Carrington Event

There are much noisier displays out there -- about 25 years ago one home in Madison expanded their electrical service to be able to handle all the lights -- but in our neighborhood these folks are the loudest. (Yes, a lot of that is blinking.) It's a bit of a tradition -- an event -- to drive by on Carrington Drive to see what they've added this year.

No regrets

We drove past a pyramid-shaped restaurant (we guessed that was what it was) quite a few times, but it was too far from home to serve as a supper destination and inconvenient to our travel the rest of the times, so we never saw the inside of the place: " "Pyramid of the Nile - Egyptian Fine Dining Experience!" (the menu was American cuisine, such as Pharaoh's prime rib)."

It may still be for sale, though there's a huge pile of gravel on the site now.

I probably didn't miss much, though if it had been close by we might have given it a try just for fun. The lighting was probably terrible, though--those windows aren't big.

Naval militia

A recent squirrel chase through the net found me looking up naval militia, and then the naval militia(*) in Wisconsin. Wisconsin had one up until a bit after WWI, and recently proposed reviving it with centers in Milwaukee and Madison. (The proposal failed.)

Milwaukee is logical, but Madison? It has some lakes and the little Yahara River.

New York has one, and they used to assist in cargo loading when retrieving Flight 800 bodies and wreckage, and after 9/11 helped with evacuations, did logistical/clerical work, security, and first aid support. Their SeaBees put up a tent city for the emergency workers--there are a couple pages of bullet points. Now we're all grown-ups, and know the need to maximize the number of categories in a report (Assisted the Security Chief in moving his desk), but clearly there were ways to help out in a disaster that don't require that you be in a boat.

OTOH, I'm not sure what this would bring to the table that the Army National Guard wouldn't, except in oddball situations where the Reserve is stripped of one kind of skills and the Guard of another.

But we might still yet have our own naval militia.

(*) Not the same as privateers.

Before you ask

I wouldn't know either of them from Adam's off ox. I vaguely recall something about the Hartley episode, but didn't make the connection with UW. I had almost no dealings with the LaCrosse branch of the University. In fact we rarely even drove near the city; there were other camping areas we liked better.

Chancellors don't have a lot of contact with most of the staff. Which, under the circumstances, is a good thing.

Wisconsin Institute for Discovery

One of the sessions:

Winnebago history

I'm mostly interested in the Wisconsin Winnebago tribes.

The article I read begins

For as long as anyone can remember, the Winnebago lived in the vicinity of Green Bay in northeastern Wisconsin. The most powerful tribe in the region, they dominated the western shore of Lake Michigan from Upper Michigan to southern Wisconsin. As part of major climatic change in North America sometime around 1400, three closely related tribes - Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Ottawa - began moving west along the shore of Lake Huron ...

Read the article for yourself. Apply a little "temporal symmetry" to the wars and alliances and counter-alliances--the past before records was probably like the past after records were made.

Smallpox has been blamed, but the Winnebago say the disease turned their people yellow suggesting it was something else.

The Winnebago emerged from this with less than 1,500 warriors and 4,500 people. They were also starving since war and epidemic had made it impossible to harvest their crops. As mentioned, the hostility between the Illinois and Winnebago must have existed for many years before the refugees began to arrive. Perhaps motivated by a need to form an alliance against the newcomers who were also overrunning their territory, or even pity for an old enemy fallen on hard times, the Illinois sent 500 warriors and food to help the Winnebago. This proved a serious mistake. The Winnebago welcomed and held a feast for them, but in the midst of the dancing and celebration, they secretly cut the Illinois' bowstrings. Then they fell upon their benefactors and killed all of them to appease the spirits of Winnebago warriors killed earlier by the Illinois.

It took the Illinois some time to learn what had happened. In the meantime, the Winnebago had anticipated retaliation and retreated to an island in the middle of a lake where they built a fort. A sensible precaution, since it was impossible for the Illinois to bring their heavy dugout canoes overland with them to attack the Winnebago. The Illinois proved patient and waited a year to take revenge. When the lake froze that winter, a large Illinois war party crossed over the ice to attack the village only to find the Winnebago were absent on their winter hunt. After a six-day pursuit, they caught up with the Winnebago and, during the slaughter which followed, almost annihilated them. Few Winnebago escaped to find refuge with the Menominee. About 150 Winnebago prisoners were taken back as slaves to the Illinois villages and, after several years of hard usage, released to return to Wisconsin. Less than 500 Winnebago survived to provide a future for their people, but their near-extermination was the second serious mistake made by the Illinois. Despite the circumstances which had caused it, the Winnebago never forgave or forgot what had happened.

