1.
Wisconsin
–
Wisconsin is a U. S. state located in the north-central United States, in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, Wisconsin is the 23rd largest state by total area and the 20th most populous. The state capital is Madison, and its largest city is Milwaukee, the state is divided into 72 counties. Wisconsin is second to Michigan in the length of its Great Lakes coastline, Wisconsin is known as Americas Dairyland because it is one of the nations leading dairy producers, particularly famous for its cheese. Manufacturing, especially paper products, information technology, and tourism are major contributors to the states economy. The word Wisconsin originates from the given to the Wisconsin River by one of the Algonquian-speaking Native American groups living in the region at the time of European contact. French explorer Jacques Marquette was the first European to reach the Wisconsin River, arriving in 1673, subsequent French writers changed the spelling from Meskousing to Ouisconsin, and over time this became the name for both the Wisconsin River and the surrounding lands. English speakers anglicized the spelling from Ouisconsin to Wisconsin when they began to arrive in numbers during the early 19th century. The legislature of Wisconsin Territory made the current spelling official in 1845, the Algonquin word for Wisconsin and its original meaning have both grown obscure. Interpretations vary, but most implicate the river and the red sandstone that lines its banks, other theories include claims that the name originated from one of a variety of Ojibwa words meaning red stone place, where the waters gather, or great rock. Wisconsin has been home to a variety of cultures over the past 12,000 years. The first people arrived around 10,000 BCE during the Wisconsin Glaciation and these early inhabitants, called Paleo-Indians, hunted now-extinct ice age animals such as the Boaz mastodon, a prehistoric mastodon skeleton unearthed along with spear points in southwest Wisconsin. After the ice age ended around 8000 BCE, people in the subsequent Archaic period lived by hunting, fishing, agricultural societies emerged gradually over the Woodland period between 1000 BCE to 1000 CE. Toward the end of period, Wisconsin was the heartland of the Effigy Mound culture. Later, between 1000 and 1500 CE, the Mississippian and Oneota cultures built substantial settlements including the village at Aztalan in southeast Wisconsin. The Oneota may be the ancestors of the modern Ioway and Ho-Chunk tribes who shared the Wisconsin region with the Menominee at the time of European contact, the first European to visit what became Wisconsin was probably the French explorer Jean Nicolet. He canoed west from Georgian Bay through the Great Lakes in 1634, pierre Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers visited Green Bay again in 1654–1666 and Chequamegon Bay in 1659–1660, where they traded for fur with local Native Americans. In 1673, Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet became the first to record a journey on the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway all the way to the Mississippi River near Prairie du Chien
2.
Sauk County, Wisconsin
–
Sauk County is a county in Wisconsin. It is named after a village of the Sauk people. As of the 2010 census, the population was 61,976 and its county seat and largest city is Baraboo. The county was created in 1840 from Wisconsin Territory and organized in 1844, Sauk County comprises the Baraboo, WI Micropolitan Statistical Area and is included in the Madison-Janesville-Beloit, WI Combined Statistical Area. Sauk County was a New England settlement and these people were Yankee settlers, that is to say they were descended from the English Puritans who settled New England in the 1600s. While most of them came to Wisconsin directly from New England and these were people whose parents had moved from New England to upstate New York in the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution. They were part of a wave of New England farmers who headed west into what was then the wilds of the Northwest Territory during the early 1800s, in the case of Wisconsin this migration primarily occurred in the 1830s. Due to the prevalence of New Englanders and New England transplants from upstate New York, the Yankee migration to Wisconsin in the 1830s was a result of several factors, one of which was the overpopulation of New England. The old stock Yankee population had large families, often bearing up to ten children in one household. Most people were expected to have their own piece of land to farm, as a result there was not enough land for every family to have a self-sustaining farm, and Yankee settlers began leaving New England for the Midwestern United States. They were aided in this effort by the construction and completion of the Erie Canal which made traveling to the much easier. Added to this was the end of the Black Hawk War and they brought with them many of their Yankee New England values, such as a passion for education, establishing many schools as well as staunch support for abolitionism. They were mostly members of the Congregationalist Church though some were Episcopalian, due to the second Great Awakening some of them had converted to Methodism and some became Baptist before moving to what is now Sauk County. Sauk County, like much of Wisconsin, would be culturally very continuous with early New England culture for most of its early history. In the late 1890s, German immigrants began to settle in Sauk County, generally there was little conflict between them and the Yankee settlers, however when conflict did arise it focused around the issue of prohibition of alcohol. On this issue the Yankees were divided and the Germans almost unanimously were opposed to it, the Yankee community was generally pro-British, however many of the Yankees also did not want America to enter the war themselves. The Germans were sympathetic to Germany and did not want the United States to enter into a war against Germany, in the early 1900s immigrants from Ireland, Sweden, Norway and Poland also arrived in Sauk County. The area around Baraboo was first settled by Abe Wood in 1838, in 1846 it became the county seat of Sauk County after a fierce fight with the nearby village of Reedsburg
3.
