Saturday, May 6, 2023

Quartet of photos from recent visit to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium

 


Photos by Retiring Guy


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Related posts:

GET ME REWRITE: Mostly white New Hampshire teeming with mostly white politicians



Boston Herald, 5/6/2023

TopUSA Today, 3/13/2023

Related posts:

AROUND TOWN MIDDLETON: Elmwood Avenue construction between Parmenter and Cayuga

 
Photos by Retiring Guy


Mapped




Other Around Town Middleton posts:
May 2023
Best double cheeseburger ever (Village Green).  (5/5)

April 2023

March 2023

February 2023

January 2023
Bathroom advice.  (1/11)
Vin Santo restaurant reopening date postponed again.  (1/7)

October 2022
The Club Tavern still sits empty (2022 edition)  (10/20)
According to a recent Next Door post, this apartment building allegedly has roaches. (10/15)

August 2022
"Tactical Urbanism" at the intersection of Elmwood Avenue and Middleton Street.  (8/29/2022)
The G Spot.  (8/11/2022)

July 2022
Turfbot mower.  (7/28)

May2022


November 2021


February 2021

January 2021

December 2020

November 2020

October 2020

August 2020

December 2019
Roman Candle survives the cut, even without the availability of convenient parking.  (12/12)
The Monona side of town.  (12/6)

November 2019
Bike rack at Sauk Trail Elementary School.  (11/8)
Not everybody's on board in the Meadows neighborhood.  (11/4)
 
October 2019
Matching car and garage door.  (10/11)

September 2019
Around Town Middleton: Bees love ornamental onion plants.   (9/4) 

August 2019
60-year-old resident arrested for armed robbery.  (8/21)
Staff and visitors may now park in the MCPASD Services Center lot .  (8/2)

June 2019
"ROAD WORK AHEAD" trumps "DRIVE LIKE YOUR KIDS LIVE HERE" on Park Street.  (6/27)
Free lunch Friday.  (6/24/2019)
CBD, just like everywhere else in Wisconsin.  (6/24)
 
February 2019
According to chapter 8.07 of the city ordinances....  (2/4)

January 2019
More than a snow fort, but not a standing-room igloo.  (1/2)
 
December 2018
This section of sidewalk was replaced in 1980.  (12/18)
The post office's new and improved self-service kiosk.  (12/18)

November 2018
Spell checker.  (11/19)

August 2018
Must be on a tight schedule.  (8/6/)

July 2018
What type of seeds?  (7/6)

June 2018
If it's not one thing, it's another.  (6/23)
Bloom Bake Shop to reopen as Bloom Bindery, a bakery/bookstore.  (6/15)

May 2018
The Tiedeman Pond frog chorus.  (5/15)

March 2018
Tiedeman Pond winter fish kill.  (3/30)
Hear that lonesome whistle blow.  (3/22)
Explosion on Elmwood Avenue.  (3/20)
Googling 'Henry Hubbard'.  (3/18) 
A not-so-faded Flo strikes a new pose.  (3/12)

February 2018

Weather forecasting as guessing game

 
Photo by Retiring Guy
Screenshots from the Weather Channel

Related post:
Guessing games UPDATE:  The Weather Channel 15-day forecast leading up to Tuesday, February 26 (Middleton WI edition).  (2/27/2019)

GET ME REWRITE: Guess this makes Wisconsin embarrassment Tom Tiffany a big fat liar!

 
Wisconsin Watch, 5/5/2023
Tiffany’s office cited a September 2021 letter from the nonprofit National School Boards Association to Biden that likened the violent threats directed at school officials over COVID-19 precautions and teaching on race as akin to “domestic terrorism.” 
But in an October 2021 response, Attorney General Merrick Garland did not adopt that comparison. He directed the FBI to examine violent threats targeting teachers and school officials, not parents speaking at school board meetings. The memo focused on criminal conduct, including violent threats and intimidation, not “spirited debate about policy matters” which is “protected under our Constitution.”
Tiffany is preparing a possible 2024 run against U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., in 2024.


GET ME REWRITE: Wisconsin GOP legislative leaders stand with schools that discriminate

 
HeadlineWisconsin State Journal,  5/6/2023
Fox Valley Lutheran in Appleton is one of 373 of Wisconsin private schools that currently receive public funding through tuition vouchers. According to this year’s preliminary numbers, they serve more than 52,000 voucher students, which amounts to 6% of all students at Wisconsin publicly funded schools. About one-fifth of voucher schools have 90% or more of their students on vouchers, what one scholar describes as “private in name only.” 
Wisconsin spent about $443 million this year on the four choice programs. Some Republicans, including 2022 gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels, have pushed for “universal” school choice, which would allow any Wisconsin student, regardless of income, to attend a private school at taxpayer expense.

