From Wis­Pol­i­tics “Quo­rum Call” blog, which cov­ers the floor debate in both the Assem­bly and Senate:

Sen. Mark Miller, D-Monona, gave a brief speech before we got on to nor­mal busi­ness, chastis­ing Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Mike Ellis and Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Scott Fitzger­ald for cut­ting off debate last week on the ultrasound/abortion bill.

Miller said that when Ellis doesn’t uphold the rules of the body, “You fail in your oblig­a­tion to this body.” How­ever, he also said that he was “will­ing to chalk it up to just a bad day.”

Ellis responded lightly.

“Those com­ments will be taken as they are given, from one friend to another,” Ellis said. “I would hope that your mother was proud of you.”

Ellis is actu­ally on some­thing of a roll today regard­ing the Left try­ing to make him into the image of “Wis­con­sin Repub­li­can Anger” with the way he han­dled last week’s ses­sion and the ultra­sound bill vote.  As he gaveled in today’s ses­sion, he non­cha­lantly said into the mic, “Notice how soft that was?”

But the crack at Miller is some­thing you need a his­tory book in order to get.

“Your mother” in the case of State Sen. Mark Miller is the late Midge Miller, a for­mer state Rep. her­self, and some­thing of a Madi­son pro­gres­sive icon.   One can guess what Ellis was really say­ing to Miller was along the lines of “Your own mother’s been here.  Knew the rules.  Would she have approved of your lit­tle stunt and tantrum last week?”

That being all said, per­haps next time, Ellis should keep the smack talk to liv­ing mem­bers of the Miller Clan.  Like if whether Mark’s daugh­ter finally passed the Wis­con­sin bar yet or not.

Ever won­der why con­crete struc­tures in the U.S. and the rest of the Anglo-world don’t last very long with­out con­stant touch-ups?  Sim­ple, it is the cement we’ve been using for over 200 years.

Called “Port­land Cement” after the Isle of Port­land in Eng­land, it has been the typ­i­cal recipe used in the West­ern World.  It’s prob­lem: It can’t with­stand repeated expo­sure to the ele­ments, often crack­ing and break­ing in a num­ber of years.  If that expo­sure includes sea­wa­ter, the cement lit­er­ally will break­down and dissolve.

There was another type of cement known to be around for over 2,000 years: “Roman Cement.”  As seen with the longevity of the Col­i­seum, it is supe­rior in every way over Port­land Cement.  The one prob­lem — No one wrote down the recipe and it was lost to history.

Not any­more, as sci­en­tists have finally cracked the code of Roman Cement, mak­ing its mass pro­duc­tion only a mat­ter of time.

As any­one who’s ever vis­ited Italy knows, the ancient Romans were mas­ter engi­neers. Their roads, aque­ducts, and tem­ples are still hold­ing up remark­ably well despite com­ing under siege over the cen­turies by waves of sack­ing maraud­ers, mobs of tourists, and the occa­sional earth­quake. One such struc­ture that has fas­ci­nated geol­o­gists and engi­neers through­out the ages is the Roman har­bor. Over the past decade, researchers from Italy and the U.S. have ana­lyzed 11 har­bors in the Mediter­ranean basin where, in many cases, 2,000-year-old (and some­times older) head­wa­ters con­structed out of Roman con­crete stand per­fectly intact despite con­stant pound­ing by the sea.

[…]

The researchers now know why ancient Roman con­crete is so supe­rior. They extracted from the floor of Italy’s Poz­zuoili Bay, in the north­ern tip of the Bay of Naples, a sam­ple of con­crete head­wa­ter that dates back to 37 B.C. and ana­lyzed its min­eral com­po­nents at research labs in Europe and the U.S., includ­ing at Berke­ley Lab’s Advanced Light Source. The analy­sis, the sci­en­tists believe, reveals the lost recipe of Roman con­crete, and it also points to how much more sta­ble and less envi­ron­men­tally dam­ag­ing it is than today’s blend.

That’s why the find­ings, which were pub­lished ear­lier this month in the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Ceramic Soci­ety and Amer­i­can Min­er­al­o­gist, are con­sid­ered so impor­tant for today’s indus­trial engi­neers and the future of the world’s cities and ports. “The build­ing indus­try has been search­ing for a way to make more durable con­cretes,” Jack­son points out.

Another remark­able qual­ity of Roman con­crete is that its pro­duc­tion was excep­tion­ally green, a far cry from mod­ern tech­niques. “It’s not that mod­ern con­crete isn’t good—it’s so good we use 19 bil­lion tons of it a year,” says Paulo Mon­teiro, a research col­lab­o­ra­tor and pro­fes­sor of civil and envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. “The prob­lem is that man­u­fac­tur­ing Port­land cement accounts for 7 per­cent of the car­bon diox­ide that indus­try puts into the air.”