Liberty
–
Liberty, in philosophy, involves free will as contrasted with determinism. In politics, liberty consists of the social and political freedoms to all community members are entitled. In theology, liberty is freedom from the effects of sin, spiritual servitude, as such, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights of others. Philosophers from earliest times have considered the question of liberty, according to Thomas Hobbes, a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do. John Locke rejected that definition of liberty, while not specifically mentioning Hobbes, he attacks Sir Robert Filmer who had the same definition. According to Locke, In the state of nature, liberty consists of being free from any power on Earth. People are not under the will or lawmaking authority of others but have only the law of nature for their rule, in political society, liberty consists of being under no other lawmaking power except that established by consent in the commonwealth. People are free from the dominion of any will or legal restraint apart from that enacted by their own constituted lawmaking power according to the trust put in it. Thus, freedom is not as Sir Robert Filmer defines it, A liberty for everyone to do what he likes, to live as he pleases, freedom is constrained by laws in both the state of nature and political society. Freedom of nature is to be no other restraint but the law of nature. Freedom of people under government is to be under no restraint apart from standing rules to live by that are common to everyone in the society and made by the lawmaking power established in it. Persons have a right or liberty to follow their own will in all things that the law has not prohibited and not be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others. John Stuart Mill, in his work, On Liberty, was the first to recognize the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion, the modern concept of political liberty has its origins in the Greek concepts of freedom and slavery. To be free, to the Greeks, was to not have a master and that was the original Greek concept of freedom. It is closely linked with the concept of democracy, as Aristotle put it, This, another is that a man should live as he likes. This, they say, is the privilege of a freeman, since, on the other hand and this applied only to free men. In Athens, for instance, women could not vote or hold office and were legally and socially dependent on a male relative, the populations of the Persian Empire enjoyed some degree of freedom. Citizens of all religions and ethnic groups were given the rights and had the same freedom of religion, women had the same rights as men
4.
Marriage
–
The definition of marriage varies according to different cultures, but it is principally an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually sexual, are acknowledged. In some cultures, marriage is recommended or considered to be compulsory before pursuing any sexual activity, when defined broadly, marriage is considered a cultural universal. Individuals may marry for several reasons, including legal, social, libidinal, emotional, financial, spiritual, whom they marry may be influenced by socially determined rules of incest, prescriptive marriage rules, parental choice and individual desire. In some areas of the world, arranged marriage, child marriage, polygamy, conversely, such practices may be outlawed and penalized in parts of the world out of concerns for womens rights and because of international law. These trends coincide with the human rights movement. Marriage can be recognized by a state, an organization, an authority, a tribal group. It is often viewed as a contract, Marriages can be performed in a secular civil ceremony or in a religious setting via a wedding ceremony. The act of marriage usually creates normative or legal obligations between the individuals involved, and any offspring they may produce, some cultures allow the dissolution of marriage through divorce or annulment. In some areas, child marriages and polygamy may occur in spite of laws against the practice. For example, the number of marriages in Europe decreased by 30% from 1975 to 2005 and these changes have occurred primarily in Western countries. The word marriage derives from Middle English mariage, which first appears in 1250–1300 CE and this in turn is derived from Old French, marier, and ultimately Latin, marītāre, meaning to provide with a husband or wife and marītāri meaning to get married. The adjective marīt-us -a, -um meaning matrimonial or nuptial could also be used in the form as a noun for husband. Anthropologists have proposed several competing definitions of marriage in an attempt to encompass the wide variety of marital practices observed across cultures, even within Western culture, definitions of marriage have careened from one extreme to another and everywhere in between. The anthropological handbook Notes and Queries defined marriage as a union between a man and a such that children born to the woman are the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners. In recognition of a practice by the Nuer people of Sudan allowing women to act as a husband in certain circumstances, Kathleen Gough suggested modifying this to a woman, none of these men had legal rights to the womans child. Economic anthropologist Duran Bell has criticized the definition on the basis that some societies do not require marriage for legitimacy. He argued that a definition of marriage is circular in societies where illegitimacy has no other legal or social implications for a child other than the mother being unmarried. In 1955 article in Man, Leach argued that no one definition of marriage applied to all cultures and he offered a list of ten rights associated with marriage, including sexual monopoly and rights with respect to children, with specific rights differing across cultures
5.