Related posts:

GET ME REWRITE: Opposing abortion rights is white man's work in Ohio GOP

 
Headline and Nick Evans photoOhio Capital Journal, 5/5/2023
The first significant issue party members considered was a resolution in opposition to a reproductive rights amendment. The proposal could appear on November’s ballot. Gloria Martin argued “we have to fight this ballot initiative tooth and nail,” and opposing the measure would be “the most important decision of our term.” 
“It’s our duty,” she said, “to take a stand as Republicans, as God-fearing Americans as decent people who say no to a constitutional amendment that will protect abortionists.” 
 
Related post:

Aftermath: Day 265 of shuttered Michael Gableman 2020 election review Trump Big Lie clown show circus

 
Headline:  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 5/5/2023
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Friday said if he could go back in time, he would not have hired former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to review the 2020 election and said Gableman became a "rogue agent." 
"Sometimes, elected officials have to look the taxpayers in the eye and say I screwed up, and that is why I should have never hired Michael Gableman," Vos said during a Milwaukee Press Club appearance Friday at which he added he still felt a review of the 2020 election was needed
Vos fired Gableman in August, more than a year after he hired him to probe the 2020 election and three days after Vos barely survived a primary challenge Gableman supported. 
The review cost state taxpayers more than $1 million in salaries and legal fees related to lawsuits filed against Gableman and Vos over ignored requests for public records. [emphasis added]

The Art of the Texas Gerrymander: U.S. House District 25

 
Tarrant County Carved to Bits
 
Roger Williams (R-Irving) was unopposed in winning a 6th term in Congress.



“Fort Worth is the new Austin,” said David Wasserman, the U.S. House expert for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan analytical outlet. 
“It’s now been sliced up into a pinwheel.” Austin, the 11th-largest city in the U.S., had been cut into six districts for nearly 20 years until the 2021 map created a concentrated “anchor” district that packed together Democrats and made Republican districts safer. 
Tarrant County’s divisions carve up the county in such a way that Fort Worth, the 13th-largest city in the country, is also now the largest without an anchor congressional district.

Related posts:
District 1.  (4/19/2023)
District 2.  (4/19/2023)
District 3.  (4/19/2023)
District 4.  (4/21/2023)
District 5.  (4/21/2023)
District 6.  (4/21/2023)
District 7.  (4/24/2023)
District 8.  (4/24/2023)
District 9.  (4/25/2023)
District 10.  (4/25/2023)
District 11.  (4/26/2023)
District 12.  (4/26/2023)
District 13.  (4/27/2023)
District 14.  (4/27/2023)
District 15.  (4/28/2023)
District 16.  (4/28/2023)
District 17.  (4/29/2023)
District 18.  (4/29/2023)
District 19.  (4/30/2023)
District 20.  (5/1/2023)
District 21.  (5/2/2023)
District 22.  (5/3/2023)
District 23.  (5/4/2023)
District 24.  (5/5/2023)

U.S. Census Bureau's 2022 population estimates: Iowa's 51st smallest county (Floyd) has fewer residents than it did in 1890

 
Iowa has 99 counties.

Trump flippin' Floyd County's population has decreased 29% since its 21,505 peak of 1950.   
 
Sources:  Wikipedia (1860-2020), U.S. Census Bureau (2022)


Another eastern Iowa county that voted Democratic from 1988 to 2008, then flipped for Trump in 2016.  Obama twice won the county by double digits:  21.9 percentage points in 2008 and 14.6 in 2012.   The MAGA message resonated here.
 
Source:  Wikipedia
3rd-party candidates received 21.4% of vote in 1992, 10.7% of vote in 1996, 6.3% in 2016.  (Alabama segregationist George Wallace received 5.1% of the vote in 1968)



