Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog

On Statehood Day

May 29, 2014

Culture
Today is Wisconsin’s 166th birthday as a state.

Wisconsin became a state May 29, 1848. It’s too bad that Wisconsin’s becoming the 30th state couldn’t have waited one day to become official, but apparently Congress was unconcerned with numerical synchronicity.

Apparently Wisconsinites — that is, residents of the Wisconsin Territory — were somewhat hesitant to join the Union, at least according to History.com:

In 1836, after several decades of governance as part of other territories, Wisconsin was made a separate entity, with Madison, located midway between Milwaukee and the western centers of population, marked as the territorial capital. By 1840, population in Wisconsin had risen above 130,000, but the people voted against statehood four times, fearing the higher taxes that would come with a stronger central government. Finally, in 1848, Wisconsin citizens, envious of the prosperity that federal programs brought to neighboring Midwestern states, voted to approve statehood. Wisconsin entered the Union the next May.

That’s a rather ironic paragraph given that Wisconsin has been a donor state to the feds for decades, with no national parks, no Air Force bases, no major federal installations, and, of course, no Upper Peninsula, that having been swiped from Wisconsin and given to Michigan to settle the Toledo War.

Be all that as it may, Estately has found 27 reasons to live here, including …
TOILET PAPER IS AMPLE

The only thing worse than running out of toilet paper is unnecessary hyperbole. Luckily, Green Bay, Wisconsin is the Toilet Paper Capital of the World. So go ahead and wipe like you’re some kind of Charmin Bear because the T.P. is abundant.

IT’S BEERVANA

Wisconsin could just as easily be called The Beer State. This land of malted hops and barley welcomed German immigrants and their brewing traditions with open arms. A staggering 3.9% of the state’s GDP comes from beer, with over 60,000 people employed in the beer industry. One brewery in Milwaukee alone produces 10 million barrels of beer annually—that’s 10 million barrels of fun! Milwaukee even named their baseball team the Brewers.

YOU CAN FIND OTHER DRINK WISCONSINBLY PRODUCTS AT DRINKWISCONSINBLY.COM

GREEN BAY PACKERS

What team has an NFL record 13 championships, 22 Hall of Famers, and is owned by the fans themselves instead of some local billionaire? The NFL’s greatest franchise—the Green Bay Packers. Being a winner feels good, too.

THE WOMEN OF WISCONSIN
1. Can outdrink men from any other state (except Alaska and North Dakota)
2. Make denim on denim look good (sorry Canada)
3. Wear skirts and heels when it’s 20 below and never complain about the cold
4. Are finally over their Brett Favre crushes, except Donna in Oshkosh
5. Open their own pickle jars
6. Would rather clean a walleye than the kitchen
7. Sometimes wear brassieres made of cheese, which is the inspiration behind the Dairy Queen Brazier
8. Can throw a snowball 20 yards further than women in Minnesota
9. Keep a photo of Donald Driver in their wallets
10. Currently have a nice casserole baking in the oven
PHOTO SOURCE: PACKER TIME

THE MEN OF WISCONSIN
1. Always oil your chainsaw before returning it
2. Wear ponytails way better than guys in Illinois (see Clay Matthews)
3. Propose to you while deer hunting
4. Are happy to take your mom out for drinks on her birthday
5. Buy a round of drinks when they win cash at pull tabs
6. Put the toilet seat down because it’s not like they’re from Iowa
7. Never, NEVER play the Goo Goo Dolls on a jukebox
8. Only sit alone in their truck and cry when the dog dies
9. Regret not making friends with Russell Wilson in college
10. Never lie about their marathon time, even if they’re running for office
ALWAYS GOT MILK

Wisconsin earned the title of “Dairy Capital of the World” because it produces more milk than any other state, except for California, which isn’t fair because California is really big. Still, 2nd place isn’t bad, and wholesome Wisconsin doesn’t corrupt it’s milk with exposure to twerking and molly and marijuana cigarettes.

SO MUCH CHEESE

People say “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” but nobody ever says “Where there’s milk there’s cheese.” That’s way better, and it’s totally true for Wisconsin, which produces 25% of the nation’s cheese and wears 99% of all cheese hats.