Forevertron
–
Dr. Evermors Forevertron, built in the 1980s, is the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world, standing 50 ft. high and 120 ft. wide, and weighing 300 tons. It is housed in Dr. Evermors Art Park on Highway 12, in the town of Sumpter, in Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States. According to Every, Dr. Evermor is a Victorian inventor who designed the Forevertron to launch himself, the Forevertron, despite its size and weight, was designed to be relocatable to a different site—the sculpture is built in sections that are connected by bolts and pins. Dr. Evermors art park is home to a number of other sculptures, many of which relate to the Forevertron, such as the Celestial Listening Ear. Other large-scale sculptures include gigantic insects, the Epicurean bellows-driven barbecue train, The Dragon, Every says he takes pride in allowing the original materials to remain unaltered as much as possible, using their original forms in new juxtapositions to create his aesthetic. While he himself is not often available for tours of the art park, mr. Every also created much of the installation art for the House on the Rock, including the worlds largest carousel. Forevertron, The Mythic Obsession of Dr. Evermore’s Kinetic Architecture -uncharted101 Field Review Team, author Anisse-Marie Gross reads her essay Forevertron An Artists Junkyard of Dreams - Article from Wired magazines Great River Road series. Video diaries of the park - A walk-through of the park in nine unedited videos, luLu Frys first-hand experience at Dr. Evermors fantastical Forevertron just south of Baraboo, WI
6.
United States Geological Survey
–
The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its resources. The organization has four science disciplines, concerning biology, geography, geology. The USGS is a research organization with no regulatory responsibility. The USGS is a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior, the USGS employs approximately 8,670 people and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. The USGS also has major offices near Lakewood, Colorado, at the Denver Federal Center, the current motto of the USGS, in use since August 1997, is science for a changing world. The agencys previous slogan, adopted on the occasion of its anniversary, was Earth Science in the Public Service. Prompted by a report from the National Academy of Sciences, the USGS was created, by a last-minute amendment and it was charged with the classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain. This task was driven by the need to inventory the vast lands added to the United States by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the legislation also provided that the Hayden, Powell, and Wheeler surveys be discontinued as of June 30,1879. Clarence King, the first director of USGS, assembled the new organization from disparate regional survey agencies, after a short tenure, King was succeeded in the directors chair by John Wesley Powell. Administratively, it is divided into a Headquarters unit and six Regional Units, Other specific programs include, Earthquake Hazards Program monitors earthquake activity worldwide. The National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines detects the location, the USGS also runs or supports several regional monitoring networks in the United States under the umbrella of the Advanced National Seismic System. The USGS informs authorities, emergency responders, the media, and it also maintains long-term archives of earthquake data for scientific and engineering research. It also conducts and supports research on long-term seismic hazards, USGS has released the UCERF California earthquake forecast. The USGS National Geomagnetism Program monitors the magnetic field at magnetic observatories and distributes magnetometer data in real time, the USGS operates the streamgaging network for the United States, with over 7400 streamgages. Real-time streamflow data are available online, since 1962, the Astrogeology Research Program has been involved in global, lunar, and planetary exploration and mapping. USGS operates a number of related programs, notably the National Streamflow Information Program. USGS Water data is available from their National Water Information System database
