It’s Only Money

Might as well dream big.

$227,839,800

Perhaps a corollary to the admonishment not to embezzle chump change.

Assertion and Documentation

From the critical thinking of the right:

How our Marxist faculties got that way: In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon ended the war and Congress ended military conscription. So the Marxist anti-war activists -- activism is now a full-time profession -- had to do something else. Most of them went to work in the real world. But a meaningful number remained in school and opted for academia, especially the humanities and the social sciences. If they got a Ph.D., they might even become university teachers, and many of them did. They then climbed academia's ladder, rising from instructor to assistant professor, from assistant professor to associate professor, and from associate professor to full professor. These last two ranks usually carry tenure, which means a guaranteed job until one decides to retire or is fired for raping little children in the streets.

From the critical thinking of the left:

UW Madison Havens Center: Michael Burawoy has studied industrial workplaces in different parts of the world -- Zambia, Chicago, Hungary and Russia -- through participant observation. … No longer able to work in factories, most recently he has turned to the study of his own workplace – the university – to consider the way sociology itself is produced and then disseminated to diverse publics. Over the course of his research and teaching, he has developed theoretically driven methodologies that allow broad conclusions to be drawn from ethnographic research and case studies. These methodologies are represented in Global Ethnography a book coauthored with 9 graduate students, which shows how globalization can be studied "from below" through participation in the lives of those who experience it. Throughout his sociological career he has engaged with Marxism, seeking to reconstruct it in the light of his research and more broadly in the light of historical challenges of the late 20th and early 21st. centuries.

Professor Reid Bryson

Professor Emeritus Reid Bryson dies today at age 88. Professor Reid Bryson founded the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 1948. This is before politics corrupts the practice of science. Two quotes to remember an intelligent and honest man.

‘You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.’

“If Global warming is a 100 story building, the human influence is equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor” - Dr. Bryson

Truth always wins in the end.

Third Wave Technologies Purchase Offer

Madison based Third Wave Technologies, Inc. (TWTI) has agreed to be acquired in whole by Bedford, MA based Hologic Inc. (HOLX) for $580 million dollars. The 180 employees in Wisconsin should be unaffected by the ownership change.

GEN News: Third Wave develops and markets molecular diagnostic reagents for DNA and RNA analysis based on its Invader® chemistry. … The company recently submitted to the FDA PMA applications for two HPV tests.

“Hologic has an established sales and distribution network for women's health as well as extensive relationships with clinical labs and OB/GYN channels,” according to Jack Cumming, chairman and CEO of Hologic. “If and when Third Wave's HPV tests receive FDA approval, which we hope will be in the first half of calendar 2009, we will be well-positioned to take these products quickly and effectively to market.”

Both companies are operating at a loss and Hologic intends to borrow $600 million to finance the acquisition. Because the current market for human papillomavirus (HPV) testing to find the four types of the virus associated with disease is only $200 million annually, someone is convinced this market is going to expand considerably in the very near future. I suspect now that drug giant Merck has an approved vaccine in Gardasil they will continue to market their concern about the need for universal testing. Once you have a preventive treatment, the task becomes finding as many people as possible “at risk”.

“It’s burdensome”

Because “progressive” government requires "smart" growth.
Madison grapples with green
Because it takes time for the smart few to outthink the many.

Carolyn "Biddy" Martin

The news is on and I ask Lola: Does it look like the UW hired a Donna Shalala clone? She answers, I was thinking the exact same thing. I wonder if Biddy is picked because she neatly fits into Shalala’s old commencement robe. I refuse to speculate if she can fill Donna’s shoes. Those sort of legacy questions are best left until the actual hiring is confirmed.

The brand new incoming University of Wisconsin -Madison Chancellor is quick to outline her vision for Wisconsin’s world class university.

WKOW: "Domestic partner benefits have become increasingly important and it's the case that faculty do leave universities without them for universities that offer those benefits," says Martin.

Well, at least she is coming for reasons other than filthy lucre.

Capital Times: Martin, who reportedly made more than a half-million dollars in fiscal year 2006, will be taking a pay cut to come to Madison -- although she will make significantly more than Wiley's pay of $327,000 per year. In February, the UW Board of Regents voted to set a pay range of $370,000 to $452,000 for the position in an attempt to attract top candidates for the job.

Hurray for Cold Beer!

How can beer get cold if carbon dioxide traps heat? This is a good question to ask your celebrity cashier at Bratfest. Don’t, however, expect scientific answers from politicians or media employees.