Related posts:
Adair County.  (4/13/2023)
Adams County.  (4/10/2023)
Allamakee County.  (4/29/2023)
Appanoose County.  (4/27/2023)
Audubon County.  (4/10/2023)
Butler County.  (4/30/2023)
Calhoun County.  (4/20/2023)
Cass County.  (4/28/2023)
Chickasaw County.  (4/26/2023)
Cherokee County.  (4/25/2023)
Clarke County.  (4/19/2023)
Davis County.  (4/17/2023)
Decatur County.  (4/15/2023)
Emmet County.  (4/17/2023)
Franklin County.  (4/20/2021)
Fremont County.  (4/11/2023)
Greene County.  (4/16/2023)
Guthrie County.  (4/21/2023)
Hamilton County.  (5/4/2023)
Hancock County.  (4/24/2023)
Harrison County.  (5/1/2023)
Howard County.  (4/18/2023)
Humboldt County.  (4/18/2023)
Ida County  (4/13/2023)
Keokuk County.  (4/20/2023)
Kossuth County, 5/3/2023)
Louisa County.  (4/24/2023)
Lucas County.  (4/15/2023)
Lyon County.  (4/25/2023)
Mills County.  (5/2/2023)
Mitchell County.  (4/21/2023)
Monona County.  (4/16/2023)
Monroe County.  (4/15/2023)
Montgomery County.  (4/21/2023)
O'Brien County.  (4/29/2023)
Osceola County.  (4/11/2023)
Page County.  (5/5/2023)
Palo Alto County.  (4/16/2023)
Pocahontas County.  (4/13/2023)
Ringgold County.  (4/10/2023)
Sac County.  (4/19/2023)
Shelby County.  (4/25/2023)
Taylor County.  (4/11/2023)
Union County.  (4/26/2023)
Van Buren County.  (4/13/2023)
Wayne County.  (4/11/2023
Winnebago County.  (4/24/2023)
Worth County.  (4/14/2023)
Wright County.  (4/27/2023)

Friday, May 5, 2023

What a stud! Flightline will earn more in stud fees than in racing

 
Photo by Retiring Guy (Keeneland, June 2015)

New York Times, 5/4/2023
On the racetrack, it took Flightline two years and six undefeated races to earn $4.5 million in purses. Doing what came naturally twice a day in the breeding shed, he matched that total in 11 days, doubled it in 22 and, with 155 mares in his date book, will have generated $31 million in earnings by the end of the five-month breeding in July.

NCAA hypocrisy in full bloom in sports betting relationship

 

Headlines top to bottom:

From ESPN:
NCAA policy prohibits athletes, coaches and personnel from betting on sports. 
"The NCAA takes sports wagering very seriously and is committed to the protection of student-athlete well-being and the integrity of competition," a spokesperson for the NCAA said Thursday. "We will work with our partners to protect student-athletes and the sports they play. The association is monitoring the situation.

Related post:

AROUND TOWN MIDDLETON: The best double cheeseburger ever

 
An assessment based on 37 years of dining experience at the Village Green.

Photos by Retiring Guy

And if you have the time, you can also enjoy up to 10 (!) 24-ounce taps for $6 apiece.  Designated driver or Uber app highly recommended.



Other Around Town Middleton posts:
April 2023

March 2023

February 2023

January 2023
Bathroom advice.  (1/11)
Vin Santo restaurant reopening date postponed again.  (1/7)

October 2022
The Club Tavern still sits empty (2022 edition)  (10/20)
According to a recent Next Door post, this apartment building allegedly has roaches. (10/15)

August 2022
"Tactical Urbanism" at the intersection of Elmwood Avenue and Middleton Street.  (8/29/2022)
The G Spot.  (8/11/2022)

July 2022
Turfbot mower.  (7/28)

May2022


November 2021


February 2021

January 2021

December 2020

November 2020

October 2020

August 2020

December 2019
Roman Candle survives the cut, even without the availability of convenient parking.  (12/12)
The Monona side of town.  (12/6)

November 2019
Bike rack at Sauk Trail Elementary School.  (11/8)
Not everybody's on board in the Meadows neighborhood.  (11/4)
 
October 2019
Matching car and garage door.  (10/11)

September 2019
Around Town Middleton: Bees love ornamental onion plants.   (9/4) 

August 2019
60-year-old resident arrested for armed robbery.  (8/21)
Staff and visitors may now park in the MCPASD Services Center lot .  (8/2)

June 2019
"ROAD WORK AHEAD" trumps "DRIVE LIKE YOUR KIDS LIVE HERE" on Park Street.  (6/27)
Free lunch Friday.  (6/24/2019)
CBD, just like everywhere else in Wisconsin.  (6/24)
 
February 2019
According to chapter 8.07 of the city ordinances....  (2/4)

January 2019
More than a snow fort, but not a standing-room igloo.  (1/2)
 
December 2018
This section of sidewalk was replaced in 1980.  (12/18)
The post office's new and improved self-service kiosk.  (12/18)

November 2018
Spell checker.  (11/19)

August 2018
Must be on a tight schedule.  (8/6/)

July 2018
What type of seeds?  (7/6)

