JANESVILLE – Roger Axtell, age 80, of Janesville, died unexpectedly on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012, while wintering in Scottsdale, Ariz. Governor Thompson appointed Roger to the UW Board of Regents in 1999-2006. After that time, he was appointed to the Board of the UW Hospital – serving on that board until his death.
Police are investigating the sexual assault of a 21-year-old woman early Saturday, which took place in an alley between State Street and the 600 block of University Avenue. A male suspect sexually assaulted the victim after forcing her into a poorly lit alley or parking lot around 2:30 a.m., according to Madison Police Department Sgt. Ann Lehner.
People know me as: Andrea Kleesattel, cellist, and Laura Weiner, French hornist; graduate students at UW-Madison and members of the Madison chapter of Classical Revolution. Classical Revolution, which was founded in San Francisco and today has 30 chapters around the U.S., Canada and Europe, aims to bring live chamber music to our neighborhoods, making it an open, accessible and fun musical experience for the community.
Sixteen months ago, UW-Madison Law School student Jimmy Anderson lost his family in a car crash in California that left him paralyzed and changed his life forever. It was a setback from which some might never recover. But Anderson, 25, is not one of them. A year after the crash, Anderson was back in law school and expects to graduate in December.
With her long braids, oversized glasses and off-kilter wit, Lynda Barry ? the groundbreaking cartoonist, creative spark and yes, Wisconsin farm girl ? is not hard to spot on the UW-Madison campus. The university?s 2012 Spring Artist in Residence, Barry is packing lecture halls and filling up Madison workshops designed to help participants dig out creativity buried since childhood. When her spring semester course ?What It Is: Manually Shifting the Image,? was announced, 92 people applied for 24 slots.
To solve the problem of the unruly Mifflin Street Block Party, Mayor Paul Soglin is turning to an unlikely source: the rabble-rousers themselves. Soglin has asked students to work with city officials to tame the annual drunk-fest ? which turned especially ugly last year. A committee is meeting once a week to develop a plan for the end-of-the-school-year party on May 5. Their deadline is mid-March.
A. There are four basic shapes of ice crystals: the hexagonal plate, the needle, the column and the dendrite. The dendrites are hexagonal with elongated branches, or fingers, of ice; they most closely resemble what we think of as snowflakes. The temperature at which the crystal grows determines the particular shape. A snowflake is an individual ice crystal or an aggregate of ice crystals. Large snowflakes are aggregates of ice crystals. Aggregation is the process by which ice crystals collide and form a single larger ice particle.
University of Wisconsin sophomore wrestler Cole Tobin wrapped up the Big Ten Conference championships with an eighth-place finish and NCAA championship berth Sunday at Mackey Arena in West Lafayette, Ind.
As a 15-year-old volunteer at a sleep laboratory in a Brooklyn, N.Y., hospital, Richard Davidson watched a room of sleeping participants, heads pasted with electrodes, experience dreams or nightmares that registered as brain waves on a gigantic machine. His time in the sleep lab, Davidson writes in his new book, taught him ?virtually every dream contained significant emotion ? terror or joy, anger, sadness, jealousy, or hatred.?
Tim Smeeding gestured at the white board in his University of Wisconsin office and told me the indecipherable scrawling related to a model for measuring poverty. I?ll have to take his word. Like many professors on the Madison campus, Smeeding is a star. He?s been director of UW-Madison?s Institute for Research on Poverty and is a national poverty expert, a prolific author and someone regularly quoted in the national media.
High school girls wanting to be the belles of the ball will be lining up early Saturday for the annual free prom dress hysteria known as “All Dressed Up.” Hundreds of gently used and new dresses, along with accessories, will be up for grabs at Madison Area Technical College on Saturday, beginning at 7:30 a.m. at the Truax campus, 3550 Anderson Street. The event is put on by the Junior League of Madison and the Panhellenic Association at UW-Madison.
When Mike Lawler started asking people who lived through the 1970 bombing of UW-Madison?s Sterling Hall to talk about those days, he hoped to hear some compelling stories. But he wasn?t prepared for just how vivid the storytellers? memories would be. Those recollections have shaped ?Uncivil Disobedience,? a dramatic script to be performed as a staged reading Friday and Saturday in the Overture Center?s Rotunda Studio.