FRIED CHEESE CURDS

For those who like their cheese squeaky and deep fried, Wisconsin is fried cheese curd paradise. These tasty little cheese nuggets are battered and fried, then served up with a cold beer. Wisconsin is like the county fair, except its an entire state and the fair food lasts all year long.

A LAND OF SECOND CHANCES

Russell Wilson was an undersized quarterback who transferred from NC State University to Wisconsin for his final year of eligibility. While there, he took the Badgers to the Rose Bowl and now he’s the star quarterback for the resurgent Seattle Seahawks. There are magical powers at work in the Wisconsin, especially when it comes to underrated quarterbacks that other teams didn’t want (see Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre).

PHOTO SOURCE: COLLEGE SPORTS MADNESS

FATHERS OF ANARCHY

Wisconsin (Milwaukee) is the home of Harley Davidson Motorcycles so maybe you could work for them? Maybe you could invent a remote control that silences a neighbor revving their Harley’s engine for a solid 10 minutes at 5:30 in the morning? You might even win a Nobel Prize for that. Check out Harley Davidson’s job page HERE.

… LOCALLY PRODUCED PEOPLE

These famous folks are all from Wisconsin…
1. Harry Houdini, famous magician and escape artist
2. Actress Heather Graham
3. Frank Lloyd Wright, the country’s most famous architect
4. Comedic actor Chris Farley
5. Mr. Baseball (announcer Bob Uecker)
6. Comedian Frank Caliendo
7. Musical performer Liberace
8. Musician Steve Miller
9. John Matuszak (Sloth from The Goonies)
… MISSISSIPPI RIVER ADVENTURE

The Mississippi River forms part of Wisconsin’s border with Minnesota. It also provides a nice jumping off point for a 1,200-mile aft trip if you want to go all Huckleberry Finn and travel to New Orleans just like ye olde French fur trappers may have once done.

UNEMPLOYMENT

The unemployment rate for Wisconsin is 6.7%, which is better than the national average of 7.3%, and far better than its neighbors Michigan (9.0%) and Illinois (9.2%). Try and ignore neighboring Iowa (4.9%) and Minnesota (5.1%) and just be happy Wisconsin still has manufacturing jobs.

… AMERICA’S BEST MUSTACHES

Mustaches are back en vogue right now, but in Wisconsin they never went out of style. Upper lip bristles are worn by all segments of Wisconsin society, including some the state’s most iconic people. To check the authenticity of a mustache be sure to examine it up close. If there are tiny flecks of cheese curd, beer foam, and/or powdered donut then the mustache is genuine and must be treated with respect.

PHOTO SOURCE: TOTAL PACKERS

… HUMBLE PEOPLE

It’s nice to think that reason so few people in Wisconsin have set any world records is because they’re humble and don’t like to attract much attention. The state is largely free of showboats, discounting this proud Guinness Book of World Records holder, a man who’s has eaten a McDonald’s Big Mac every single day for 37 years.

THEY’RE INTO POLITICS

Wisconsin ranks number three in overall voter turnout with 61% over the past six elections. The state takes its politics seriously, even if they elect a confusing blend of contradictory political figures. This electoral bi-polar disorder causes the state to elect Democrat Barack Obama as President and conservative Republican Scott Walker as governor. The state has sent both socialists (Rep. Victor Berger) and rabid anti-communists (Sen. Joe McCarthy) to Congress. No matter what your politics, you’ll find someone who agrees with you in Wisconsin.

… THIRD-SHIFT HAPPY HOUR

Happy hours are great for those who enjoy discount drinks and food, but what if you work nights? Many a Wisconsin bar offers “third-shift” happy hours for nurses, firefighters and assembly-line workers, so they can still get cheap beer at 8:30am.
It’s not clear to me that interest in politics is a positive, and if you can find someone who agrees with your political views, you can also find someone who disagrees with your political views. The pre-statehood Wisconsinites wary of the feds were right.

Even less serious on the subject, with the added bonus of dubious accuracy, is this blog:

#1 Our cheese is simply better than yours.

Wisconsin cheese is amazing. It’s hands down the best in the country. Sure, we are absorbing tons more cholesterol and saturated fat than you, but you only live once!

#2 We have a baseball team called the friggin’ beers.

