The number one single today in 1961:
The number one British single today in 1964 was sung by a 21-year-old former hairdresser and cloak room attendant:
That day, the Rolling Stones made their second appearance on BBC-TV’s “Top of the Pops”:
State Senate President Mike Ellis came out again on Sunday in opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s plan to expand school choice to districts with two or more failing schools. Ellis claimed on Up Front with Mike Gousha that he supported the original school choice program in Milwaukee when it only served people below the poverty line in a district that was failing. However, he now opposes the expansion of school choice, claiming it “goes beyond the poverty and beyond the failing school concept.”
This is, of course, incorrect, as it allows students to apply for choice programs in their districts if the district has two or more failing schools.
Using the Neenah School District as an example, Ellis said, “Neenah has thirteen school buildings. If two or more of those school buildings have a D or an F on their report card, under the Walker plan the entire school district is considered a failing school district.”
Of course Ellis’ objection is just absurd. Buildings don’t fail. School districts fail when they fail to teach children. If there are children that aren’t learning in the district, of course the school district is failing them regardless of the building. …
Ellis seems to believe that every student that are under the maximum household income level would want to participate in a private school choice program. If he truly believes that, it’s a poor commentary on the school district. Contrary to the example that Ellis gives, if a student is doing well in a school, regardless of the grade given to the school, it would be unlikely for the parents to move that child.
On the other hand, if a child is not doing well in a school that has been given an “A” rating by the state Department of Public Instruction, then it’s cold comfort to the parents to know that some students are succeeding when their child is not. Far better to match the student to the appropriate school than it is to worry about what the cost might be to the district.
Even if Ellis was correct that the proposed expansion of school choice might somehow block an impoverished child in a failing school from participating because of the lottery, that’s an argument against having the enrollment caps, not scrapping the choice program itself.
After all, the point of state aid to local school districts is not to build buildings, hire administrators, and to make superintendent jobs easier. The whole point of state aid is to provide the means for educating each of Wisconsin’s children. …
The latest MacIver Student Census shows us that 26% of children statewide exercise some form of choice and an incredible 81% of children in Milwaukee use choice in education. We have statewide open enrollment and public charter schools that allow parents an opportunity to find the best educational fit for their child. We even have online public charter schools that attract students from across the state looking for an educational alternative. One of those online charter public schools is in Ellis’ senate district in Appleton.
The reality is that school choice is a bargain for the state’s taxpayers. Ellis is correct that the voucher is only $6,442 currently. However, Wisconsin spent $11,364 per pupil in 2009-2010 according to census data. The Green Bay school district in Ellis’ district spends $11,194 per student. Meanwhile studies have shown that graduation rates are actually higher in choice schools. …
While Ellis complains that there is a lack of local input by local school districts about allowing school choice, Ellis and other state legislators are the ones responsible for the stewardship of state tax dollars that are allocated for education. Ellis’ plan to hold referendums in individual school districts to see if they wish to participate in the choice programs would be an abdication of that responsibility and would only invite the mass chaos of Madison last year to every community under consideration.
Wisconsin should watch the Republicans in the state Senate, who now have an opportunity to change from an antiquated system of moving children through a failing mass production model of education to one that allows for meeting the child’s individual educational needs.
We need to ask our legislators why, under the current system, funding a school building is more important than funding an individual child, no matter where he or she goes to find the best education to meet their needs.
Today in 1955, Billboard magazine reported that sales of 45-rpm singles …
… had exceeded sales of 78-rpm singles for the first time.
The number one single today in 1966:
CNS News reports that gun manufacturers are putting their money where their mouths are:
A growing number of firearm and firearm-related companies have stated they will no longer sell items to states, counties, cities and municipalities that restrict their citizens’ rights to own them.
According to The Police Loophole, 34 companies have joined in publicly stating that governments who seek to restrict 2nd Amendment rights will themselves be restricted from purchasing the items they seek to limit or ban. …
Bravo Company USA states:
“The people at Bravo Company USA and BCM support responsible private individuals having access to the same tools of civilian Law Enforcement to affect the same ends … As such Bravo Company’s policy is that law enforcement officials and departments will be restricted to the same type of products available to responsible private individuals of that same city or state.”
