Mark's blog
Sporadic blog posts on a wide variety of topics, by Racine, Wisconsin web designer Mark Czerniec.(Also check out my weekly roundups in Another Week.)
We Energies coal ash spills into Lake Michigan
Wisconsin news made The Rachel Maddow Show again last night. That's because on Monday, coal ash from the grounds of We Energies' Oak Creek Power Plant was swept into Lake Michigan when a shoreline bluff collapsed during construction — ironically, for an air quality...
‘Once Upon a Time,’ ‘Grimm’: New TV from old tales
Two of the new TV series we have sampled over the last couple of weekends have some things in common. Both are hour-long scripted dramas which layer fantasy and supernatural elements onto the everyday, modern world. Both also link back to the realm of classic fairy...
Dry Bones song: Ezekiel cried, ‘Dem dry bones!’
Dry Bones, the video above by Dan DiFelice, is something that showed up in my Vimeo inbox the other day and caught my eye. It does not use the Dry Bones song.However, both this short film and the Dry Bones song share the same inspiration: the Old Testament's Book of...
Michael Lewis: ‘Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World’
Author Michael Lewis is on tour for his new book, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, published on Monday by Simon & Schuster. Above is the extended clip of his appearance last night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Boomerang is sort of a followup to...
C. Peter Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation
It was on The Rachel Maddow Show back on August 10 that I first heard of the New Apostolic Reformation. That segment aired just before Rick Perry entered the 2012 presidential race, and just after his August 6th prayer rally — "The Response" — at Houston's Reliant...
Social Media Week Chicago: Reinventing media careers
Social Media Week Chicago took place last week, and one of the sessions generating some online buzz was the event above on Friday evening, featuring: Nancy Loo (@NancyLoo) Robert Feder (@RobertFeder) Richard Roeper (@richardroeper) and Steve Dahl (@SteveDahlShow)...
Iraq War casualties erased from ‘War on Terror’?
Today, as news organization after news organization "remembers" the September 11 attacks — and as our fellow Americans remind us not to forget September 11 — I saw something truly shocking. It was a Facebook post by WISN 12 NEWS, Milwaukee's ABC affiliate: By The...
SC Johnson companies pay no Wisconsin income taxes?
Over his 45-year career in journalism, David Cay Johnston has many impressive achivements. Tax reporter for the The New York Times from 1995 to 2006, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2000 and 2003, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting in 2001 "for his...
Allstate ‘Raccoon Mayhem’ commercial with Dean Winters
The Allstate Mayhem commercial series has burrowed deep into my head. I saw the "Raccoon Mayhem" commercial above a couple of days ago. Then, this morning at about 2:30, I heard either a large raccoon or a small horse tramping across our roof above my bed. All I could...
Kate Voegele music videos: ‘Heart in Chains,’ ‘Hallelujah’
Here's a video that showed up in my YouTube subscriptions stream, and now I can't stop playing it: "Heart in Chains," by Kate Voegele, from her latest album Gravity Happens. It may not be a groundbreaking pop song, but it has some very sturdy hooks, nice changes of...
TV schedule shell games make it hard to follow shows
As a TV viewer, there are few things which irritate me more than the games played with the TV schedule these days. Despite the ridiculous amount of money we pay to a cable company every month — and despite our willingness to follow and even promote the few shows we do...
Sound of a chipmunk: Weird chipmunk noise
The chipmunk noise in this video was recorded on our front doorstep a couple of years ago, but we have the same situation in the backyard today. After weeks of air conditioned cabin fever during the Heat Wave of 2011, the windows are finally open here at the...
‘The Kids Are All Right’ (2010 movie)
Many gentle souls still practice the delicate daily art of rapport with their fellow human beings, despite some whose approach to life is aimed more at "winning" some aggressive marketing campaign. Although a lot of movies today rely on computer-generated robots in...
Austerity is dangerous class politics
Watching the riots in England these days, one line from the video above keeps echoing in my mind: There's a term for this: "class politics," and it usually ends badly. Speaking about austerity in the video is Mark Blyth, a faculty fellow...
‘Public Enemies’ (Johnny Depp, Christian Bale movie, 2009)
Thank goodness for the optional subtitles on DVDs. I am glad I did not try to watch Public Enemies (trailer above) in a theater. I don't know what sort of accent Christian Bale was trying to emit in his role as Bureau of Investigation agent Melvin Purvis, but his...