Yeah that’s right our baseball team is called the Milwaukee Brewers. If you’ve seen the movie baseketball you know they parodied our team, but it’s so true. Our baseball team is pretty much called the beers. It’s awesome.

#3 I eat your weight in brats every year, but i’m still in better shape than you are.

Did you know that brats are a food group? What’s that you say? They’re not? IN WISCONSIN THEY ARE!!

#4 We’re pretty good at football.

Last year the packers won the superbowl, the Badgers played in the Rose Bowl, and UW Whitewater won the division 3 NCAA national championship for the second year in a row. Whitewater has played in every NCAA championship since 2004. Our high school teams aren’t bad either.

#5 We’re pretty much immune to the cold.

Most humans have trouble adjusting to temperatures around twenty below zero fahrenheit. We jump in the water and pretend that we’re polar bears.

#6 We’re the home of the driftless area.

That’s right, at one point in time we had an area of the state that was so bad ass it flipped off a glacier and told it to go flatten some other part of the country… That’s how tough Wisconsin is. …

#8 Do not challenge someone from Wisconsin to a snowball fight.

You will lose. Hands down. Not only do we have experience but miller light numbs pain.

#9 Tip back your glass!

Wisconsin has five major breweries and over 25 microbreweries. Most of them are pretty good! …

#11 Our river will eat you. Do not go swimming.

The Wisconsin river is dangerous. The only two rivers in the world that are more dangerous are the Nile and the Amazon, and they are dangerous because of what lives in them. The Wisconsin river has extremely swift currents and deadly whirl pools. This one is no joke, stay away from the river!

#12 We have a lot of cows. Be jealous.

We have approximately 1,279,000 cows here in Wisconsin. If we equipped our cows with weapons and marched them into Canada we could probably take it over. That’s what i’m talking aboot!

#13 With great cows comes a great deal of milk.

Any day that I don’t drink a gallon of milk is a bad day. I’m pretty much addicted.

#14 Contrary to popular belief cows will not eat you.

Apparently people from urban areas are scared to death of cows. Cows are pretty docile. They are like big dogs and are usually much more afraid of you than you are of them. …

#16 If you are from another state do not… i repeat DO NOT try to out drink someone from Wisconsin.

You may have tipped back a few in your day, but people from Wisconsin are trained professionals. Attempting to out drink someone from Wisconsin can lead to serious injury and or death.

#17 The leading alcohol Consuming Countries in the world are as follows;

#3 Finland, #2 Ireland, and #1 Wisconsin. Yes, Wisconsin actually becomes a country in the category of alcohol consumption. Due to the massive quantities of football, beer, cheese, and brats once a party starts it rarely stops. …

#25 If you don’t like the weather…

Wait five minutes.. it’ll change! Come visit us!
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Presty the DJ for May 29

May 29, 2014

Music
This is more a pop than rock anniversary: One of the two funniest songs Johnny Cash performed, “One Piece at a Time,” hit number 29 today in 1976:

Birthdays start with Gary Brooker of Procol Harum:

(more…)
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Climate “science” and “consensus”

May 28, 2014

US politics, weather
According to fans of man-made global climate change that will change the Earth as we know it, all scientists believe their claptrap.

Think again, say Joseph Bast and Roy Spencer:

Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the “crippling consequences” of climate change. “Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists,” he added, “tell us this is urgent.”

Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” Or maybe from NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website, “Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.”

Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.

One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinion essay published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly dissented.

Ms. Oreskes’s definition of consensus covered “man-made” but left out “dangerous”—and scores of articles by prominent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who question the consensus, were excluded. The methodology is also flawed. A study published earlier this year in Nature noted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren’t substantiated in the papers.

Another widely cited source for the consensus view is a 2009 article in “Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union” by Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, a student at the University of Illinois, and her master’s thesis adviser Peter Doran. It reported the results of a two-question online survey of selected scientists. Mr. Doran and Ms. Zimmerman claimed “97 percent of climate scientists agree” that global temperatures have risen and that humans are a significant contributing factor.

The survey’s questions don’t reveal much of interest. Most scientists who are skeptical of catastrophic global warming nevertheless would answer “yes” to both questions. The survey was silent on whether the human impact is large enough to constitute a problem. Nor did it include solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists or astronomers, who are the scientists most likely to be aware of natural causes of climate change.