Biddy Martin, the former UW-Madison chancellor who was scheduled to give a talk Saturday to the Madison Civics Club, has cancelled her trip to town. Eve Galanter, who is chair of the Madison Civics Club?s 100th Anniversary Committee, said Friday morning that ?due to health reasons, Biddy Martin is unable to travel to Madison.? UW Police Chief Sue Riseling will be filling in for Martin. Galanter says Riseling will give a keynote presentation titled ?Between Protesters and Politicians? that examines her role in leading the police response during last year?s protests around the Capitol.
MINNEAPOLIS ? When Derek Lee trudged out of practice Wednesday afternoon and climbed aboard a waiting bus, the junior center for the University of Wisconsin men?s hockey team took with him a somewhat cruel reality. Lee is still feeling the effects of a concussion suffered Jan. 28, which means he won?t play for UW Friday and Saturday nights when it faces Minnesota in a Western Collegiate Hockey Association series at Mariucci Arena. It also means the Badgers will go an entire regular season without having their full complement of players due to injury, illness or recuperation.
In order for Gov. Scott Walker to balance the state budget, the University of Wisconsin has been handed $46.1 million in cuts. As of yet, no UW group is sure how to shoulder the setback, and right now, all anyone can do is plug leaks in the levy while the flood of consequences is ready to break loose.
University of Wisconsin political scientist Ken Mayer is one of the most serious and responsible analysts of the politics of the state. Widely respected as fair player, whose work is well regarded by members of both major political parties, Mayer is someone conservatives and liberals listen to for reasoned comment on the political processes of the state. So when Mayer talks about the challenges raised by Wisconsin?s new voter ID law, we should all take him seriously.
By all accounts, Russell Wilson had a strong showing at the NFL draft combine. The former University of Wisconsin quarterback impressed scouts on the field and off. He ran fast, threw accurately and showed NFL-caliber arm strength. He put his personality, dedication and football intelligence on display. When it was over, though, Wilson hadn?t really changed his NFL profile. Scouts see him today much the same way they did after his one spectacular season at UW. Their widely held view? He?s got everything you want in a starting NFL quarterback except height.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi said he wants to examine whether Madison police are taking people to the county?s detox facility who are not incapacitated by alcohol, though they may be intoxicated. But Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said that?s not the case and that doing so would violate not only state law and department policy, but people?s civil rights. “It would be a false arrest,” Wray said. Parisi said people from Madison take up a disproportionate amount of detox beds, which Wray attributes to the city being an urban center with a university and concentration of nightlife Downtown.
The other day at the Wisconsin Newspaper Association?s annual convention in Madison, I represented the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism on a panel titled, “Nonprofit News: What You Need to Know About ?Free? Media.”….Moderator Stephen Ward, a UW-Madison journalism professor who specializes in media ethics, focused in on who funds our organizations and how that affects what we do ? worthy questions that merit a thoughtful response.
David Nguyen pumped his legs up and down on a stationary bike outside of UW-Madison?s Natatorium, keeping up both a steady cadence and banter with the other students in the triathlon training class. The 23-year-old said he feels lucky to be taking the class. The course is slated to be eliminated after this spring. “It seems like there are other classes that could be cut before this one,” Nguyen said.
Can Rick Santorum?s slam of higher education be easily dismissed? Or does it warrant serious debate? Blogging in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Peter Wood writes: ?None (or at least very few) appear to see Santorum?s various criticisms of the university as adding up to a view that needs to be reckoned with as intellectually serious.? But, adds Wood, ?that?s a mistake.? Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars, which Wikipedia refers to as a nonprofit organization that ?opposes multiculturalism and affirmative action, and seeks to counter what it considers a ?liberal bias? in academia.?
Anthony Shadid had dozens of bylines in the Wisconsin State Journal during his time with the Associated Press in Milwaukee in the early 1990s. But in April 2002, Shadid?s name appeared in the State Journal not as a byline, but as the subject of a story. It was an indication of the life he chose and the distance his talent took him.
A UW-Whitewater student was attacked by a man wielding a baseball bat outside a near west side house where a party was going on early Saturday morning, Madison police reported. The 20-year-old male student suffered a gash to his hand when the attacker used the bat to smash a glass beer mug the victim was holding, according to a police news release. The attack was reported at 3:26 a.m. Saturday in the 1100 block of Mound Street.
A UW-Whitewater student was attacked by a man wielding a baseball bat outside a near west side house where a party was going on early Saturday morning, Madison police reported. The 20-year-old male student suffered a gash to his hand when the attacker used the bat to smash a glass beer mug the victim was holding, according to a police news release. The attack was reported at 3:26 a.m. Saturday in the 1100 block of Mound Street.