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UPDATE from Winnebago stories

"The Winnebagoes always encouraged one another to die on the warpath, because, if one dies in battle, the person would not really lose consciousness, but simply live right on in the spirit, and death would seem to him as if he had stumbled over some object. So they would say. If you wish to have a happy life as a spirit, do not die in your house. If you die in your house, your soul will wander over all the earth in want, and when people eat the four-nights' wake, you will not get anything. If they drink water, you will remain thirsty. It is said that people not dying on the warpath will, as spirits, have to content themselves by pointing to food and drink, and licking their fingers.

Those that die in battle have a village four days' distant from the general village the souls. They are in need of nothing, as they plant and raise their own food, and have so many clothes that they look as if they were covered with furs. They play ball and have lots of fun, ride horseback, and dance. If any of them should desire to return to the earth and become alive again, they can do so. The wounds, however, from which they died, remain with them in the spirit world. Those who lost their scalps are without scalps. Some are without heads, and some without scalplocks. They can see their relatives here on earth whenever they with to."

Little Norway

AVI posted about a 75-year-old travelogue about New Hampshire and suggested that there might be some for other states.

Yes, there was one from about 15 years later. (No, the Badger State was not named after the animal badger, but the mining kind.) It claimed that Little Norway was close to Madison, which seemed odd since I've never been there.

It was a tourist farm centered around a building built by Norway for the 1893 Columbia Exhibition, which was moved to Wisconsin. "After the end of World War II, the owners had offered to sell the facility the State of Wisconsin for $1 but the state didn't want to take on the maintenance of the property." What with upkeep and taxes the facility couldn't make it go, so they closed.

If I still want to visit it I can, but it's more of an adventure--"a delegation from Orkdal" bought the place, raised private and public funds to move it, and it is back where it started 124 years before.

The infamous "slavery" lesson's upshot

"Dane County Circuit Court Commissioner Scott McAndrew ruled in favor of former Sun Prairie Area School District teacher Mary Headington in a small claims lawsuit against the school district."

It was small claims because she and two others had agreed to quit after a flap when some parents got angry about a lesson plan based on Hammurabi’s Code. The students were given the situation of a Mesopotamian slave owner with a slave who refused to recognize his master--what do you do? (under the Hammurabi Code he was executed) The school district got bent out of shape, possibly from the publicity, and encouraged the teachers to quit--with a separation agreement which the school district then violated. SPASD Employee Relations Manager(*) Isabel Simonetti alleged that the assignment was "racist and offensive to African American students", but admitted "that she never viewed the whole PowerPoint. She received access to the scenarios only from parents’ emails and social media." She had circled on the separation form "that what the employee did was unsatisfactory and had an arrow pointing to giving a “racist/offensive assignment.”".

The Commissioner bothered to read the whole lesson plan, and found for the teacher. A federal court found for the school district when some parents sued about the matter. Words like "offensive" and "insensitive" were used in the opinions, but nothing racist or culpable.

We could do without the "services" of Simonetti. In her official capacity she alleged an offense she never bothered to check for.

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(*) The district's web page lists her title as "Assistant Superintendent for Teaching, Learning & Equity" Did I mention that I think they could save a lot of money and improve the social climate if they let go everyone with "equity" or "diversity" in their job description?

A different stereotype

AVI has a post on Vermont stereotypes, as shown in pictures. The first picture is of a gaily decorated VW. It reminded me of something else I'd seen: Gus Klenke's garage (my wife has a picture I like better, but I'm not sure where it is). Gus had a poem written about him. It's the first in that article.

Every year somebody replants the flowers in the car. The locals probably know who, but didn't tell us.

This _is_ the dairy state...

Cows blocked Hwy 151 at Main Street. The police called 3 "a herd". I'm not sure where they came from--I didn't think any of the nearby farms had cows, and I'm pretty sure John Deere and Walmart don't stock any.