The “97 percent” figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientists—of the 3,146 who responded to the survey—does not a consensus make.

In 2010, William R. Love Anderegg, then a student at Stanford University, used Google Scholar to identify the views of the most prolific writers on climate change. His findingswere published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Mr. Love Anderegg found that 97% to 98% of the 200 most prolific writers on climate change believe “anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for ‘most’ of the ‘unequivocal’ warming.” There was no mention of how dangerous this climate change might be; and, of course, 200 researchers out of the thousands who have contributed to the climate science debate is not evidence of consensus.

In 2013, John Cook, an Australia-based blogger, and some of his friends reviewed abstracts of peer-reviewed papers published from 1991 to 2011. Mr. Cook reported that 97% of those who stated a position explicitly or implicitly suggest that human activity is responsible for some warming. His findings were published in Environmental Research Letters.

Mr. Cook’s work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August 2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook and found “only 41 papers—0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent—had been found to endorse” the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv and Nils- Axel Morner, whose research questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work.

Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch —most recently published in Environmental Science & Policy in 2010—have found that most climate scientists disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change.

Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.

Finally, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—which claims to speak for more than 2,500 scientists—is probably the most frequently cited source for the consensus. Its latest report claims that “human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems.” Yet relatively few have either written on or reviewed research having to do with the key question: How much of the temperature increase and other climate changes observed in the 20th century was caused by man-made greenhouse-gas emissions? The IPCC lists only 41 authors and editors of the relevant chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report addressing “anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing.”
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On Wisconsin’s shooting gallery

May 28, 2014

Culture, media, Wisconsin politics
Steve Spingola:

Seemingly each year, the reporters and the editorial writers at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel believe the shooting of a young child, the needless murder of a homeless man, or a large turnout at a candlelight vigil, is the so-called tipping-point on crime. In this scenario, the residents of Milwaukee’s central city or the “hood,” as the area was recently dubbed by the Journal Sentinel, awake from their Rip Van Winkle-type slumber to forge a new reality — that the conduct of the criminal element will no longer be tolerated.

And, each year, it takes all of two weeks to debunk the Journal Sentinel’s theory, as bodies, sadly, begin filling the freezers of Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s office.

Instead of looking to Chief Flynn and his overpriced east coast consultants for answers, the proponents of the futile Rip Van Winkle theory on Milwaukee’s inner-city violence could find solutions at Amazon.com for $10.67, a price substantially more affordable than Chief Flynn’s cabal of advisors.

In February, retired Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) Captain Glenn Frankovis released a new book, Area Saturation Patrol: A Policing Strategy That Works, which spotlights the successful strategy used to suppress crime in MPD Districts Two, Three and Five.

At the request of Glenn’s publisher, I penned the following:

“During the summer of 2001, Milwaukee’s Metcalfe Park neighborhood was a virtual war zone. Fox News 6 reporter Mara MacDonald’s investigation dubbed this troubled area a killing field. In an effort to prevent more bloodshed, Police Chief Arthur Jones called on Captain Glenn Frankovis.

“Glenn had previously served as the Commanding Officer at District Five, where he implemented an Area Saturation Patrol (ASP) strategy that worked wonders. In 2002, overall major crime in District Five declined 8.1 percent, shootings plummeted 42.8 percent, and the number of homicides decreased 48.6 percent. Within 18 months, the near north side policing sectors under Frankovis’ command had witnessed the largest one-year decline in per capita homicides in urban America.

“But could the man with the plan, and his hard-charging foot soldiers, put a lid on the on violence in Milwaukee’s killing field? After all, Metcalfe Park was surrounded by other neighborhoods teetering on the brink. Instead of making excuses, requesting a huge influx of new officers, or whining about budgets, Glenn Frankovis met the challenge head-on. In his first full-year at District Three, the commander’s ASP strategy and no-nonsense policing style resulted in 15.5 percent reduction in violent crime, including a 21.7 percent reduction in robberies.”

