Construction work on the University of Wisconsin campus is expected to cause delays tonight (Tuesday) for men’s basketball fans who plan to use the parking ramps nearest to the Kohl Center for a 6:30 p.m. game against Florida State.
Don’t know much about history? Don’t know much geography? There are some painless remedies for that this holiday season.
This week’s main event is the launch of “Madison: The Illustrated Sesquicentennial History, Volume 1, 1856-1931” by city planner-journalist-labor mediator-politician Stuart Levitan.
The University of Wisconsin Press launch party, free and open to all, will be Wednesday from 5 to 8 p.m. in the lobby of the Orpheum Theatre on State Street.
Barry Alvarez isn’t prowling the sideline any longer for the University of Wisconsin football team but his name still has value.
This year alone, Alvarez, who is UW’s athletic director, stands to make more than $175,000 in outside income, ranging from speeches to major corporations, autograph signings, and radio and television appearances. That comes on top of his $500,000 annual salary as athletic director, as well as the $100,000 he receives each year through the Mendota Gridiron Club and the National W Club.
With interest nationally in the Bowl Championship Series, Alvarez has positioned himself as a national expert on the topic. Fox Sports is paying Alvarez $55,000 to be its go-to guy for commentary on the upcoming BCS bowl games. But there is more, according to records on file with the UW Athletic Department.
In the early 1920s, university student life was dominated by a group of young men who proudly espoused patriotism, Protestantism, and white racial superiority — the interfraternity Ku Klux Klan honorary society.
Excerpted from “Madison: An Illustrated Sesquicentennial History, Vol. 1, 1856-1931,” written by Stuart D. Levitan (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).
Dear Editor: The Charter Street Power Plant is literally a black smudge on the University of Wisconsin. Our progressive reputation, innovative ideals and the health of students and residents are compromised by this embarrassing piece of dirty and archaic technology that sits in the middle of campus.
The Badger men’s basketball team defeats Auburn 77-63 to give coach Bo Ryan victory No. 500.
Although Larry Coker was fired Friday morning after six seasons as head football coach at Miami and Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez’s name has again been linked to the school because of his relationship with Miami’s school president, Donna Shalala, sources indicate Alvarez is staying at UW.
Donna Shalala gets it. As chancellor at Wisconsin or now as president at Miami, she understands the tremendous ancillary value of a successful sports program at a major university.
University of Wisconsin coach Pete Waite already has a good scouting report on the women’s volleyball teams coming to UW this week for the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament.
The host and 10th-seeded Badgers (24-6) meet Notre Dame (18-13) in the second match Friday night at the UW Field House, about 7 p.m. UW ousted then-No. 9 Notre Dame, 3-2, in the 2005 NCAA regional semifinals.
Television viewers in crucial Midwest states got more political information in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections from campaign advertisements than from news coverage, according to a new study.
In the seven markets studied, newscasts aired almost 4 1/2 minutes of paid political ads during a 30-minute broadcast, while only offering 1 minute 43 seconds of election news coverage.
The study was done by the Midwest News Index, a project of the University of Wisconsin’s NewsLab. [Second item].
Quoted: David Canon, political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Since I became dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health on July 1, no issue has received more of my attention than the relationship between the school and the Milwaukee community and our role in addressing the health care needs of its underserved populations. A column by Robert Golden.
Oh, great, yet another “sport” that involves alcohol. This one, however, involves consumption by players. Beer Pong, according to an article Wednesday by Journal Sentinel reporter Megan Twohey, is sweeping college campuses, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It has been a long time in the making, but it’s now only a few months until Wisconsin citizens will be able to watch their legislators, live and in full color, from the State Capitol
….There are (also) plans to televise UW symposiums and conferences.
Federal regulators are clamping down on the use of microscopic particles of silver in consumer products because of potential harmful effects on the environment, but scientists are working on testing standards as the new nanotechnology industries develop, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced new regulations this week on the use of nanosilver, tiny particles of silver a few ten-thousandths the diameter of a human hair thick, that have been infused into products such as food containers, shoe liners and bandages to kill bacteria.
Dear Editor: The University of Wisconsin is one of 14 competitors for the new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, intended to replace the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
….The proper place for such a dangerous lab is an island or similarly isolated location, not Dane County.
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas – Those who have seen many of the games that Bo Ryan has coached over the past 23 years were perplexed when they were asked which one of his 499 victories best defined his career.
