Random Question?

Got a question? Try me.

Random Question Time

Got any questions, random or otherwise?

Monona-related?

State politics?

Basketball?

Ask away and I will try to dig up an answer (or make one up if I'm in a hurry).

Randomizer: Ask a Question

Some whiner - err, reader - asked me to post random question time again. So here it is. Ask away. Do your wurst.

(JK about the whiner thingy.)



Golly Bill, that's an ornery ole scutter!



Is raad really an electric catfish?? Apparently so. That's so totally raad.

Now look what you started.



Post a Question

It's been awhile, so here's your chance to ask a question. Go ahead. Somebody out there may even have an answer - oh, wait that's my job. Questions related to Monona are likely to get more accurate answers than most other stuff.

Let's Play Hypothetical Referendum Proposals

The Monona city council has been favored with a proposal to hold a referendum on a hypothetical commuter train proposal guaranteed to reveal meaningless results*. And it only costs about $900 so, heck, let's ask a bunch of questions!

What other hypothetical questions should we ask the voters?

For starters, how about:

"Should we have hypothetical advisory referendums?"

* Why meaningless? Because the RTA Board is not going to propose spending the entire allowable half-cent sales tax increase on a commuter-train-only service as the question assumes. If the RTA Board proposes commuter trains at all, it will be as part of a package in one form or another.

Comments and Questions?

It's your turn to do the work. Let's try something a little different. Just submit a comment about whatever you want (prefer Monona or area-related, but that's not essential). Put down your take on whatever is making you happy or putting a bug in your shorts. (A big crawly bug with huge eyes and lots of legs and eggs on its back - like a Belostomatidae).

Everyone's got an opinion about something and some people have an opinion about everything, so let's hear yours.

Afghanistan war. Property taxes. The Four Lakes. Climate change. Trains. Buses. Sidewalks. The Monona Drive project. Biking. The weather, The Brewers or the Cardinals or how bad the Cubs are. (But please NO football yet!) Schools. Cost of college. Summer in Madison. History, reading, libraries, books, bookstores - used or new. Web sites for books. Whatever. Mix all of those into one comment and...you have too much time or your hands.

Or just ask a question and I will pretend I know the answer to everything.....

Yuk!

This is a gross giant water bug or fascinating or both depending one's perspective. I came across the photo by Alex Wild on Tree of Life web project. See the bottom more details.

Scientific Name Abedus sp.

Location Stebbins Reserve, Solano County, California, USA

Comments Male giant water bug with eggs

Specimen Condition Live Specimen

Sex Male with eggs

Life Cycle Stage Adult, eggs

Copyright © 2003 Alex Wild

Infor on the Tree of Life Web Project. 2005. Belostomatidae. Giant water bugs. Version 21 June 2005 (temporary). http://tolweb.org/Belostomatidae/10926/2005.06.21 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/

And check out Alex Wild's photography web site. Awesome stuff.

I snapped this little dandy myself over the ALNC a month or so ago.
Doug Wood (c) 2010

Mystery Monona News

In a week or so there will be some really good news announced about, concerning, or relating to Monona. Really.

Take a guess what it will be. Of course I won't be able to tell you if you guess right untilt eh news is announced. (And no the Edgewater is not relocating to Monona).

Question Time! Sound Your Vuvuzela!

OK, it's time for you guys to do some work and think up stuff for me to write about....I mean, here's your opportunity to ask questions about your community (if you live in Monona, that is).

I can't hear-r-r-r-r-r you. Get out your vuvuvzelas? It turns put that World Cup fans are a bunch of whiners. They don't like this sound... 

South Africa is (are?) proud of it. Besides, don't they always make continual racket during World Cup games? Like, this one. I think you have to be from Argentina to appreciate that one.







On the other hand, you don't want to make these people mad.

Random Question Time

Back by unpopular demand, it's random question time. Ask any question as long as it relates to Monona or is interesting or both.

Please, no questions about Calvinism unless you are really predetermined.

hahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha.




 

Is It Spring Yet?

So, is there anything going on in town?

There's the ongoing DaneCom discussion/wrestling match between Kathleen Falk and the Dane County cities and villages and towns, but it is so complicated with so many unknowns that no one can stay awake long enough to understand it. (And my guess is: it's not happening.)

So, back to you, got any questions or junk?

(yeah, besides the school budget angst)

Beat the Rush! Submit Your Questions Now - Holiday Edition of Monona Random Questions

The blog post title is self-explanatory. Get cracking! Submit a question. Random or otherwise.