This is an interesting converse of a trend that started in the 1970s and 1980s, when activists hectored companies to abandon their operations in South Africa because of its apartheid policies. The most prominent of those companies may have been General Motors, which after passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act sold off its South African subsidiary in 1987, only to repurchase 49 percent of it a decade later and the rest in 2004.
The concept is pretty simple: Businesses should be able to choose, or not choose, their own customers. This is not a decision made lightly in the case of refusing to sell to a unit of government. It is, however, telling that businesses have more respect for the rights of American citizens than government does.
Quality Arms has this on its website:
We at Quality Arms build semi auto sporting rifles (so called assault rifles) used by members of the public and law enforcement agencies of the free world and because of recent events find ourselves under attack from liberal minded individuals who feel we are the problem of today’s society.
These elected officials have their own agenda to circumnavigate the truth and destroy the constitution of the United States of America. Any rifle, pistol, knife, baseball bat is an inanimate object and therefore is useless as a weapon until a person whether mentally unstable or of a criminal mind decides to use that object in a criminal way.
These liberal politicians are jumping on the band wagon to bolster their own ego’s and have little or any respect for anybody or any laws passed by the founding fathers of this once great nation and wish to destroy the very existence as to how and why those laws came about.
They must not be allowed to destroy the 2nd amendment because if they succeed what other laws will they wish to change in the name of the people.
We at Quality Arms are against any Politician, Law enforcement official, and any other organization who feel it is their right and purpose to destroy the freedoms and liberties of the citizens of this Country.
As such we consider such acts as TREASONABLE.
The U.S. Constitution has the Second Amendment. Wisconsin’s Constitution has Article I, section 25: “The people have the right to keep and bear arms for security, defense, hunting, recreation or any other lawful purpose.”
Which seems to lead to an opportunity for this state. A number of firearms manufacturers are based in states such as New York and Connecticut, which have more stringent gun laws than the spirit of the Second Amendment suggests. (As we’ve seen from mass shootings, the only people who follow firearms laws are those who follow the law generally.) State government is also trying to jump-start the state’s moribund economy (in a nation whose economy is worse than Wisconsin’s).
Unlike in some states, the La Crosse Tribune reports:
Amid continuing debate over cutting gun violence, Republicans in control of the Wisconsin Legislature say it’s unlikely the state will pass any gun-control legislation this session.
While some other states and Congress mull bans on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, or tighter background checks on buyers, Wisconsin Republicans say they will focus instead on potential gaps in the state’s mental health system.
“I’d be really surprised if anything passes here in Wisconsin that would restrict gun access,” said state Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend. “We haven’t talked about it because we’re not going to do it.”
Grothman, a gun owner and member of the National Rifle Association, said he is against most, if not all, of the measures President Barack Obama’s administration is pushing since a gunman killed 20 first-grade students and six educators in December at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. …
“They looked at the isolated incident in Connecticut, which a horrible thing, and all of a sudden say we have to change our constitution,” Grothman said. “We have more guns but less problems in Wisconsin.”
Federal data show Wisconsin had 80 firearm murders in 2011, down from 97 the year before. Nationally, firearm murders have dropped in recent years; the number was in 8,583 in 2011, down from 10,129 in 2007. Calculating the level of gun ownership in Wisconsin is more difficult since the state doesn’t require firearm registration. …
Assembly Majority Leader Scott Suder, a Republican from Abbotsford, said he’ll listen to ideas on cutting gun violence but “they can’t go too far.”
“We’re not going to limit how many ammunition clips people can have,” Suder said. “That is a red herring and cannot solve any gun crime.”
Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. should send out Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who apparently has the role of the state’s number one business recruiter, to firearms manufacturers in states with unduly restrictive (not to mention ineffective, as Newtown, Conn., demonstrates) gun laws to move their companies to Wisconsin. This state is well known for its hard-working skilled workforce, which would fit in well with the precision manufacturing requirements of firearms. The gunmakers can work in a state with a lot of firearms enthusiasts, a lot of hunters, and, with a few exceptions (the Madison–Milwaukee axis), people who would welcome them here. And thanks to the Obama administration, firearms manufacturers are having banner years.