Disposing of a frightening reminder

"an object ... also served as a daily reminder of a more recent troubling past". It is indeed troubling to be reminded of the mile-thick ice which aggressively invaded from Canada, forcing out the native inhabitants and thrusting pre-Cambrian intruders into the peaceful land.

Earlier posts: Post 1 and Post 2 and Post 3

"The rock will be placed on publicly accessible university-owned land southeast of Madison near Lake Kegonsa, where it will continue to be used for educational purposes by the geoscience department." Thanks to the Wisconsin State Journal for the photo and story.

Variable weather

Beneath this stone--a lump of clay--
Lies Uncle Peter Dan'els
Who too soon in the month of May
Took off his winter flannels.

Chamberlin Rock

In the continuing saga of Chamberlin Rock, "Chancellor Rebecca Blank has approved a committee’s recommendation that the boulder be relocated off university property. Private or gift funds, not taxpayer money, will cover the cost."

Quick recap: a glacial erratic named for a scientist is being moved because a Black Student Union president did enough in-depth research to find that it was once given an offensive name, albeit not within the lifetime of pretty much anybody still living.

Here I rely on the dog that didn't bark. Newspapers have an interest in scandal. If the stone still had the name by snickering word-of-mouth, the paper would have gleefully reported on how racist UW students were, and the UW Flagelants would have done loud mea culpas. Crickets.

The press release was careful to assure us that "private or gift funds" are used. If this means non-earmarked or endowment fund money, that's a distinction without a difference, since that and tax money is one big pot. If this is earmarked money--who is paying for this? It might be interesting to ask them why.

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On another UW story, the paper reports that UW has gotten 1000 doses of vaccine to start immunizing students and employees. Baldly stated like that it sound like somebody is cutting in line. It isn't until paragraph 3 that you learn that this is for UW-Hospital.

I'm trying to picture the geometry

"16 year old male with a gunshot wound to his head in the parking lot of the Palace Cinema Movie Theater ... the 16 year old male accidently shot himself". (He survived.) Followup to the story 20 days later: "he accidently shot himself in the head when he was passing the stolen gun (stolen from a vehicle in Sun Prairie) to a rear juvenile passenger while sitting in the stolen vehicle."

Somebody probably wasn't a Boy Scout.

All I want is ...

"The Campus Planning Committee unanimously voted last week to recommend to Chancellor Rebecca Blank that the boulder be removed from Observatory Hill."

The Wisconsin Black Student Union is mad about Chamberlin rock because it was called something else once 95 years ago. I noted that the furore would resurrect a long-forgotten name. McWhorter seems to have ambitions beyond the symbolic: "After the rock is removed, the Black Student Union's focus will shift to generating ideas for how students of color can reclaim the space, such as installing a piece of art". That's an interesting choice of words. "reclaim" ?

This might be amusing. The effort to remove is purely power politics--the claim that it was a daily reminder of oppression is an obvious lie. But it turns out that another minority group has a stake in the hill--and this stake is statutory.

"UW-Madison needs to secure approval from the Wisconsin Historical Society before removal begins because the rock is located near an effigy mound.

The first step requires UW-Madison to submit a request to disturb a catalogued burial site. All Native Tribes of Wisconsin are notified during the process, which can take 60 to 90 days and includes a 30-day comment period. A qualified archeologist is also required to be on site during removal.

Forgotten names

"Yet, while the rock itself is blameless, the cultural associations with it are enough for some to call for its removal."

The State Journal was unable to find a reference to the objectionable name that was more recent than 95 years ago--and certainly I've never heard it before. "The term itself appears to have fallen out of common usage by the 1950s."

That sounds, to first order, as though somebody dug long and hard to find something they could object to, at a university that seems to try hard to be welcoming to black students.

As far as I know for the past N decades it has been simply known as Chamberlin Rock and celebrated as a very large glacial erratic.

I suppose if someone were to find proof that it had been used by the Sioux to sacrifice immigrating Ho Chunk, the local Ho Chunk might be pleased to see it go away. But they might not care anymore--the Sioux lost and were driven west.

The old term--it wasn't even an official name--was long gone. It lost. This kind of demand resurrects it. Even if the rock goes away, the hole will remind everyone of the old name.

Lighter side

In Port Washington you may find a business called "Wholistic Dentistry."

I did not investigate closely: they were closed and I had places to be.