"Monona - Home of a Really Big Bra."

Non-Random Question Time

Submit your leftover questions. Get reheated answers. Submit Monona-related questions, get shiny new answers made from scratch.

(I am going to keep this post at the top for a few days. New posts will be immediately below).

Question Time - Updated

Hey, just like Parliament, it's question time but without the shouting or the Prime Minister or BBC. This is your chance to be Kanye West, but I'm not as nice (or cute) as Taylor Swift.

No lie. (By the way, did the You Lie Guy really mean 'you lie boy'? Maureen Dowd thought so and said so.)

Post a question Monona, please.

Here's a couple. Should the Brewers fire Ken Macha? Will they? I'd say 'no' and 'probably not'. The Brewers slipped because they lost their two best starters from 2008 (Sheets and CC). They had a rotation with no established number one pitcher. And then we watched in dismay as Bush and Suppan wracked up time on the DL and Manny Parra regressed. And now Gallardo is struggling.

Macha didn't cause this scenario and firing Macha won't fix any of that. I think Brewers management is smart enough to figure that out. BUT, unlike the former owner, the Attanasio will not sit back and twiddle his thumbs hopelessly. Doug Melvin may be more at risk than Macha, but really folks, they have the hitting, their defense is better, they ditched Bill Hall, and found Casey McGehee. Get some starters, avoid this plague of injuries, and they can be back in bidness.

Random Question

Here's mine:

Query: What are the top three threats to Western Civilization?

Odds and Ends

Shouldn't that be 'odds and evens'?

Random stuff bouncing around in the cranium and vicinity.

Flann O'Brien is really funny in a quirky Gaelic kind of way. Try The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About the Hard Life (includes illustrations by Ralph Steadman) about growing up in the Gaeltacht (Gaeltacht - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

Visit: Amazon's Flann O'Brien Page and http://www.ralphsteadman.com/

***

The Germans seem to be making a lot of good films lately.

LinkCat: Counterfeiters (DVD) [videorecording]

Netflix: The Counterfeiters

Facing an ethical quandary, Jewish master forger Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) must choose between abetting the Nazis and saving his skin in this taut Oscar-nominated drama based on a true story. Assembled at a death camp, a cadre of printers, artists and chiselers -- led by the opportunistic Sorowitsch -- is tasked with counterfeiting currencies to weaken Allied economies. But will Sorowitsch's conscience begin to gnaw at him as the war draws to a close?

LinkCat: Das leben der Anderen (DVD) The lives of others /

Netflix: The Lives of OthersDas Leben der Anderen(2007) R

Set in 1980s East Berlin, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's debut feature (which earned an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film) provides an exquisitely nuanced portrait of life under the watchful eye of the state police as a high-profile couple is bugged. When a successful playwright and his actress companion become subjects of the Stasi's secret surveillance program, their friends, family and even those doing the watching find their lives changed too.

LinkCat: Nowhere in Africa (DVD) [videorecording]

Netflix: Nowhere in Africa

Shortly before World War II, a Jewish couple and their young daughter emigrate to Kenya from Germany to escape the Nazis. Not all members of the family are happy with this drastic change -- but going home isn't an option. Ultimately, they must all come to terms with a new life in a new continent. Director Caroline Link's epic drama won the 2002 Oscar for best foreign film.

For a quirky, funny and touching foreign movie try the 1968 winner Closely Watched Trains (Closely watched trains (DVD) [videorecording]). It's Czech not German.

Surrounded by but seemingly removed from the violence of World War II, a naïve railroad apprentice (Václav Neckár) working at a train station in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia carves some excitement out of his humdrum existence by exploring his own sexuality. Jirí Menzel directs this Oscar-winning foreign-film classic based on a novel by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, who co-wrote the screenplay with Menzel.

Full List of Best Foreign Language Film

***

Raise the beer tax? It was set at $1/barrel in 1933. It was raised top $2/barrel in 1969. The Wisconsin beer tax has not been raised in 40 years. Raising the beer tax to $10/barrel would generate about $50 million in added revenue per year. (If my math is right that means the current beer tax generates all of $12 million a year.)

Yoinks! the WSJ's Scott Milfred likes the idea.

Ok, then did you know that California already taxes medical marijuana sales at 9.5%. Thirteen states have legalized medical marijuana (Wisconsin, of course, is not one of them.). A company called Medical Marijuana Inc. is already in the business of managing these tax transactions.