….Consistency certainly has been the hallmark of Ryan’s success during a career that will reach a great milestone with his next victory. Consistency certainly has been the hallmark of Ryan’s success during a career that will reach a great milestone with his next victory. If the 7th-ranked Badgers (4-0) defeat Missouri State (3-0) Friday during a South Padre Island Invitational game here, it will be his 500th.
Thanksgiving means turkey and shopping, but several experts warn that e-mail spam could put a lot of turkeys in your inbox as spammers take advantage of the holiday season.
“It happens over the holidays, or anytime there is an expectation that people will be more interested in buying, such as Mother’s Day,” said Gerald Thain, a consumer law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies spam – unsolicited and unwanted e-mail.
(DoIT’s Brian Rust is also quoted.)
Josh Zalasky should be the kind of college applicant with little to worry about.
The high school senior is taking three Advanced Placement courses. Outside the classroom, he’s involved in mock trial, two Jewish youth groups and has a job with a restaurant chain. He’s a National Merit semifinalist and scored in the top 3 percent of all students who take the ACT.
But in the increasingly frenzied world of college admissions, even Zalasky is nervous about his prospects. He doubts he’ll get in to the University of Wisconsin, a top choice. The reason: his grades.
In the final month of the fall election, Cleveland and Columbus television stations let paid political advertisements – not news stories – do their talking.
During a typical 30-minute evening news broadcast, Cleveland’s top four stations each aired more than five minutes of political ads, but devoted about 1 minute and 20 seconds to election news, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study of political coverage released Tuesday shows.
Midwest TV stations devoted far more time to political advertising than to political news coverage during their newscasts in the month before the November election, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the University of Wisconsin’s NewsLab and the Joyce Foundation.
Television viewers in the Midwest got an eyeful of politics during local newscasts last month, but most of it was in the ads, not the news.
A study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s NewsLab found that in the month before the Nov. 7 elections, television stations in seven Midwest markets aired an average of 4 minutes and 24 seconds of political ads and 1 minute and 43 seconds of election news during a typical 30-minute broadcast.
The pingpong table stood mightily on the front lawn of a fraternity house near the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one side painted with the red and white stripes of the American flag, the other with the Soviet Union hammer and sickle.
Beer pong – in which players make their opponents drink by sinking a pingpong ball in one of their cups – has been around for more than a decade. But in the last couple of years, it has reached unprecedented popularity – to the chagrin of college administrators who fear the game fuels binge drinking.
Bret Bielema continues to cling to the minuscule chance that the University of Wisconsin can land a Bowl Championship Series at-large berth.
Marshfield Clinic said Monday that it will become the first organization outside of the states public university system to use the systems technology transfer expertise to commercialize the work of researchers.
Marshfield has signed a contract with WiSys Technology Foundation Inc. that will give the clinic instant patenting and licensing expertise and encourage collaboration between Marshfield and state public research institutions. WiSys is a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, one of the oldest and most successful university technology transfer organizations in the country.
Since we’re on the topic of weird stuff, we see that Kevin Barrett, professor emeritus of wacky ideas at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, plans to apply for more teaching jobs at UW after his fall course on Islam ends. Barrett created a controversy by teaching the theory that the Sept. 11 attacks were orchestrated by the Bush administration. What’s next, Kevin? A course on meteorology exploring the possibility that Hurricane Katrina was caused by UFO training exercises in the mid-Atlantic? Here’s a tip: If you’re looking for work, try Faber College, and be sure to tell Dean Wormer we sent you.
Mentions that Steven Avery was freed in 2003 after University of Wisconsin-Madison students involved in the Innocence Project proved he wasn’t guilty of the rape and assault for which he served 18 years in prison.
The waiting should end soon.
Officials from Florida Citrus Sports, who attended the game against Buffalo, likely will extend UW an invitation to the News Year’s Day Capital One Bowl in Orlando as soon as the Badgers are “released” from BCS consideration. That could happen today. The Badgers would face a Southeastern Conference foe. The possible SEC opponents include: Florida (10-1), Arkansas (10-1) and LSU (9-2).
Quoted: Joel Rogers, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=532815
After a years-long debate over whether the morning-after birth control pill should be sold without a prescription, Plan B emergency contraception is now available to walk-in pharmacy customers.
“We received our first shipment Monday, Nov. 6, and by golly, we dispensed it that afternoon,” said Linda Willsey, of the Community Pharmacy in Madison. She added that customers of the pharmacy near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus had been asking about it since the FDA approval in late summer.
Here’s a reason to be proud of Wisconsin’s young people: They voted.