Companies this might apply to include Charter Arms, based in Sheldon, Conn.; Smith & Wesson, based in Springfield, Mass.; Ruger, with corporate headquarters in Southport, Conn.; Colt, of West Hartford, Conn.; ArmaLite, of Geneseo, Ill.; Rock River Arms of Colona, Ill.; and others.
Kleefisch need simply argue that businesses should go where they’re wanted. Based on the actions of their home states’ governors and legislatures, they don’t appear to be welcome where they are now.
The number one country and western single today in 1956 was the singer’s number one number one:
The number one British album today in 1984 was the Thompson Twins’ “Into the Gap”:
The number one single today in 1984 was adapted by WGN-TV for its Chicago Cubs games — a good choice given that the Cubs that season decided to play like an actual baseball team:
The number one single today in 1973:
Today in 1976, the Eagles’ “Their Greatest Hits” became the first platinum album, exceeding 1 million sales:
Today in 2000, Carlos Santana won eight Grammy Awards for “Supernatural”:
The number one song today in 1991:
Today in 1998, the members of Oasis were banned for life from Cathay Pacific Airways for their “abusive and disgusting behavior.”
Apparently Cathay Pacific knew it was doing, because one year to the day later, Oasis guitarist Paul Arthurs was arrested outside a Tommy Hilfiger store in London for drunk and disorderly conduct.
The high school boys basketball playoffs start this week. (Weather permitting in some places.) That means the NCAA college basketball tournaments are imminent.
Grantland has a story about college basketball’s tempo, or increasingly, lack thereof (which I wrote about a year ago):
It has become fashionable, of course, to assert that Division I college basketball is “in trouble,” that it has become so slow and staid and overcontrolled it might ultimately wither into irrelevance. Some of this is hyperbole, since there’s an obvious upside to the parity that low scoring engenders, and since the NCAA tournament is still a financial windfall, and since a team like Wisconsin, under Bo Ryan, can drag games into the 30s and still win games and fill seats. But it is impossible not to notice that something is happening, that the balance has been thrown off, and it is silly not to acknowledge that the overarching trend is impacting how people view college basketball. “I’m not a guy who’s too concerned about whether the game is popular or not,” says Ken Pomeroy, who pioneered the notion of advanced college basketball statistics at his website, “but it certainly hurts the perception of it.”
Here is what the numbers confirm: Overall scoring, at slightly less than 68 points per game, is at its lowest level in three decades, and possessions are growing longer and longer. The game, as a whole, is slower and less free-flowing than it used to be. There are distinct lulls, and transition baskets are more and more difficult to come by. Ask why this is happening, and it becomes a Rorschach test: You will hear a dozen hypotheses from a dozen different sources, ranging from the length of the shot clock to the increased physicality on the perimeter to poor shot selection to the lack of competent post players to the profusion of timeouts to the NBA’s one-and-done rule to the spike in coaches’ salaries, all of which are entirely speculative, and any of which might be at least somewhat viable.
The last of Michael Weinreb’s hypotheses leads to another that may or may not be tied to coach salaries, because it applies to high school coaches too, most of whom are paid in no more than four figures. Weinreb interviewed former Oklahoma coach Billy Tubbs, whose Sooner teams were among the nation’s scoring leaders:
Toward the end of his Oklahoma tenure, Tubbs says, he could feel the culture changing, veering toward the conservatism he both embraces outside of the game and despises within it. (In 1991, a few years before Tubbs left Oklahoma for TCU, overall scoring peaked at 77 points per game, and it’s been trailing downward ever since.) Tubbs brought up the shadow of “political correctness” with me several times, which seems like a bit of an oblique connection, but I think what he was trying to say is that the coaches who should be willing to gamble — coaches, like Tubbs, who are blessed with superior talent — simply don’t think it’s worth the risk anymore. And so they take command of everything that’s happening on the floor. They slow the game down to call offensive sets, and they play it safe on defense rather than risk giving up easy layups in transition. And the very notion of running wild like Tubbs’s teams did, or of throwing caution to the wind like Paul Westhead’s Loyola Marymount teams did, or of raising hell like Nolan Richardson’s Arkansas teams did, becomes a concept too fraught with potential danger to even consider implementing. The favorites now play at the underdog’s pace. And this, one coach told me, is how a team like Kansas loses to an obvious inferior like TCU.