According to an article in the Atlantic, California State assemblyman Tom Ammiano made his pitch in February, a bill that would legalize the "cultivation, possession and sale of marijuana by people 21 and older." The bill would amount to about $50 per ounce tax on the drug, raising an estimated $1.3 billion for the state of California.

Now, California has about 6.5 times as many residents as Wisconsin (around 36.7 million compared to 5.6M) and I doubt Wisconsinites keep up with California in the stoner department, but still, if a marijuana raised even 1/20th that amount we're talking $65 million in tax revenue per year.

CNN has a chart projecting lower, but still significant revenues ($13.4 million for Wisconsin).

Here is a Slate magazine article on the revenue enhancing qualities of legal marijuana.

Hmmm, instead of $30,000/year free room and board for pot dealers, we turn them into respectable tax-paying business owners. Back when Wisconsin was progressive, it might have happened here. Not anymore.

But think of the increased sales of Pop Tarts!

What's on Your Mind?

So, I'm tired of doing all the work around here. I am not your mother!

Post your questions, answers, thoughts, recommendations, and other stuff here. Here's a few questions of my own.

Did you take the Green Monona Tour?

Where do always take out of town visitors? Any off-the-beaten-path places? (yes, it can be outside of Monona. duh.)

What are you doing to make Monona a better place?

Or, knowing that nearly all of us are a little bit lazy and like to procrastinate, what do you think you (or preferably somebody else) should be doing to make Monona a better place?

Is the half-assed factor alive and well? Examples, please.

Are you excited about Internet Explorer 8?

What will you do with your furlough days?

Your questions will be answered in the order I get around to them. Reliable answers will take a bit longer.

City Spring & Summer Guide & Question Time

Submit your questions here. You may even get answers, some of which are bound to be accurate.

Whether you do or not, the city has posted the 2009 Monona Spring & Summer Guide on the web page (Monona). It looks great and has a ton of of information.

UPDATE: The spring and summer guide was mailed to residents on Friday, March 20.

Exploring the Obvious

Have you ever stopped to think what people mean when they say 'it is what it is'? No, good that means you have a much fuller more satisfying existence than I do.

The Urban Dictionary: It is what it Is suggests that at least one meaning is exhibited in this exchange:

J: It troubles me that you continue to put cyanide in my Yoohoo even after I've asked you to stop.

B: It is what it is.

One ponders the imponderables: How do we know (and here I mean, really know at some existential level) whether 'is' in fact the 'what' that 'it' purports to be? Know what I mean??

In saying that 'it what it is' are we expressing a Nietzschean nihilism? Doubtful. It is well known that his nemesis, Arthur Schopenhauer first used the phrase 'it is what it is' in his seminal work, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Schopenauer, of course, thought this whole gig was one fruitless attempt after another to fulfill our emotional, sexual, and physical desires.

(Don't miss Fred's latest work 'Fat is Dead' New Nietzschean Diet Lets You Eat Whatever You Fear Most The ...)

The phrase 'it is what it is' also expresses a contemporary postmodern search for meaning. as when Bill Clinton explored the depths of the word 'is':

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....."

http://www.slate.com/id/1000162/

I couldn't have said it better myself (and I actually learned to think that way at the Wisconsin Law School).

The Great Courses compares and contrasts the impactfulness of 'it is what it is' with other Great Sayings that have set our course to Infinity and Beyond!

For example:

Rene Descartes: 'I think therefore I am'
I think, therefore I am, I think Economist.com
I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am
I doubt I think, therefore I think I isn't
I am what I am and I ain't what I ain't
Popeye Hell Naw No U Ain't CD
Pooh," said Rabbit kindly, "you haven't any brain." "I know," said Pooh humbly.

The end.

OK, discuss amongst yourselves.

Just remember:

It's all good (Meaning: Despite any possible doubt, everything's cool.
Oh you slept with my girl? It's all good homie! ).

Whatever.

I'm out...

Ask Your Question!

Go ahead. Ask a question. Make it a good one. Make it about Monona.

I have trained specialists standing by to assist with the tough ones.

Or not.....

Random Monona Question Time

Post your random Monona-related question. All questions accepted, many answered, some answered accurately, satisfactory answers possible.

(Those of you who are still paying attention may notice that limiting the questions to Monona makes them non-random. I will be the final judge of randomness.)