The Unholy Alliance that manufactured Global Warming: Please understand I am not claiming a conspiracy, but rather a cabal, which is defined as a secret political clique pushing a political agenda; in this case, designed by Maurice Strong.

The unresolved question remains which local publication, The Isthmus or The Wisconsin State Journal will first have the courage to ask why cold beer is possible if carbon dioxide has incendiary super power? My bet is that Marc Eisen of the free weekly will ultimately be the first to admit in print that there are “legitimate doubts” about the ability of CO2 to magically induce ecosystem destroying infernos. I’m thinking his thinking will free up as he realizes that Kathleen Falk’s rising star has peaked. Maybe the epiphany will happen this Memorial Day Weekend. Cheers, fellow citizens!

The Migrations Continue

A Mourning Warbler appears in the yard this early evening following the seasonal warming back towards summer homes in the northern woods. This one may settle in the Rice Lake area now that habit has grown back from the extensive logging of a century or so ago. I’ve observed two Common Yellow Throats as the warblers continue to migrate.

A White Breasted Nuthatch joins the groups of Purple Finches and White Crowned Sparrows feeding in the grass and trees then moving elsewhere. In the subsequent stillness I notice a large bird, probably a Marsh Hawk, perched on a low branch. She rests for several minutes then skims off low to the ground heading north.

Rhetoric v Results

This may be the best thing Isthmus Executive Editor Marc Eisen has written.

When policy trumps results: This earnest but unhelpful committee delved into the abstractions of what distinguishes "equity" from "equality," how the board might commit to equity and what esoteric guidelines could measure that commitment.

If you are already slipping into catatonia from the meaningless rattle of words, that's understandable. This is stuff that appeals to progressive professors at the UW-Madison School of Education and to graduate students who aspire to become progressive professors at the UW-Madison School of Education.

"Equity," the committee announced in its report to the board, "involves opportunity; access; elimination of barriers; distribution of resources; protection of specific groups; recognition and acceptance of differences" and marches on for another 75 words in an act of faux definition.

The lack of discipline in Academic writing is shameful. We have institutions of higher education demanding a magnitude and frequency words on paper, to demonstrate and justify scholarly activity, yet there is no corresponding requirement these words concisely express thoughts and concepts in simple clear understandable terms. This is how gibberish thrives and now we have gibberish masquerading as reasoned public policy.

I can't for the life of me see them rallying around a pompous and abstruse equity policy, especially one that reads like it was formulated by the UW Department of Leftwing Social Engineering.

Marc Eisen is making the point that Madison is saturated with the thinking that creation of policy is the purpose of government, however, this is not counterbalanced by an insistence that real world results of public policy are the standard of final judgment. In the private sector, performance dictates policy which explains why the private sector works for the public more efficiently than government. Especially government, for example, where leadership holds firm to a belief that Inclusionary Zoning works because it works on paper.

Spring Birds 2008

A Palm Warbler drifts through the back yard this afternoon. It is about a three minute stop but long enough to sight him up with the binoculars for a positive identification. That distinctive chestnut head plumage will be faded when it heads back southward at summers end. Two additional surprise sightings are an Indigo Bunting and a Rufus Sided Towhee.

All day long the yard is filled with birds as the landscape finally frees itself from the prolonged life suppressing cold of winter. A House Wren hops up and down along a rock wall while an Acadian Flycatcher darts between newly budding tree branches. The Cardinals, Crows, Chickadees and Wild Turkeys make appearances, acting like they are natives to the area. A Blue Jay and Hairy Woodpecker show up late in the afternoon.

White Throated Sparrows, with their yellow eye dots, kick up leaf litter as do a pair of Catbirds. Later on one of the Catbirds perches atop a sumac flower picking out the last tasty goodness leftover from last fall. I don’t understand why Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and his environmentalist comrades believe so fervently that people and nature need to be separated. That Palm Warbler has no preconceived idea of what constitutes a natural ecosystem. It just goes where the bugs are plentiful and there are adequate trees for safety and shelter.

Green Day Spring Day

Yesterday, NOAA announces they are finishing updating America’s high-tech climate monitoring stations that are improving the historical climatology network. The change is to insure “very high accuracy” in data collection, and corrects misplacement of older monitors in artificially heated areas such as asphalt parking lots in urban centers. Today, the Isthmus Green Day eco-celebration features a speaker on global warming.

Lola and I decide to take a slow drive on back roads down to Oregon, WI, and then a tour through the UW Arboretum before heading home. There is a great deal of melt water everywhere which is consistent with the record snowfall of the preceding winter. Other than that the ecosystem looks pretty normal for this point of the year. I simply don’t see a planet in the need of human salvation and I am reminded of the following thoughts.