A UW-Madison student ended up carrying his teeth early Saturday morning after he was hit in the mouth by a trash talking stranger, Madison police reported. The assault was reported at 2:49 a.m. Saturday in the 600 block of University Avenue, according to a police news release. The 19-year-old victim had the two knocked-out teeth put back into his mouth by a doctor, and he also got a few stitches in his lip.
….Since the Republicans have achieved absolute power in our state, they have sought to destroy the labor movement and any political opposition to their corporate agenda. They have crippled public employee unions and have now attacked the School for Workers, the oldest university-based labor education program in the country. It was also one of the first outreach programs created by the Wisconsin Idea. The Wisconsin Idea was developed during the governorship of Robert M. La Follette. It is based on the belief that the people rather than special interests should control government institutions. In 1904 UW President Charles Van Hise declared: ?I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every home in the state.? He decreed that the boundaries of the university should be the boundaries of the state. The Wisconsin Idea gave birth to such innovations as workers? compensation, unemployment insurance and collective bargaining laws, as well as the formation of cooperatives, vocational education and apprenticeship programs for worker training.
It seems amazing that it doesn?t happen more often. We all see them, especially around campus: young people crossing the street wearing headphones, sometimes oblivious to what?s going on around them. I?ve hit the brakes more than once for bicyclists and pedestrians who have floated in front of my moving car on University Avenue, never glancing in my direction. They can?t hear you honk. All you can do is shake your head and hope that person doesn?t end up dead.
Taylor Wurtz has expanded her game through her junior year with University of Wisconsin women?s basketball team. The full range of her game was on display Sunday when she went over, around and through the Illinois defense to score 21 points and grab 12 rebounds to help lead the Badgers to a 72-60 victory.
In a move that was expected, tight end prospect Scott Orndoff has decommitted from the University of Wisconsin football program, according to a report by Wisconsin247Sports.com. Orndoff, who was the first Class of 2013 player to pledge to the Badgers, had been publicly hedging on his oral commitment following an offseason shake-up in which six assistant coaches departed UW.
To appreciate the life Carolyne Prevost has built with the University of Wisconsin women?s hockey team, one has to look long and hard at its sturdy foundation. Prevost is a former gymnast, soccer standout and decorated martial artist whose presence on the top-ranked team in the country is generally overlooked.
Building a Grandview Commons grocery store with 58,000 square feet does not mean it has to be served by a “big, driver-friendly” parking lot, as suggested in columnist Chris Rickert?s Feb. 23 piece.
Bobbie Kelsey has a bone to pick with her fellow Big Ten Conference women?s basketball coaches. The first-year University of Wisconsin coach said she was somewhere between befuddled and irritated when she saw that her star guard Taylor Wurtz had only received honorable mention from the coaches when the All-Big Ten honors were announced Monday night.
Recently restored murals by John Steuart Curry will be the subject of a UW-Madison talk at 7 p.m. Wednesday, as part of the regular Wednesday Night @ the Lab series. The public is invited to come to Room 1125 of the Biochemistry Building, 420 Henry Mall, to see the murals, hear about Curry?s work and learn about the science depicted in the murals.
UW-Madison officials will unveil plans for a campus power plant expansion at a public meeting on Thursday. The $67.5 million addition will be made to the northwest corner of the West Campus Cogeneration Plant, 515 Walnut St.
Former UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin will be back in town this weekend for a speech at Monona Terrace, sponsored by the Madison Civics Club. Martin, now president of Amherst College, is scheduled to speak about the challenges of innovation in academia.
An arts festival designed to highlight creative works that came out of the 2011 ?Wisconsin Uprising? is on again. Last week, the Cap Times reported that an ?Art in Protest? event was called off after the office of Rep. Steve Nass, R-Town of La Grange, got wind of it. That festival was being sponsored by UW-Extension?s School for Workers and originally was scheduled for March 29-31 at the Pyle Center on the UW-Madison
Regarding Sunday?s story titled ?Legislation would allow doctors to say ?sorry,?? readers may be interested in the view of one who teaches communication to doctors. The author examines the trial lawyers? view that protecting a doctor?s admission of error will prevent a patient from receiving compensation. That would be a bad thing ? there should be no tolerance for malpractice. But common sense suggests such rare cases would be far outweighed by the common good resulting from doctors feeling safe to speak openly after bad news happens.
