pursuit of Black Hawk and the Sauk Indians. Before leaving camp, the troops were told to leave behind any items that would slow down the chase. The troops camped that evening at Rock River, 20 miles east of present day Madison. Some sources place this event on July 18, 1832. [Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail by William F. Stark, p. 119]
Re-enactment of Notable Persons Buried in the Brick Church Cemetery, Walworth
The Walworth County Genealogical Society and the Historical Society of Walworth & Big Foot Prairie are jointly sponsoring a free Re-enactment and Cemetery Walk on Saturday, August 7, from 1 to 3 PM at the Brick Church Cemetery, 3/4 mile west of U.S. Hwy 14 on Brick Church Road, Walworth Township. The following persons or families will be depicted by relatives or professionals: Cyrus Church, Rev. Reader, and Hone, Featherstone, Worden, Bulger, Pearce, Boorman families. The depicters will be Ruby Harness, Ken Ryer, Debra Ryer Mancusi, Kathryn Worden Shebiel, Rev. Steve Buchanan, Rev. Steve Wessing, Barbara Shreves, a Bulger family member and a Church family member.
Stroll through this beautiful cemetery containing many old gravestones with a map and booklet to guide you and hear the stories of the local early settlers and their families.
Good evening,
Whitewater’s weekend of hot weather ends with a night of patchy fog and an overnight low temperature of sixty-six.
Stage fourteen of the Tour de France took place this morning, and despite twists and turns earlier in the Tour, it looks like the race may be a battle between Contador and Schleck. Schleck has 31 seconds on Contador.
The Wall Street Journal has excellent coverage of the controversies over doping in cycling:
Doping Allegations Roil Cycling.
Cyclists Questioned in Doping Probe.
The Case of the Missing Bikes – WSJ.com.
Lance Armstrong Denies Charge by Floyd Landis of Doping; Landis Admits Use.
Armstrong Addresses Latest Landis Allegations.
Why emphasize the problems in cycling? Because Americans are an honest people, and we don’t cheat to win. We are, and always be, better than the Soviets or East Germans were. I believe in a world of clean cycling, and we’ll not have that world pretending that there’s not a problem in cycling
That world won’t come about if Armstrong relies only on allegations against others —
See, Armstrong Challenges LeMond in French Television Interview.
The race is exciting; the prospect of clean cycling even more so.
A few nights ago, I posted a video from the Huffington Post about a possible chupacabra sighting. The HuffPo offers an eclectic mix of politics, entertainment, and odd stories about chupacabras or… UFOs over China. In a post entitled, “China UFO Sightings, Back-To-Back, Alarm Residents” one reads that
A second China UFO sighting has residents on edge, just seven days after an unidentified flying object shut down a Chinese airport.
The new UFO sighting took place in Chongqing in eastern China on July 15. Witnesses told Shanghai Daily they saw the same thing: “four lantern-like objects forming a diamond shape that hovered over the city’s Shaping Park for over an hour.”
Like the one before it, there has been no official explanation to date for this latest incident.
This video may be of an unidentified object, but that hardly suggests that extraterrestrials are flying over Chinese skies. It’s fascinating nonetheless, for what people in China, and beyond, may believe to be true. more >>
Is the typical reader of Fortune magazine someone who benefits from free enterprise but feels guilty about it? Every issue suggests as much.
2:12 PM Jul 16th
RT @davidgumpert: 5 tips for surviving a raid on your food club or farm club as govt picks up the pace of crackdown. http://bit.ly/d3Y1Q2
2:09 PM Jul 16th
Wisconsin Court Says Teacher Emails Are Private http://bit.ly/c6RUXn
1:36 PM Jul 16th
RT @WiStateJournal: Old World Wisconsin to reopen July 24 http://ow.ly/18aaCk After a tornado….
11:53 AM Jul 16th
RT @reasonmag: Mangu-Ward and Moynihan on Stossel Tonight! http://ow.ly/2c7lT Sure to be a great program
4:12 PM Jul 15th
Tickets now on sale: Jungle Jack Hanna brings his live animal show to Whitewater WI on August 29th http://bit.ly/a7TF8o
8:29 AM Jul 13th
Over time, the Descent of Politicians’ Humility: from others’ praise, to friends’ praise, ending at self-praise
4:21 PM Jul 12th
Can’t see how it could have been otherwise – Poll Shows Unhappiness with Wisconsin Politicians.
The inability of Libertarians and Greens to field more candidates affects ballot access in the future. They will have to wait until 2012 to regain qualified status.
In the meantime, thousands of green or libertarian-leaning voters will influence races within major party contests.
It’s really the difference between being libertarian and Libertarian.