“Oh my gosh, yes, Monroe Street has changed,” Hank Reese acknowledges. “But is it really such a bad thing?”
It is 10:55 on a recent midweek morning, and the 81-year-old Reese, dapper as ever in a powder blue shirt and beige cardigan sweater, is standing in the same spot where he has spent much of the last 59 years – behind the cashier counter at Mickies Dairy Bar, the most popular diner this city has ever known.
He is also giving me his own no-holds-barred perspective on the vast transformation that continues to take place in the neighborhood southwest of Camp Randall Stadium.
When gay and lesbian faculty and staff members at UW-Madison met with Chancellor John Wiley to discuss the state’s passage of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions, many of these talented educators and researchers said they were thinking of leaving Wisconsin.
That’s bad news for the university and for the state, and Gov. Jim Doyle and legislators should respond in a manner that respects the need to maintain the viability of the university system. The best move, in our view, would be for the governor to issue an executive order extending domestic partnership benefits to state employees, as did Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack several years ago.
A new program at the University of Wisconsin is aimed at alleviating a severe shortage of physicians in rural areas of the state.
The School of Medicine and Public Health is starting a four-year program that will parallel the school’s standard M.D. curriculum but that will also use a network of clinical partnerships across Wisconsin to immerse medical students in rural practice.
They are small and colorful, detailed and exotic.
What’s more, these lacquered boxes made of papier-mache tell stories and fairy tales, if you know how to read them and have a background in Russian folklore and literature.
“Russian Lacquer Boxes: A Narrative Tradition from the Frederick Seibold Collection” will go on view Friday at the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave. The exhibit will run in the Mayer Gallery through Jan. 14.
Critics of a coal-powered heating plant that serves the University of Wisconsin-Madison say the facility is too old, too polluting and too hazardous to health to merit renewal of its air pollution operating permit without significant changes.
Citizens and environmentalist groups testified before the DNR on Wednesday that the Charter Street Heating Plant, located just south of the UW-Madison campus at 117 N. Charter St., is pumping hazardous smoke into the atmosphere that is both harmful to area residents and contributing to global warming. The plant must be cleaner and more efficient, they said.
Dooyoung Choi, a student from Korea at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, doesn’t hang out or drink beers with many Americans, he says.
On weekends he typically relaxes by watching Korean television over the Internet at his apartment, where he lives with two Korean roommates. When he has work to do, Choi will often join other Koreans for day-long study sessions at the library. Many of his friends crack the first book at 9 a.m., he says, and won’t call it quits until midnight, except for breaks for food throughout the day.
“It’s a really gloomy, dark, international student life, I guess,” Choi says laughingly.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher is part of a team that has identified changes in two viral building blocks called amino acids that allow the bird flu virus to recognize human flu virus receptors in people’s cells.
The two amino acid changes “can be used as a genetic marker for predicting a potential dangerous virus,” Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a flu researcher at UW’s School of Veterinary Medicine, said of their study published in today’s edition of the journal Nature.
Arsenio Cicero came to Madison from Havana seven years ago, and his life has not been the same.
“I had two lives, one before in Cuba and one studying here,” he said.
Dear Editor: It appears that another UW football player has received preferential treatment by a Dane County Circuit Court judge.
….It is hoped the new football coach at UW does not endorse this practice and will institute appropriate punishment to any athlete who breaks the law even if the court system appears to be too biased to do the same.
….For those of us with terminally ill relatives who must shuttle our loved ones to and from hospital care, the valet service, while not perfect, is one of the few bright spots as we daily grieve for what is to come. How much easier it is on us to have someone take care of this one detail to give caretakers and those they care for a brief respite.
Despite being poised to finish the regular season at 11-1 and probably no worse than No. 9 in the Bowl Championship Series standings, the University of Wisconsin will need a miracle, akin to Moses parting the Red Sea, to secure a BCS bowl berth.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have identified two genetic mutations that appear to be involved in turning a deadly bird flu virus into a deadly human one.
Alando Tucker and Brian Butch are gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated this week as part of the magazine’s college basketball preview edition.
Sports Illustrated is doing regional covers with the theme “Big is Back,” and a posed shot of Wisconsin’s Tucker and Butch is one of them.
….Fatal plunge: A 19-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student leaped to his death Tuesday from the top of a downtown parking ramp.
The student jumped from the sixth level of the UW Frances Street ramp, located at the intersection with Johnson Street, at about 1:30 p.m., landing in an alley between the ramp and the Fluno Center.
