You'll be on Cloud Nine after polishing off one of these

I guess that's the idea. Amazing dessert -- chocolate cake, surrounded by vanilla mousse, topped with a ribbon of white chocolate and drenched with raspberries in syrup. Wow. If you're around Wisconsin Dells over the weekend, stop in at the Cheese Factory in Lake Delton. Cloud Nine was a dessert special when we were there a few weeks ago, as a sort of preview of a coming attraction. It's on the regular dessert menu all summer long, from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is Green

It better be -- if not, we're in a lot of trouble. (Military Ridge Trail.)

The net worth of middle class American families is tied up in their homes, and that's a problem

It's a problem when a real estate bubble bursts, as we all know. Families’ median net worth fell almost 40% between 2007 and 2010.  Is it fair to blame President Obama for that? No, says Paul Krugman. The drop took place almost entirely during the Bush Administrationand started to turn around 3 months into the Obama Presidency, as illustrated by the chart at the link.

The Wisconsin Uprising and the recall weren't the end of something. They were the beginning of something.

"Fighting Bob" La Follette was born on this day in 1855. Thanks to a resolution state Rep. Mark Pocan introduced, it has been celebrated as "Fighting Bob" La Follette Day in Wisconsin since 2008.

 The crowds that surrounded La Follette's likeness in the Capitol last year are gone now. The recall ended in defeat. What would "Fighting Bob" do now? He would regroup, to better fight again.

His career was not without its ups and downs, its defeats and setbacks. Each time he bounced back and went on to greater success. He served three terms in Congress, but was defeated in 1890. He then spent the better part of the decade of the Nineties building a movement against corporate control of the Republican Party, and through it, the state legislature. La Follette and his "Insurgents," who soon came to be called "Progressives," spent years battling against the "Stalwarts" of the party who sided with corporations and blocked reform. Gradually their efforts began to change public attitudes. Finally, in 1900, he was elected governor, which marked the real beginning of the Progressive era in Wisconsin politics.

Change rarely happens overnight. Rebounding from defeat is often how great social movements find themselves and grow. The Wisconsin Uprising and the failed gubernatorial recall were not the end of something. They were the beginning of something.

Our lakes and streams thank homeowners for fertilizing their lawns so assiduously there's lots of runoff

Without it, they lakes and streams would not be nearly as green. The word is eutrophication. (Wingra Creek, Madison, which is unusually overgrown for this time of year.)

Tallard Conservancy

Great summer for local bike trips and we just keep discovering beautiful places we had never heard of before. This is in the Town of Middleton, just west of Morey's Airport and at the end of the North Fork Trail. By car, Airport Road will get you there.

Work of a mad 19th Century scientist? No, a brilliant modern American vernacular artist.

The Forevertron is what artist Tom Every -- "Dr. Evermor"-- calls a "soul transformation device."  To get your soul transformed, go to Dr. Evermor's Art Park, across from the old Badger Ordnance Works on Highway 12 between Sauk City and Baraboo.

How photo mosaics resemble human vision

I've been referring to my experiments with Autostitch and the iPhone as panoramas, but I'm not really using the software panoramically. I guess a better name is photo mosaics. I've mentioned some of the things I like about the Autostitch/iPhone combination, like the ability to make superwide, high-res images with just a cell phone camera. Also, it can increase dynamic range without the unnatural look of so much HDR. By planning your layout, you can usually frame your individual images so that you expose properly for both shadows and highlights.

But what most fascinates me is how a photo mosaic resembles the process of human vision. We don't see the way cameras usually do -- taking in everything at a single glance, from a single point of view. (This artificiality is probably one of the things that most intrigues us about photos, but it can be limiting.) Since the eye's area of really sharp vision is so small, our eyes constantly scan our surroundings, and our brain stitches together together what we see out of a lot of separate images without our even realizing it. Using Autostitch you go through a similar process, taking  numerous separate "glances" and then combining them into a whole -- either seamlessly, or letting the seams show, as I did in this 20-image mosaic photographed at Wingra Boats.

Just a Cubist painter at heart, I guess.