“To take command of everything that’s happening on the floor” happens to blunt one of the supposed benefits of athletics. Players of team sports learn to work as a team, to realize the greater good is more important than the individual, and how to deal with success and failure. They also should learn decision-making on the fly, because in life sometimes you have to make important decisions quickly. Student–athletes do not learn when their coach does all the thinking and makes all the decisions. Employers do not want automatons working for them.
Of course, any story about slow-tempo basketball has obligatory shots at Wisconsin. Tubbs was not known for caring about others’ opinions when he coached, and that apparently hasn’t changed:
“The thing you’ve got to look at is if the stands are empty in the arena. I’m seeing a lot of empty seats. You can play really conservative if you fill the gym. At Wisconsin, they don’t know any better, do they?”
Tubbs’ rude comment about Wisconsin aside, he’s right about the financial issues, which, as I’ve argued before, apply to football as well. Division I college coaches of revenue sports (primarily football and men’s basketball, plus men’s hockey at Wisconsin) are judged not merely on wins and losses, but on whether they fill their stadiums. The revenue sports at D-I schools fund all the other sports. When Bret Bielema left Wisconsin for Arkansas, I argued then (and believe now) that it was a stupid move because he was in no danger of losing his UW job because the Badgers filled Camp Randall Stadium, whether or not fans were always pleased with what they were seeing, or paying.
Whether UW fans like games in the 40s or not, Bo Ryan is similarly in no danger of losing his Wisconsin job. The aforementioned Pomeroy ranks Wisconsin fifth best in Division I and second best in the Big Ten, despite its 19–8 record. Ryan’s accomplishments at UW — Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles, something UW never did under Dick Bennett, and an Elite Eight team, the only area in which Bennett did better — make Ryan arguably the best coach UW has ever had. (It is interesting to note, though, that the UW Athletic Department was pushing season tickets into the regular season.)
Ryan is an example of the value of old sportswriters. Sports commentators working today assume that Wisconsin has always played a glacially slow style of basketball, dating back before Ryan to Bennett. Few probably realize that when Ryan was the coach at UW–Platteville, his teams tried to run and press their opponents out of the gym; in fact, UWP once led Division III in scoring under Ryan. Today’s sportswriters are too dense to realize that maybe Ryan’s offensive style is based on Ryan’s conclusions based on available talent within the state of Wisconsin.
Adding more hate, if you want to call it that, is Awful Announcing:
Tuesday night CBS Sports Network Debbie Antonelli went the extra mile to try and help viewers at home watching Rutgers-Syracuse. The score at the half was 19-15 Rutgers as both teams combined to shoot 22.2% from the field. Antonelli left the booth and went to the scorers table to try and select a new game ball and change the offensive luck of both teams. …
If only we could get whoever’s calling the next Wisconsin game to try this …
I’ve watched, covered and announced games of every conceivable tempo. I admit to preferring a faster pace, having covered the fastest-paced team of all, Grinnell College. It’s not that every game needs to be played at Grinnell’s insane pace, though. There are high-quality deliberate-paced games. There are also deliberate-paced games that are boring to watch, and there seem to be an increasing number of those kinds of games.
We know how the most successful sport, pro football, would handle this. The National Football League will tinker with its rules whenever the league feels it’s necessary to stoke fan interest, usually toward more offense. Today’s NFL game ties back to 1978, when the league liberalized what offensive linemen could do and restricted what defensive backs could do. The NFL realizes that sports is entertainment, and non-entertained fans don’t buy tickets and don’t spend money at the stadium.