June 2018
If it's not one thing, it's another.  (6/23)
Bloom Bake Shop to reopen as Bloom Bindery, a bakery/bookstore.  (6/15)

May 2018
The Tiedeman Pond frog chorus.  (5/15)

March 2018
Tiedeman Pond winter fish kill.  (3/30)
Hear that lonesome whistle blow.  (3/22)
Explosion on Elmwood Avenue.  (3/20)
Googling 'Henry Hubbard'.  (3/18) 
A not-so-faded Flo strikes a new pose.  (3/12)

February 2018

Covid Chronicles. Chapter 33: Zoom in Person


Read chapter 32 here

Photo submitted by friend

Tuesday, May 5, 2020 


Eric Yuan, the founder of Zoom, a now wildly popular video conferencing software, emigrated from China to the United States in 1997. Even though he spoke little English, he landed a job with a small Silicon Valley company. Now he has a net worth of $5.7 billion. His company employs more than 2500 people. Quite the immigration success story. And quite the irony to have a president whose primary goal in place strict limits on who is able to enter the United States, with at least one exception.

 “We should have more people from Norway,” he proclaimed at a White House meeting in January 2018. 

And now, to distract us from his horrendous handling of the coronavirus pandemic, he’s once again ramping up the China blame game. Granted, Chinese leaders deserve censure for their muzzling of scientists, health care workers, and journalists – not to mention hoodwinking their own citizens – but it’s not as though the Trump administration is doing a ‘great job’ – as our president emphatically insists on a daily basis – for the rest of the world to emulate. Hardly. Trump is a font of lies, misinformation, rumors, and just plain nuttiness


 A great leader would not sow seeds of division. He wouldn’t have implemented an ‘America First’ policy. Fighting the coronavirus requires cooperation among all countries of the world. 

The event took place yesterday. Apparently, Trump felt his base wouldn’t approve of U.S. participation. Government by cretins. 

OK, so I got a little bit sidetracked here, veering off into a Trump rant. An easy thing to do nowadays. Let me get back to my original focus. At the same time that Zoom and other similar products have become a popular video conferencing software for keeping people connected, it has also come in for some criticism. Some of it is deserved, some not. With ‘safer-at-home’ restrictions placed on public gatherings during the pandemic, these programs have become a necessary substitute during the pandemic. Starting in mid-March, the Dane County Board of Supervisors has used GoToMeeting to conduct its formal business, including committee meetings. The collective learning curve wasn’t as steep as I initially thought it would be. The board’s second virtual meeting went very smoothly, helped by the fact that the agenda included only the items most critical to the county’s operation. The major drawback is that it creates a challenge, some would say a hindrance, to public participation. People can’t decide to show up at meetings at the last minute. They need to register in advance and be ready to go when the item on which they want to speak comes up on the agenda. A Covid variation of phone a friend on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ 

The popularity of Zoom has been accompanied by the proliferation of the Zoombombers, people whose primary goal is to intrude on a meeting or conversation in order to disrupt it, often bombarding the unsuspecting group with racial, ethnic and religious epithets. Call them the party crashers of the Pandemic Age. Prior to the March 19th virtual board meeting, office staff learned that a local anti-jail group planned to conduct such a disruption, but the GoToMeeting software gives the moderator of a meeting firm control over who can participate. Zoom does not offer, as yet, such a safeguard. 

The Usual Suspects’ Zoom sessions have occurred without any intrusion. Not that we expected any problems. I’m sure Zoombombers tend to go after groups that fit a certain profile: people of color, religious minorities, those who have a mission that is thoroughly at odds with their own twisted philosophies. Our latest Zoom session took place on a beautiful Friday afternoon. JoAnna and I decided not to participate at home but drive to Madison’s east side to join Carol and Carrie in their driveway. I’m holding JoAnna’s iPhone, which is not an especially useful device for Zoom. First of all, with the sun in my eyes, I could barely see the screen, and with an iPhone, only the person speaking shows up on the screen. Not sure how that works when two people are talking at the same time. Carrie and Carol used a laptop to participate. Of course, it’s not necessary to observe the other participants in order to join the conversation, and I actually preferred it that way. The important thing was that JoAnna and I could hear everything being said and respond appropriately. 

As for privacy concerns, another area where Zoom has taken a beating, my philosophy hasn’t changed. If you are going to participate in any type of social media – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Zoom – don’t expect to inhabit a privacy cocoon. That’s not gonna happen. Our phones and other devices track our every movement.

Spectrum, 5/2/2020

Read chapter 34 here