3D printing miracle: The 3D printer will change the world
The latest installment of the BBC World Service's Global Business program — "New Dimensions for Manufacturing - Episode 1" — kind of blew my mind. It's about "3D printing," which I had never heard of. Apparently it's been around for 30 years, known as "rapid...
Racine history: 1861 Joshua Pierce home
We were talking gardening with our neighbor Katie last month when she mentioned that her daughter, Mary, has an interest in Racine history and has been researching our neighborhood's past online. I handed Katie my business card and told her I would be very interested...
Japanese Beetle control: Grubs in lawn
We first saw a Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) in our Racine, Wisconsin backyard a few years ago. They were devouring our rose bush. So, after reading about the use of geraniums as a trap crop (since geraniums are toxic to Japanese beetles), we planted a geranium...
Website traffic statistics: More than 15,000 visits in July
MarkCz.com received 15,465 visits in July, as recorded by Google Analytics — and 16,365 according to Clicky Web Analytics — so we are trending upward, as shown in the above website traffic graph of visits per month for the last year. [includeme...
Quebec City wedding anniversary, 20 years: Have we got this?
Thirty years ago today, Lady Diana married Prince Charles in an extravagant wedding ceremony that was broadcast around the world. I had just turned 21, and was living back at my mom's house in Kenosha after a short career in door-to-door vacuum cleaner sales and a...
Jeff Bridges movie: ‘Crazy Heart’ (2009)
I knew I wanted to watch Crazy Heart (trailer above) — Jeff Bridges won the Academy Award, it was well-reviewed, Ryan Bingham is in it and sings the theme — but I was also hesitant. It's about an aging alcoholic singer-songwriter, so it might be a terribly tragic and...
Hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe)
Watch this video in full-screen, 720p mode. The Hummingbird Moth is difficult to see at first, but it comes closer during the second minute of the clip. The first time I saw one of these, my mind briefly went into a strange Twilight Zone mode because I couldn't place...
Taiji dolphin slaughter caught on film: ‘The Cove’ (2009)
The Cove is a 2009 documentary about an annual dolphin slaughter — 23,000 bottlenose dolphins killed every year in a secluded bay at the whaling town of Taiji, Japan. We first became aware of it when it won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary, and finally...
‘Farmer John’ movie documents Illinois farmer’s life
We watched a DVD last night that turned out to be an unexpected delight. The Real Dirt on Farmer John is a 2005 documentary about the life of a farmer, John Peterson of the Angelic Organics farm at Caledonia, Illinois, which is just a little northeast of Rockford,...
Jackson Browne, ‘The Barricades of Heaven’
Above is a YouTube video of Jackson Browne performing "The Barricades of Heaven" at the Glastonbury Festival in southwest England in June of 2010. The song — originally released on Browne's 1996 album Looking East — has been my constant earworm for several days...
Milkweed Bug infestation of Butterfly Weed
Pictured here is the original idea — purple Liatris spicata spikes paired against orange Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) blossoms in one of our backyard flower beds. Both attract butterflies, both are easy-to-grow perennials, and both have similar tight flower...
Federal debt, Medicare, spending, deficit: President Obama’s speech
[President Obama’s speech: White House video and text transcript.] Remarks by the President on Fiscal Policy George Washington University Washington, D.C. 1:48 P.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Please have a seat. Please have a seat, everyone....
Paul Ryan is Dagwood Bumstead
In the video clip above we see Rachel Maddow, aggravated over Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and the tendency of the news media to portray him as a bright and earnest young man on the rise — a numbers-whiz with a sharpened pencil behind his ear who has the guts to level...
‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ (1988 movie)
We watch a lot of foreign films, and always enjoyed movies from Orion Pictures, but somehow Amy and I have never seen The Unbearable Lightness of Being, director Philip Kaufman's 1988 adaptation of Milan Kundera's 1984 novel. We haven't...
‘Mad Men’ Season 5: I give up
As Maureen Ryan wrote yesterday at TV Squad, Mad Men Season 5 is now postponed until 2012. Difficult negotiations are reportedly in progress over product placement, cast cuts, and trimming two minutes of each Mad Men episode's length. I...