With such a track record of success, one would think the editorial writers at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the staffs of local television news outlets, and the political-class at city hall, might take notice of Frankovis’ crime fighting strategy. But alas, the sound of crickets and excuse making are the only concepts being promulgated by the proponents of the Rip Van Winkle theory.
So, each year, as you read the articles in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel regarding the very tragic loss of human life, consider the source. Then, take notice that the newspaper’s editorial board and city leaders seem more concerned with political correctness than fighting crime. And, as time passes, the public can count on one thing: that editorial board and political pontificators will continue to put their collective heads in the sand while waiting—for eternity—for the elusive inner-city Rip Van Winkle to be jostled from his slumber.
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Presty the DJ for May 28

May 28, 2014

Music
Paul McCartney must like releasing albums in May. Today in 1971, he released his second post-Beatles album, “Ram,” which included his first post-Beatles number one single:

Birthdays today include Papa John Creech of the Jefferson Airplane:

Gladys Knight:

(more…)
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20 years ago tonight

May 27, 2014

Sports
Strange though it seems for someone who grew up in Madison, which is 943 miles west of Madison Square Garden, I am a New York Rangers fan.

There are only two reasons. First, as a lifelong UW fan growing up in the ’70s, you would naturally follow the only successful major sport at UW in that period, hockey.

Second, USA Network in its pre-NBCUniversal/Comcast days carried events from the Madison Square Garden Network, which still exists today, though it’s carried only in Noo Yawk. MSG carried events from, natch, Madison Square Garden, including Rangers hockey, Knicks basketball, boxing and professional wrestling. I cared little about the middle two (yes, I watched pro wrestling, but preferred Milwaukee’s own The Crusher to the NYC wrestlers), but followed the Rangers, the only New York team I did, or would, follow.

I watched the Rangers because that was the only NHL team I could watch. The NHL had some syndicated games in the late 1970s, but no Madison TV station carried the NHL. (The closest stations that carried the NHL were in Chicago and Duluth. Milwaukee’s then-only independent station didn’t carry the NHL either.) I could have been a Chicago Blackhawks fan, but Blackhawks owner William Wirtz, who met no one’s definition of an enlightened pro sports team owner, banned home telecasts, and the only Chicago station we got, WGN-TV, didn’t carry Blackhawks road games. (How bad was Wirtz? ESPN named the franchise the worst in pro sports in 2004. When the Blackhawks held a moment of silence after Wirtz’s death in 2007, the United Center crowd booed.)

It’s safe to say that the Rangers teams I started watching in the late ’70s were more celebrities than team-oriented hockey players. The biggest name was probably center Phil Esposito, followed by goalie John Davidson, followed by defenseman Ron Greschner, because he was married to supermodel Carol Alt, and the brothers Maloney, defenseman Dave and forward Don, star of a 7Up commercial.

The biggest hair undoubtedly belonged to forward Ron Duguay, described in 2009 by the New York Times as “an icon of the disco era,” and who, unlike Greschner, is still married to his supermodel, Kim Alexis.

Watching from Wisconsin (whose Badgers provided Rangers goaltender Wayne Thomas and forward Dean Talafous, by the way) and not metro New York, I missed this:

Given the ethos of the NHL, I suspect the Sasson participants were ridiculed mercilessly in every NHL arena once that hit the airwaves. Which is not to say that Espo, Duguay, Maloney and Anders Hedberg were the only NHL players to wear designer jeans. (I had a pair of not Sassons, but Jordache.)

The Rangers’ teams I started following were announced on TV by Jim Gordon (also the long-time New York Giants announcer) and former NHL referee Bill Chadwick, who would yell “SHOOT THE PUCK BARRY!” whenever huge defenseman Barry Beck scored. Those were the only NHL games I watched until USA Network started carrying hockey; apparently Rangers road games were carried on local TV, while MSG got the home games.

Until the 1993–94 season, the Rangers were sort of the National Hockey League’s answer to the Chicago Cubs, though going without a Stanley Cup for 54 years is not quite like going without a World Series title for 86 years. (Now 105 years, and counting.) The Rangers got to the 1979 Stanley Cup final, but lost 4 games to 1 to Montreal.