Lord Monckton’s address to the Cambridge Union Society: AL GORE says, “I believe this is a moral issue.” So it is. To “announce disasters” or “scary scenarios” or “over-represent factual presentations” in place of adherence to the scientific truth – that is a moral issue.

To let politicians insert data into official scientific documents; to alter those documents so as to contradict scientific findings; to manipulate decimal points so as to engender false headlines by exaggerating tenfold – those are moral issues.

To exaggerate by 2000% not only the atmospheric lifetime of a trace gas but also the effect of that gas on temperature; to reduce the magnitude of its predicted influence on temperature without reducing the predicted temperature itself – those are moral issues.

To claim scientific unanimity where none exists; to assert that catastrophe is likely when most scientists do not; to exalt theoretical computer models over real-world observations; to misstate the conclusions of scientific papers or the meaning of observed data; to overstate the likely future course of climatic phenomena by several orders of magnitude – those are moral issues.

To reverse the sequence of events in the early climate; to repeat that reversal in a propaganda book intended to infect the minds of children; to persist in false denial that past temperatures exceeded today’s; to state that climate events that have not occurred have occurred; to ascribe these non-events as well as specific extreme-weather events unjustifiably to humankind – those are moral issues.

To propose solutions to the non-problem of climate change that would cost many times more than the problem itself, if there were one; to advocate measures to mitigate fancifully-imagined future climatic changes when adaptation would cost far less and achieve far more; to ignore the real problems of resource depletion, energy security, bad Third World government and fatal diseases that kill millions – those are moral issues.

I hope the Isthmus leadership; Marc Eisen, Bill Lueders, V.O and the rest, believe we all want clean air, clean water and vibrant ecosystems. What is unacceptable, however, is scientific fraud advancing political policies that are expensive and unnecessary at best, and ineffective and counterproductive at worst. It is time to stop perpetuating the dangerous man-made global warming lie.

Our Industrial Famine Culture

I thought the impetus for killing the living to burn for energy was based on the idea that burning rocks doesn’t turn carbon directly back into rocks. I was also under the impression that the MANDATE to use corn derived ethanol was a government dictate. I guess there are other interpretations of the reasons food prices are rising.

John Nichols on The World Food Crisis: The current global food system, which was designed by US-based agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, Monsanto and ADM and forced into place by the US government and its allies at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, has planted the seeds of disaster by pressuring farmers here and abroad to produce cash crops for export and alternative fuels rather than grow healthy food for local consumption and regional stability.

“as the Oakland Institute's Anuradha Mittal observes, that it is time to "stop worshiping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the principle [that] every country and every people have a right to food that is affordable." As Mittal says, "When the market deprives them of this, it is the market that has to give."

I also did not realize that genetically modified seeds “reduce food production”. If only we could return to the pre-industrial age when all food was locally produced by eco-friendly happy peasants, then hunger would be abolished. Is it true the word famine does not even exist in aboriginal languages?

Metamorphosis with Attitude

The Isthmus asks a question about the leap of faith Madison’s very old progressive paper is taking. The end of an era: Panicked newspapers seek salvation. Will the Cap Times find it on the web? Written with the empathy of a fellow comrade in the struggle, Marc Eisen writes:

Newspapers won't die off as quickly as slide rules did when calculators were introduced, but the changes under way are so epochal you'd be foolish to believe anyone who speaks confidently of what publishing will be like in 10 years.

The switch from paper to pixels to deliver the news represents far more than a change in transmission. The definition of news itself changes online. This is big stuff, truly a shift in the paradigm.

As the advent of bloggers, listservs and reader comments attest, online news is "less of a lecture, more of a conversation," as media analyst Jay Rosen has put it. This is hard for old-school journalists to accept. They're used to hiding behind either the fig leaf of "objective" reporting or the omniscience of magazine-style journalism. Now stories are picked apart online by citizen commenters and bloggers.

Marc Eisen is exactly right. As long as government allows the public freedom to access and question information, the conversation will push towards the truth. So let’s take a quick look at the first topic the electronic metamorphosis of the Capital Times brings up. Actually, it's not a call for reasoned debate.

Call Congress on climate change: Call the Capitol switchboard today at 202-224-3121 and leave a message for members of the Wisconsin delegation, telling them that their constituents want:
* A moratorium on new coal-burning plants.
* Renewable energy.
* Carbon-neutral buildings.
* Protection for the poor and middle class in the new green economy.