Dear Editor: As an election observer in the student ward, I sat in awe of non-stop lines of students exercising their right to vote. A huge turnout convinced me that students care about this state. It also convinced me that without same-day registration, we disenfranchise one of the most thoughtful, passionate and hopeful segments of society.
You could think of filmmaker Saul Landau as the University of Wisconsin’s answer to Noam Chomsky, the controversial East Coast public intellectual and social activist who was recently praised, to the outrage of both Republicans and Democrats, at the United Nations by the populist and left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The 70-year-old Landau, who has just donated his life’s work to the UW, will be honored this week at the University of Wisconsin’s seventh annual Cinefest, a free film celebration of Latino culture, which will run from Thursday through Sunday.
One of the state’s biggest lobbying firms will announce today it has formed a joint venture with a Pittsburgh-based consultant that helps companies attract more federal and state grants and contracts. The article quotes Mark Bugher, director of the University Research Park.
Letter writer opines on Kevin Barrett.
With John Stocco’s status for the regular-season finale Saturday against Buffalo uncertain, Tyler Donovan is poised to make his second start.
Despite losses in the Nov. 7 election that lowered their margin of control in the Assembly, Republicans moved two of their past leaders into top spots Tuesday, electing Rep. Michael Huebsch as speaker and Rep. Jeff Fitzgerald as majority leader.
Kevin Barrett, a part-time lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who teaches the theory that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were an inside job, intends to apply for more jobs at the university after his fall course on Islam is over.
SKIP ZACH would have loved Friday. Nothing, except maybe signing with the Chicago Cubs, which Skip did in 1951 after playing for Edgewood High and UW, made the Avenue Bar proprietor prouder than seeing his restaurant hopping. If many of the faces were familiar, all the better.
Friday noon there were plenty of recognizable faces at the Avenue…at the big center table, the Friday lunch crowd included UW Chancellor John Wiley and his wife, Georgia;
WASHINGTON – Organized labor delivered millions of votes for the Democratic Party in the 2006 midterm elections and has spelled out what it wants from the Democratic-controlled Congress in return.
Union workers voted Democratic in the House races, 67 percent to 30 percent. And others in union households voted almost as strongly Democratic, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and the networks.AFL-CIO President John Sweeney sees the elections as a “mandate for a union agenda.”
Former University of Wisconsin running back Booker Stanley was put on probation for seven years Monday and ordered to spend another year in the county jail for sexually assaulting, choking and battering his former girlfriend.
Authorities are asking people to look out for a handcuffed man who got away from them en route to University Hospital, but said he is not known to be violent.
The man, Joseph J. Mercer, bolted Monday evening while Sauk County deputies were taking him to the psychiatric ward at University Hospital. Despite a waist restraint and handcuffs, he was able to push a deputy away, get out of a police vehicle and flee to the Shorewood Hills/Eagle Heights area.
A part-time instructor who contends the U.S. government orchestrated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks doesn’t plan to seek another teaching assignment for the spring semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Not far from where I live, two girls live with their undocumented immigrant parents from Mexico in a rented cottage behind a city duplex.
Maria, 7, is in the second grade at a Milwaukee public school. She speaks Spanish at home while rapidly attaining English fluency at school. She is bright, social and intelligent.
Imagine who Maria could be in 10 years – confident, close to her family and recently accepted to the state’s best university, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is one of many diverse faces of the next generation of Americans – Hispanic, bilingual and educated, despite coming from what many Americans would consider a very poor background.
Zachary L. Cooper, an educator and lecturer who worked tirelessly to impart the importance of education and a sense of worth to children, died on Nov. 1. He was 71.
“In his community he was somewhat of a hero,” said Joyce Boggess, executive director of the Early Childhood Learning Center, where Cooper served as president of the board of directors. “The kids all loved him here, and they will miss him terribly. They’ve already begun to write poems and letters to Dr. Cooper in his honor.”
Cooper was widely known as one of the state’s most prominent chroniclers of African-American history.
IT TURNS out that while the rest of us were oversleeping, the wake-up call industry has been buzzing. Who knew?
This is occurring on many fronts, each of which warrants examination. There is now, for instance, a company – WakeUpLand – that will give you a wake-up call at home.
….a Madison hotel could feature wake-up calls like these:
….”Good morning, this is John Wiley. Your mini-bar is locked and it’s going to stay that way.”
….”Good morning, this is Barry Alvarez’s personal assistant. Please hold for Mr. Alvarez.”