The secret to Roman con­crete lies in its unique min­eral for­mu­la­tion and pro­duc­tion tech­nique. As the researchers explain in a press release out­lin­ing their find­ings, “The Romans made con­crete by mix­ing lime and vol­canic rock. For under­wa­ter struc­tures, lime and vol­canic ash were mixed to form mor­tar, and this mor­tar and vol­canic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The sea­wa­ter instantly trig­gered a hot chem­i­cal reac­tion. The lime was hydrated—incorporating water mol­e­cules into its structure—and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mix­ture together.”

The Port­land cement for­mula cru­cially lacks the lyme and vol­canic ash mix­ture. As a result, it doesn’t bind quite as well when com­pared with the Roman con­crete, researchers found. It is this infe­rior bind­ing prop­erty that explains why struc­tures made of Port­land cement tend to weaken and crack after a few decades of use, Jack­son says.

Adopt­ing the mate­ri­als (more vol­canic ash) and pro­duc­tion tech­niques of ancient Roman could rev­o­lu­tion­ize today’s build­ing indus­try with a stur­dier, less CO₂–inten­sive con­crete. “The ques­tion remains, can we trans­late the pricini­ples from ancient Rome to the pro­duc­tion of mod­ern con­crete? I think that is what is so excit­ing about this new area of research,” Jack­son says.

Roman con­crete will be as win-win a sce­nario as you can get.  Small gov­ern­ment con­ser­v­a­tives will see roads that last much, much longer than before caus­ing infra­struc­ture projects last­ing longer and in less need of short-term repair costs, while envi­ron­men­tal lib­er­als will be pleased to know that mak­ing Roman cement is more CO2-friendly than the tra­di­tional method behind Port­land cement.

So, let’s get paving the Roman way.

Might be time we start form­ing a list for these sorts of things.

Sec­ondly, you ever notice that this stuff hap­pens mostly dur­ing debates on Immi­gra­tion?  (Just saying…)

While attempt­ing to attack an amend­ment to the “Gang of Eight” immi­gra­tion bill that would require a fence be built along Mexico’s bor­der with the U.S. before legal­iza­tion, Sen. Mary Lan­drieu (D-LA) made a sig­nif­i­cant geo­graph­i­cal gaffe.

Lan­drieu, who rep­re­sents Louisiana in the U.S. Sen­ate, was try­ing to under­mine the amend­ment Sen. John Thune (R-SD) offered. In doing so, she tried to argue Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was more qual­i­fied to talk about bor­der issues than Thune because McCain rep­re­sents Arizona.

“A smart fence, which is what Sen­a­tor McCain and I want to build–since he’s from Ari­zona, I think he knows more about this than the Sen­a­tor from South Dakota who only has a bor­der with Canada and that is quite dif­fer­ent,” Lan­drieu said.

South Dakota does not share a bor­der with Canada. It does, how­ever, share bor­ders with North Dakota, Wyoming, Mon­tana, Min­nesota, Nebraska and Iowa.

I know what you’re think­ing?  “But Kevin, didn’t you and the rest of the Ron John­son cam­paign say New York wasn’t a Great Lakes State in 2010?”

No.  I’m say­ing I knew our ad guys were wrong when I was research­ing the ad for back-up facts and got vetoed and over-ruled on it.   Still to this day I’m shocked it took the state AP two days before they fig­ured out the error.  Frankly, since both cam­paigns looked like crap after that mid-July exchange of smear ads, I think every­one learned their les­son there.

There’s a dif­fer­ence between that and a politi­cian play­ing Geog­ra­phy pro­fes­sor at a Sen­ate hear­ing or dur­ing a debate in the Mil­wau­kee Co. Board Chambers.

Hon­estly, I hadn’t even heard that Frank Miller is even involved in this work.  For a while now he has been work­ing on a “Xerxes” pre­quel to his epic “300” graphic novel, but it hasn’t been released yet.  (Frank is pro­duc­ing / co-directing the “Sin City” sequel with Robert Rodriguez at the moment.)

So the idea there was a “300” sequel was even in the works is pretty for­eign to me.

The plot is set to focus on the rise of Xerxes in Per­sia and cul­mi­nate in the Bat­tle of Salamis, the great naval bat­tle which united all of Greece to finally fin­ish off the Per­sian threat once and for all started a decade ear­lier at Marathon.  His­tor­i­cal fig­ures which will be the key focus this time are Themis­tok­les, the Greek (actu­ally Athen­ian) gen­eral who unites all the city-states under his ban­ner and Artemisia, Xerxes only known female naval com­man­der — who appears to be por­trayed by for­mer Bond girl Eva Green.

Two wor­ri­some notes about the film is that Zach Sny­der is no where to be found in the director’s chair, — he was sup­posed to, but took the “Man of Steel” gig instead — he did how­ever write the screen­play accord­ing to IMDB.  It was also sup­posed to pre­miere this August ini­tially, but was moved back to next March.