Now it strikes me as strange that the first thing the Capital Times wants as they transform from paper to electricity is a moratorium on coal-burning electricity generating plants. Why call for restrictions on the essential energy we are all depend upon? We all know the reason is because “progressive thinkers” believe carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal is "bad" for our photosynthesis dependent environment. This is exactly why the conversation needs to be brought back to these questions – is there a limit to the CO2 greenhouse effect and when that limit is reached, what exactly is dangerous in a healthy, warm and growing world?

Dr. Jonathan Foley

The fact the University of Wisconsin pays Dr. Jonathan Foley as a Professor says a great deal about academic science. The Capital Times features his Earth Day report to the State of Wisconsin Natural Resources Board. This is the report of a person well versed in computer modeling. Please, read the whole thing but focus on these specific assertions.

Climate 'out of balance,': A long-term rise of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — mainly due to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas — warmed the Earth, he said. … Those heat-trapping gases multiplied what is a natural greenhouse effect, in which the sun heats the Earth and the Earth in turn gives off radiation in infrared waves. Those waves go into the atmosphere, which absorbs some of that heat and radiates it back down to Earth. … "The Earth is 30 degrees warmer than it would be without that natural greenhouse effect. Without it, life would never have evolved," Foley said. But humans made the greenhouse a little thicker by burning fossil fuels.

First, let’s agree on the fact that the greenhouse effect is necessary for life on Earth. Second, let’s agree that the greenhouse effect is absorption of infrared radiation by a few specific types of atmospheric molecules. The fallacy in everything Dr. Foley asserts after these two points is attributing to carbon dioxide a significant and additive contribution to atmospheric absorption of infrared radiation.

It is well established that CO2 has limited IR absorption frequencies, and if saturation of these absorption bands are demonstrable from satellite data, it is proof that additional CO2 molecules are non-contributory. In other words, once saturation is achieved, as it is in the present 300 ppm range, it is impossible for additional molecules of carbon dioxide to contribute to additional warming.

The question Dr. Foley needs to answer is this: Is there a limit to the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect, and if so, then what is that limit? I doubt any UW Professor will answer that more CO2 always means more warming, without end.

Living Small

The Isthmus runs a lead story about Madison residents living in really tiny houses. The piece ends with an almost textbook example of the Orwellian reasoning embraced as virtue by our environmentalist neighbors.

Living Small: Big, historically, has been considered good, and small inferior. …"That's no longer an appropriate way of looking at the world. We're reaching a point where people who build McMansions will be considered immoral."

I take this seriously because cultures change over time and money and power can completely alter public values. It has been twenty years, for example, since organized money set out on a deliberate strategy to stigmatize tobacco smoking to great success.

But that’s not my favorite part. That honor goes to a featured quote: “When you free yourself from your stuff, you actually can become freer”. There you have it. In poverty lies freedom. In the more common vernacular, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. If that comes off glib, it shouldn’t. The political discourse uses words like freedom with the assumption the public agrees on the meaning of the word. Clearly freedom means very different things to very different people.

This Madison reasoning is not hard to understand. Even 18 year old fledgling adults can learn the basics. If freedom from want is served by dependency on the government then advancing government dependency is advancing freedom. If wealth and resources are fixed sums and the population grows, then mathematics dictate that fairness requires each individual receives a smaller portion of the total. All that is left is to codify the meaning of happiness as accepting having what you have.

Memo to Self

“Cowboy Roy's back with the Meat Raffle join us every Saturday starting at 2pm. WE HAVE BIG TEN NETWORK come watch all Badger sports”.

Love Wisconsin people. Not real fond of the current crop of politicians. WTF do you think freedom means?

The Race and Gender Blues

Last Saturday is International Women’s Day and the Madison Blues Society seizes the nomenclature to use as a fundraiser. The Brink Lounge hosts the event featuring Chicago based blues guitarist Sue DeBaco followed by Canadian born, now Austin based Sue Foley. Lola and I agree this is a good opportunity to hear Ms. Foley for the first time so we pay our $30 and order drinks.

Sue DeBaco puts on a Chicago Blues performance. Adequate vocals and frantic guitar work combined with an overbearing obsession with audience banter. It’s a stage show perfected for suburbanite crowds out to have an adventuresome night downtown in a big city Blues Club. Clap with me, sing along, have some drinks, tip your bartenders. Let me play you something in the style of Hendrix.

At intermission I slip into the lounge to watch the end of the Wauwatosa East v. Madison Memorial Wisconsin Boy’s State Basketball Championship game. Madison has victory in hand until Wauwatosa ties the game with a three point shot sending it into overtime. Alas, Memorial finishes second again. Lola tells me I miss Kathleen Falk give her Guest Speaker presentation. Kathleen, allegedly, says she wakes up every morning thinking about Rosa Parks. Every morning? That’s just absurd unless it's part of a specific meditation ritual upon rising. Just saying.