A stack of books stood there a year ago. Now there is a beehive of hexagon-shaped tables, laptops, and flat-screen TVs. Welcome to the modern university library. UW-Madison will unveil new learning centers Tuesday at two campus libraries: College Library (UW-Madison?s undergraduate library) and Wendt Commons Library (the engineering library). ?We aim to provide a personalized learning experience, even while teaching large numbers of students,? said John Booske, a UW-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering, in a statement.
When theater director Andy Wiginton first saw the pilot of ?Smash,? he immediately recognized the look on the faces of the men and women waiting on folding chairs at an audition. ?I remember going on those cattle calls,? said Wiginton, a former actor who lives in New York while he finishes his PhD dissertation for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?That was familiar, the nerves, the faces. I don?t think those actors had to play very much. All of that felt very real to me.?
A: Sand from Wisconsin and other parts of the country is now in high demand as it is essential to the process of hydraulic fracturing or ?fracking,? a technique that splits rock so it is easier to access certain natural gas deposits.
INDIANAPOLIS ? University of Wisconsin receiver Nick Toon laughed when asked about his dad, Al. The former Badgers and New York Jets star receiver currently sits on the Green Bay Packers board of directors and Nick was asked if his dad is politicking being the scenes. ?Not that I know of,? Toon said with a smile. ?It?s obviously a unique situation to have a dad who played in the NFL and now is on the board of directors for the Packers. It?s cool, but we?ll see what happens come April.?
Former University of Wisconsin quarterback Brooks Bollinger is joining ex-UW offensive coordinator Paul Chryst?s staff at Pitt, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported Sunday. Bollinger will coach quarterbacks. He is the sixth assistant with UW ties to be hired by Chryst, who was named Panthers coach in mid-December.
As many as 60,000 people cheered on young competitors during the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association?s high school state wrestling tournament this week, but some parents said they were concerned about possible scheduling changes next year. The tournament, which has been on a Thursday through Saturday for years, may move to weekdays because of scheduling conflicts at the Kohl Center. University of Wisconsin-Madison officials have told WIAA leaders to plan on getting bumped next year, tournament director Wade Labecki said.
?Clowns are crazy,? Madison?s Dave Brown said during Sunday night?s episode of CBS? ?The Amazing Race,? showing the keen wisdom that has made he and his wife Rachel the clear front-runners this season. The couple, a Wisconsin National Guard combat pilot and an Epic Systems employee, won last night?s competition, meaning they?ve gone two-for-two so far this season. That earned them a free vacation in Grenada and, as Rachel put it, ?a big target on their back? from the other eight teams still in the race.
Dave Brown is an assistant professor of military science at UW-Madison and Rachel is an alumna of the university.
LODI – Robert Kenneth Ham, age 74, of Lodi passed away quietly, surrounded by family, on Friday, Feb. 24, 2012, at 5:30 p.m. at University of Wisconsin Hospital due to complications from cancer. In 1967, he became a professor in environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At the university, Bob helped pioneer several sanitary landfill practices which are still used today, such as the extracting and burning of landfill gas as a beneficial re-use. One of his projects even lead to kitchen garbage disposals becoming legal in New York City, Korea and Norway. He retired in 1998.
Madison stem cell company, Stemina Biomarker Discovery, is getting a $150,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health aimed at expanding the use of its drug testing technology for harmful side effects. Co-founded by UW-Madison stem cell researcher Gabriela Cezar, Stemina has been using its technology with heart cells provided by Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), the Madison company founded by UW stem cell pioneer James Thomson, to see if drug compounds could cause cardiomyopathy, a condition that weakens the heart and can lead to heart failure.
How much say should students have in how their mandatory fees are used? It?s a topic UW-Madison sophomore Sarah Neibart is attempting to bring some attention to by contacting reporters and writing letters to the editor.
Here are some basics: A full-time student attending UW-Madison pays about $540 in mandatory segregated fees each semester (a figure that?s on top of tuition, which is $4,835 per semester for an in-state undergrad). Over the course of an entire academic year, this means students across campus contribute a combined $42 million in segregated fees.
MADISON – Jack Richard DeWitt, sometimes called ?Dick,? passed away on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012. He was born Dec. 15, 1918, in Muskego, Okla. The family relocated to Wisconsin at age 13 or 14. He graduated from Lancaster High School and from the UW-Madison with a B.A. in Economics and an L.L.B. (law). He practiced law and then became a faculty member of the UW School of Law. He was an author of the original ?Wisconsin Practice Methods? book and was instrumental in establishing the Legal Practice course. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the UW Law Alumni Association.