The lat­ter is usu­ally never a good sign in the movie biz.

Yeah this isn’t every­thing that is to blame in what’s wrong with America’s pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem.  Bro­ken homes and fam­i­lies have a lot to do with it too in my opin­ion, but this is some­thing that pol­i­cy­mak­ers can actu­ally pro­vide pos­i­tive change in.

From NRO’s Andrew Stiles at the Corner:

In a new paper released on Wednes­day, Sally Love­joy and Chad Miller of the Amer­i­can Action Forum argue that teach­ers unions’ and their collective-bargaining poli­cies are at least partly to blame for both issues.

The authors cite an array of stud­ies exam­in­ing the impact of teach­ers’ unions and their nego­ti­at­ing strate­gies. The major­ity of these stud­ies have found that collective-bargaining agree­ments typ­i­cally focus on higher teacher pay and ben­e­fits and greater job secu­rity, with lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion given to stu­dent per­for­mance. In fact, teach­ers’ unions have his­tor­i­cally resisted most efforts to hold teach­ers account­able for the aca­d­e­mic per­for­mance of their stu­dents, and have suc­ceeded con­sis­tently. Tenure poli­cies, for instance, make it vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble to fire unqual­i­fied or inef­fec­tive teach­ers. Most states award tenure auto­mat­i­cally after about three years, and do not test a new teacher’s mas­tery of even the most basic read­ing and math skills. Per­haps not sur­pris­ingly, this has had a largely neg­a­tive impact on the stu­dents them­selves, espe­cially those in large urban school dis­tricts with a high per­cent­age of black and His­panic students.

The paper com­pares student-performance data from two such dis­tricts, New York City and Chicago (both of which require col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing), with data from Char­lotte, N.C., and Austin, Texas, urban dis­tricts in states where col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing is banned for pub­lic employ­ees. The two dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions reveal how col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing is inflat­ing salaries, com­pen­sa­tion, and job secu­rity while it’s stran­gling poli­cies that could help stu­dent achievement.

Public-school teach­ers in New York and Chicago recently signed collective-bargaining agree­ments that increase pay and ben­e­fits, but place lit­tle empha­sis on stu­dent per­for­mance. In Chicago, for exam­ple, the union fought to ensure that “stu­dent growth” counts for only 30 per­cent of teacher eval­u­a­tions to deter­mine per­for­mance pay. In New York, the union agree­ment offers pay and ben­e­fit increases for teach­ers based on expe­ri­ence and edu­ca­tion lev­els with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion for stu­dent performance.

Data from the National Assess­ment of Edu­ca­tional Progress show that stu­dents in New York and Chicago have con­sis­tently under­per­formed those in Char­lotte and Austin, and per­form con­sid­er­ably lower than the national aver­age. In 2011, only 20 per­cent of Chicago fourth graders per­formed at or above grade level in math, and only 18 per­cent were at or above grade level in read­ing, com­pared with national aver­ages that year of 40 per­cent and 32 per­cent, respec­tively. Stu­dents in New York per­formed slightly bet­ter, but are still below aver­age. Char­lotte and Austin, mean­while, saw much bet­ter results, beat­ing the national aver­ages. Nearly 50 per­cent of Char­lotte fourth graders per­formed at or above grade level; 36 per­cent did so in read­ing. Austin was close behind.

Research indi­cates that high-quality teach­ers have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on stu­dent achieve­ment both in school and beyond, mak­ing the teach­ers’ unions’ resis­tance to performance-based eval­u­a­tion all the more frus­trat­ing. One study by pro­fes­sors at Har­vard and Colum­bia found that stu­dents assigned to teach­ers clas­si­fied as “high-value added” instruc­tors attend bet­ter col­leges, earn higher salaries, and are less likely to have chil­dren as teenagers. Fur­ther­more, sim­ply replac­ing a “low-value added” teacher with an aver­age one can increase stu­dents’ life­time earn­ing by as much as $1.4 million.—

The authors note, opti­misti­cally, that more states appear to be adopt­ing poli­cies that at least include objec­tive student-achievement data in teacher eval­u­a­tions. Twelve states now require stu­dent per­for­mance to be the pri­mary con­sid­er­a­tion in such eval­u­a­tions. Not sur­pris­ingly, right-to-work states have proven to be most eager to do so — the National Coun­cil on Teach­ers Qual­ity lists Florida, Okla­homa, Rhode Island, and Ten­nessee as the most suc­cess­ful states in terms of iden­ti­fy­ing effec­tive teach­ers and remov­ing inef­fec­tive ones, and among those only Rhode Island man­dates col­lec­tive bargaining.

Act 10, you just keep look­ing bet­ter and bet­ter with age.