Sue Foley begins her time on stage with solo acoustic songs before bringing out her band to finish the acoustic set. It’s all very polished and sparkling. It’s the kind of mastery that a smoke free room of affluent white people appreciate. The electric set that follows is decidedly good but I can’t help thinking this would be much, much better if the room was much darker, hot and hazy, and scarred by the wear and tear of time.

Diary Entry: Monday Night in Madison

Lola comes home and announces she is the only person in her department that shows up for work this Monday. I reply how wonderful it is that attendance is recommended but not mandatory. Unlimited sick leave is a fantastic benefit and I believe a standard feature of European employment. By the way, I tell her, you do realize all the 2008 Oscar acting winners are from the old world. I think Hollywood is in back in love with those societies our ancestors rebelled against so long ago.

Piffle, she says, the Oscars are all about wardrobe. Before the Fashion Police broadcasts, however, she first races to the internet to introduce me to the work of Dengue Fever, a Cambodian pop rock psychedelic dance party! I reply they remind me slightly of the uptempo country, punk, rockabilly fusion with traditional Japanese Eenka and Kayokyoku roots as performed by Asakusa Jinta. As someone once said: “believe it or not there is a lack of psychobillypunkmarching bands in the United States”.

Then it is my turn at show and tell and I inform Lola I have found the future of Madison. Behold the wonders of the Aquaduct Mobile Filtration Vehicle.

Check out the winning bike from Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Contest, an event cosponsored by Specialized Bicycles and Google. The contest, which the two San Francisco Bay Area companies announced three months ago, sought “machines that transform pedaling energy into new and useful purposes,” with an eye toward the environment. The winning entry, from a five-person team in Menlo Park, California, is a three-wheeled bike intended for people who lack access to clean drinking water. Built around a large tank, the Aquaduct Mobile Filtration Vehicle uses pedal power to run the water through a series of filters. If a rider reaches home before all of the water has been cleaned, he or she can disengage the wheels and continue pedaling—and, thus, filtering—while stationary.

In the coming socialist future, the labor of our legs will serve not only our selfish need for mobility, but also the greater good of potable beverage. We have grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches then Lola retires to watch discussions of age appropriate ear rings while I continue to ponder The Truth About Islam in Europe.

The Railroading of the Public Continues

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and her puppet Mayor Dave Cieslewicz continue working. with as little public attention as possible, to impose the eternal debt burden of inflexible rail transportation on Dane County. Their New Urbanist plan to limit personal transportation as much as possible is moving forward with the Dane County Board to hear RTA Referendum proposals this Thursday, Feb. 7, 7:00 pm at the City-County Bldg Rm 201.

The Great Train Robbery: We are devoted to spreading information we think is crucial to prevent a disaster. The quality of life in Madison and Dane County and the economic strength of our community are at risk unless we defeat a proposal to increase a county-wide sales tax for trains and trolleys through the development of a Regional Transit Authority (RTA).

The County has reportedly already applied for Federal Funds which are contingent on the County approving a new taxing body and collecting the adequate funds. Needless to say, Falk and Cieslewicz absolutely positively do not want this massive tax increase going to a public referendum which is exactly why a referendum is important.

Do some homework and contact your representatives to let them know that affirmative public approval should be required before government makes a financial commitment, in perpetuity, of this magnitude.

Saving the Planet with MGE

Madison Gas and Electric will now sell you absolutions for the sin of using their energy. On the day a cold so bad it shuts down Madison schools, the new MGE business plan is to charge a premium so that carbon emissions don’t overheat the climate.

Sign Up for Green Power: Now you can offset the carbon emissions generated by your electricity use by choosing to purchase clean, renewable electricity. For $6 extra per month, the average MGE residential customer using 600 kWh per month can buy enough green power to offset 100% of their electricity-generated carbon dioxide emissions.

As of January 2008,
• new wind power projects in Wisconsin and Iowa and
• local solar PV installations
are providing three times more renewable power for MGE customers to buy.

This is no doubt stamped with the seal of approval from Kristine A Euclide, Vice President and General Counsel for MGE and one of Kathleen Falk’s appointees to the Dane County Regional Planning Commission actively working on limiting growth in the county. Is it a tad suspicious that Falk is working so very closely with Madison Gas and Electric while having her office actively resist American Transmission Company plans to upgrade the power grid in Dane County?