Your everyday non-wholistic dentist will urge you to make the lifesytle changes of eating less sugar and starch and flossing more often. Presumably "wholistic" adds new dimensions beyond these: perhaps a modified version of a Miskito smoke therapy that requires that the patient use cigars--that would probably be popular. Or perhaps they inject novacain into the left big toe instead of the jaw. Or they teach patients to transcend dental medication.

Or perhaps they really mean "hole-istic" dentistry.

I was accused of making Dad-jokes when I referred to Ouroboros butterflies.

Dice game followup

In the post on a dice game, I didn't explain the meaning of the graphs.

A player has about a 50/50 chance of winning some points in her turn. That's in a good range--not too rare, not too often. But one attractive feature of the "losing turn" is that it isn't a one-and-done. There's a little tension: "I missed once, will I miss the second time too?" It makes the game a trifle slower, but the dramatic advantage should compensate for that. Clever.

Getting multiple points in a turn is common enough to make that something to hope for--and even getting a winning throw isn't so rare that the women wouldn't see it every few games. This also helps cultivate a little drama.

The more biased the chips are, the more likely early players are to win, but the effect isn't that dramatic for reasonable estimates of unfairness. If the chips are dramatically unfair, players will notice and quit using them. So it seems to be a pretty fair game.

The prize (some yard goods that she would give to a man in exchange for something of equal value) was something easily provided by the other women, something the man had to supply, and an exchange which emphasized the reciprocal obligations of men and women in the tribe. And--probably now and then an unmarried winner used it for signaling interest.

I'll work up some estimates for how many women can play the game before it gets too unfair. If there are 1000 women playing, the winner will appear in the first few hundred and the last ones will pretty much never get a turn. If you've only got 2 players, the odds are close to even for them both.

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UPDATE:

Actually, this is a terrible game. Below see the table for the number of women playing and the relative odds of the last woman in the group to those of the first woman in the group. If you can randomly pick who goes first, who second, and so on, you're OK, but otherwise the first players have quite an advantage.

# players	win rate ratio of last to first
2	0.86
3	0.78
4	0.73
5	0.66
6	0.62
7	0.58
8	0.53

UPDATE:

The easiest way to fix this is to skip the "first past the post" rule, and allow points to keep accumulating. The first past woman with 10 or more points marks the final round, which continues until all are done; then the woman with the highest number of points wins--with tie-breaker rounds as needed. Of course, that's a different game then, but probably similar enough.

Women's dice game

Menominee women's dice game as seen in the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Six of the dice were thin circular disks; one was carved in the form of a turtle, and one represented a horse's head. They were formerly made of buffalo rib, but horse ribs were common in later times. One surface of each die was colored blue or sometimes red, and the other was left white. The bowl was held with both hands and the dice were shaken to the far side of the bowl. Then the bowl was given one flip and set on the floor and the score was counted, as follows:

• All of similar color except 2: 1 point
• All of similar color except 1: 3 points
• All of similar color except turtle: 5 points
• All of similar color except horse: 10 points
• All of similar color: 8 points
• All of similar color except turtle and horse: 10 points

The scoring varied according to each tribe, and each woman kept her own score using beans in front of her. Each woman shook until she missed twice and then passed the bowl in clockwise rotation. The first to score ten points won the game, and her prize-a piece of yard goods-was given to one of the men spectators, who in turn was obliged to reciprocate with a gift of equal value in the future.

OK, obviously the lady can score more than 10 points in a turn, though that won't happen often. If the chips (not really dice) were fair, the probability of red or white would be 0.5, but it might vary a bit. If they were fair, how much would a woman score in a turn--on the average? I made a stupid typo in my program, and I wanted to use the exercise to learn some python plotting I wasn't familiar with, so this took longer than it should have, but for your interest:

And if you want to know how things change if the chips aren't fair (systematically), that's here:

The award scheme is clever. The woman probably didn't need any "yard goods" herself--that was the sort of thing women made anyway. But she got to make a forced exchange with a man for something the men provided.

How do you get rid of this?

He didn't take it out to the back 40 to try using it for target practice. He took it to the people he thought would be experts. The back 40 option might be fun, though I'd want a lot of distance in between us. And if it didn't go off I'd avoid the spot for a month. At least.

"The Sheriff's Office is encouraging people who find explosive devices to leave the area and call 911."