College sports is entertainment too, whether or not the NCAA wants to admit that. Sportswriter complaints shouldn’t be the impetus for NCAA rule changes. Dropping TV ratings and diminishing attendance should be the impetus for NCAA rule changes. Fewer eyeballs watching games, in person or on TV, will ultimately mean less financial windfall for the NCAA.
Perhaps the most effective way (as the excellent sports editor of The Platteville Journal pointed out) to improve scoring has nothing to do with, as has been suggested elsewhere, the distance of the three-point line or the length of the shot clock. (Scoring now is below where it was in the days before the three-point shot and the shot clock, which demonstrates that coaches and players adjust to rules changes.) It doesn’t have to do with the lane, either, even though I’ve previously proposed the international lane, which trapezoid shape might make camping in the lane more difficult for offensive players.
It has to do with the officials’ calling the game as it is meant to be played, as opposed to how it’s played now.
What does watching old NCAA basketball demonstrate? It demonstrates how the game is supposed to be officiated. Playing inside shouldn’t reach contact levels consistent with charges for battery. Touching the player with the ball should be a foul. Contact should mean fouls. Not only would calling fouls mean more points directly (assuming players started practicing free throws again), it would mean changes in defensive approaches away from today’s no-autopsy no-foul strategy.
Coaches are not dumb. If officials called the correct fouls, coaches who played excessively physical styles would lose games. (This means you, Tom Izzo!) They would either adjust or get fired (because their teams lost and fans stopped showing up) and would have to find jobs as football defensive assistant coaches.
This blog is not about past Corvette design proposals that did not come to fruition.
This is about how Chevrolet could have done a better job with the C7 Corvette, premiering later this year.
The outstanding Art and Colour Cars blog, which contributed to my popular (as in more than 2,800 views) Cadillac piece, improved the rear view of the C7.
First …
The Split-Window is Back! For my take on the new C7 Corvette Stingray I went backwards in time a bit. To begin with I restored its traditional four round taillights. I gave it a much more traditional greenhouse rather than the new car’s first time and rather forced rear quarter windows. I also added a thin central paint-colored spine to the hatchglass, following the existing indented roof panel. I also edited the side vents so they’d fit better with the last several generations. Detail changes include moving the new Stingray logo to the B pillar and flattened out the new “winged” crossed flags
It’s not clear to me why rear quarter windows are a good idea on a two-seat car. I understand why the ’63 split-window C2 is so popular, because it was found only on the ’63 Vettes. Of course, there’s a reason only the ’63 Vettes had a split rear window — drivers couldn’t see out the back. Now, though, with the ability to use opaque-on-the-outside tinted-from-the-inside window coverings, this might make sense.
For my second take on the C7, I decided to keep the idea of a rear quarter window, but I reshaped it into a much simpler graphic. By bringing this new side window to a point, I referenced the Corvette supercar prototype from the 1970s, the mid-engined 4-Rotor.At the back I created a set of aluminum-ringed quad circular taillight and replaced the new “V” crossed flags emblem with a “proper” set of flags from ’72 ‘Vette. I cut down on the visual height of the bodysides by using another ’70s styling trick: Argent colored rocker panels. The cool new Stingray logo has been moved to the B pillar when it’s noticeable every time you open the door.
The aforementioned rear quarter window is a clever tribute for the AstroVette. Either of these is an improvement from what Chevy is introducing, although I do have to give Chevy credit for one C7 feature:
What, you ask? A green Corvette? (To be precise, Lime Rock Green.) Aren’t all Corvettes red (as the book on the creation of the C5 claimed)?
No, there are green Corvettes:
Those are all Corvettes in the standard-for-that-year green color. Most green Corvettes were dark green (for instance, “Glen Green” in 1965, “Fathom Green” in 1969, “Donnybrooke Green” one year later in the first Corvette I recall seeing down the street). Variations of lime started intruding in the early ’70s, but went the way of polyester disco outfits.
Some people decided to choose green after buying their cars, and some, unable to choose one shade of green, decided upon “all of the above”:
The number one single today in 1960:
Its remake 16 years later — which I had never heard of before writing this blog — finished 12 places below the original:
The number one British single today in 1962:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 