A. We have continued to enjoy temperatures well above normal through most of February 2012, making this year?s Dec. 1?Feb. 20 the fifth-warmest on record with an average temperature of 28.3F in Madison. Barring an exceptionally warm last week of the month (which does not appear likely), that is where we will end up ? the fifth-warmest winter (defined as December, January, February) of all time in Madison.
In the wood-floored studio flooded with natural light, the only sound is the wave-like cadence of deliberate breathing. Here a dozen students bend and twist into the ancient poses that Western fitness gurus have embraced and marketed with religious fervor. The silence is broken as the instructor calls out names such as downward-facing dog, side angle, shoulder stand. This is yoga, the epitome of a safe fitness experience. Not so, says William J. Broad, the author of the new book ?The Science of Yoga,? who reports on some startling health repercussions that threaten to give yoga a bad name.
Madison has had valuable sister city relationships with cities such as Camaguey, Cuba; Freiburg, Germany; and Arcatao, El Salvador ? some stretching back almost 30 years. Now, a 29-year-old Madison native is forging a sister community center for the Meadowood Neighborhood Center with a planned neighborhood center in Camarones, Ecuador, about three hours northwest of Quito, the country?s capital.
Some might celebrate with a shindy and others might hold a whindig or a wingding, but Joan Houston Hall just breathed a sigh of relief. After five decades, UW-Madison?s ambitious project to document the idiosyncrasies of American English reached both the zenith and ?z? this month, said Hall, the editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE). Volume Sl to Z is now for sale from Harvard University Press. From aa (rough lava in Hawaii) to zydeco (dance music in Louisiana Creole culture), the dictionary spans five volumes and 60,000 words.
The State Journal editorial board is right to express outrage over our continuing DUI epidemic. But when our lawmakers do react, let?s make sure their actions are effective. Clearly Wisconsin needs stronger DUI penalties, but that alone won?t help. Ample research has shown that increasing penalties doesn?t change behavior unless people think they might get caught. Toward that end, we need sobriety checkpoints.
One of these years the Wisconsin Film Festival should invite Joe McBride back to town to tell stories of the glory days of film on the UW-Madison campus, as well as what happened to him later when he went Hollywood. In fact, why not this year?….Originally from Wauwatosa, in September 1966 McBride was taking a beginning film class taught by charismatic UW-Madison professor Richard Byrne. ?Kane? was screened one day in class, and the young McBride was blown away.
Former University of Wisconsin quarterback Russell Wilson is among 10 quarterbacks who have been picked to meet with Monday Night Football analyst Jon Gruden for his ESPN show. It?s the third year Gruden, a former NFL head coach and Green Bay Packers assistant, has worked with quarterbacks prior to the NFL draft for “Gruden?s QB Camp.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison was the only Big Ten Conference institution to oppose a new policy that allows major-college sports programs to offer multi-year scholarships to athletes, according to an NCAA document obtained by the Chronicle of Higher Education.The provision to allow athletic departments to offer multi-year scholarships was approved by the NCAA Division I Board of Directors in October. The change, which was strongly backed by NCAA President Mark Emmert, is intended to give student-athletes more security. Previously, these scholarships could only be awarded on a year-by-year basis.
How is it that some people in America scrape by on rice and beans every night, while others dine on lobster bisque and drink fine wine? This inequality in American society will be on the table March 1 during the Hunger Meal, sponsored by UW-Madison?s La Follette School of Public Affairs, UW announced in a news release. The meals will be served at 6 p.m. at the historic Red Gym, 716 Langdon St.
When he reached his post that night, just inside the entrance to sections 116-117 at the Kohl Center, John Deering had the best view in the house. Not of the game ? Wisconsin had faced off against Denver a few minutes earlier ? but of the students seated in the rows below him, directly behind one of the goals. This was Saturday, Feb. 18, a little after 7 p.m.
Former UW Athletic Director Pat Richter said he?s certain John Chadima got a verbal reprimand for a 1998 incident in which he allowed a starting Badgers quarterback to drive his truck drunk, but he doesn?t recall whether there was ever a scolding in writing. Documents released to the State Journal Wednesday showed Chadima?s personnel file did not include a letter of reprimand, despite comments from Richter in 1998 that he would receive one.
Dakota Whyte has been doing her homework this winter. When she hasn?t been playing basketball ? first for her Notre Dame Catholic High School team and now for her Advantage Basketball rep team — Whyte has spent as much time as she can studying up on her future team, the University of Wisconsin women?s basketball team.