That was until the 1993–94 season, with new coach Mike Keenan, forward Mark Messier, defenseman Brian Leetch, and former UW and Olympic goalie Mike Richter in net. The Rangers won the regular-season title with more points (two for a win, one for a tie) than any other team, and won their first two playoff series. Against Hudson River archrival New Jersey, the Rangers fell behind three games to two, won game six at New Jersey when Messier, former teammate of the great Wayne Gretzky, guaranteed a win and then delivered a third-period hat trick …

… bringing us to game seven, on the Friday of 1994 Memorial Day weekend.

I watched this game from my parents’ family room on the way to visiting the in-laws. I’d stopped there for supper, saw the game-tying goal with 7 seconds left in overtime, and then sat nervously through the two overtimes while my parents must have wondered why I cared about an NHL game.

There is really nothing like an NHL overtime game in professional sports. Overtime used to be found only in the playoffs; the NHL grudgingly added five-minute overtimes, then added shootouts to settle regular-season ties. (Though teams get one point in the standings for a shootout loss, whereas they get no points for losing in regulation or OT.) I once did a college hockey overtime playoff game, and I wish I still had the sound file of the finish, which sits on a dead computer somewhere. Before that, I played in the UW Band at nine UW overtime games, all wins.

Unlike other sports, where you have some warning of what’s about to happen in overtime, there are the skaters on one end, and then the red light goes on behind the net, and the fans and announcers go bananas if the home team wins. It’s comparable to a walk-off home run in baseball or a buzzer-beater in basketball, but somehow seems more dramatic.

Four minutes into the second overtime, Stephane Matteau, who had already scored one overtime goal in the conference final against New Jersey, swiped the puck in the corner and …

The most memorable call of the game-winner comes from substitute radio announcer Howie Rose …

… who was working because the regular radio announcer, Marv Albert, was working for NBC. (Albert had an amazingly full schedule in those days.)

The win moved the Rangers to the Stanley Cup Finals against Vancouver. What happened then? Stay tuned.
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How to respect the military, from someone who does

May 27, 2014

Culture, US politics
Since the original Memorial Day — known first as Decoration Day — was May 30, I think a Memorial Day — or Memorial/Veterans Day these days — post is still appropriate today.

The first blog post on this theme was from Buzzfeed:

We are a generation winding down from a decade of war.

Getty Images

There is a really good chance you know someone who served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Via youtube.com

Here are some nice ways to welcome them home or just say thank you.

… and Young Conservatives picks up the theme:

1. Look them in the eye and give them a firm handshake. No one appreciates a firm handshake more than a soldier.

Via edge.liveleak.com

2. If they prefer not to shake hands…

AP

…then a chest bump will do.

AP

Just make sure you do duckface afterward so they can laugh at you.

AP

… 4. Always treat their families with great respect. They have been through more than you could imagine.

Via reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com

… 6. Sometimes it’s important that you treat a soldier the way you would treat anyone else.

… 9. Each soldier has an amazing story.

georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov

10. Listen. Listening is often the best gift you can give someone.

11. Give them a hug!

georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov

Draper/White House

12. Do a sport with them.

AP

President Bush golfs with wounded veterans at the Warrior Open tournament.

13. Make sure you are respectful.

AP

14. But if you only have a minute, look them square in the eye… And say, “Thank you.”
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Presty the DJ for May 27

May 27, 2014

Music
Today in 1975, Paul McCartney released “Venus and Mars” (not to be confused with “Ebony and Ivory”):

Birthdays include Ramsey Lewis:

April Wine drummer Jerry Mercer:

(more…)
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Presty the DJ for May 26

May 26, 2014

Music
Another Beatles anniversary today: Their “Beatles 1967–1970” album (also known as “the Blue Album”) reached number one today in 1973:

(more…)
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Presty the DJ for May 25

May 25, 2014

Music
Two unusual anniversaries in rock music today, beginning with John Lennon’s taking delivery of his Rolls-Royce today in 1967 — and it was not your garden-variety Rolls:

Ten years to the day later, the Beatles released “Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, 1962,” which helped prove that bands don’t need to be in existence to continue recording. (And as we know, artists don’t have to be living to continue recording either.)

Meanwhile, back in 1968, the Rolling Stones released “Jumping Jack Flash,” which fans found to be a gas gas gas:

(more…)
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