Upon what meat doth this, our campus, feed? You may want to switch to Caesar salads. ARTS
l
University of Wisconsin-Madison
PAGE 5
GOPHERS’ UPSET SPOILS LEURER’S RETURN Abysmal shooting leads to shocking loss in Minnesota, sends Badgers reeling SPORTS
Complete campus coverage since 1892
l
dailycardinal.com
l
PAGE 8
Weekend, February 19-21, 2010
Edgewater saga prompts look at approval process PART 1 of 2 By Grace Urban The Daily Cardinal
After many months of debate, the long-awaited Edgewater vote at the Common Council meetings next week may finally seal the fate of Hammes Co.’s proposed redevelopment project. But the lengthy process the project has gone through to gain city approval has officials questioning whether the system is conducive to new development. The council had hoped to vote on all the committee actions necessary for full approval of the project at its meetings Feb. 23 and 24, but according to Ald. Bryon Eagon, District 8, the final decision will be postponed. The council, will,
however, vote on whether to overturn the Landmarks Commission decision. Following the Common Council’s inability to overturn a Landmarks Commission decision to deny a certificate of appropriateness to the project in December, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz criticized what he deemed to be a “broken system.” “There was widespread support for the project on the council. No member of the council actually spoke against it,” Cieslewicz wrote in his blog. Cieslewicz said the council’s inability to overturn the Landmarks decision with a supermajority vote could be attributed to their need to address a “narrow legal question” about whether the ordinance imposed “significant
Graphic by natasha soglin/the daily cardinal
hardship” on Hammes Co. Eagon said there is room for improvement in the city’s approval process for development projects. “It’s important to maintain that quality and character [of Madison] but also support new investment in the future of the city,” he said. He said one possible way to attempt to strike the balance is by offering economic
incentives such as tax breaks. “But there’s also intangibles of the quality of life that Madison provides,” he added. “Stressing some of those other less tangible benefits of the city itself [adds to] possible direct incentives in the form of economic issues to specific projects.” Conversely, Ald. Bridget Maniaci, District 2, said, “On
paper I think [the process] is fine. I see us run into problems when commissioners start asking for a lot of ancillary items.” Although it is clear that a project needs to get approval from multiple city committees to go forward, there is no one specific path for a proposal to take when edgewater page 3
Committee debates city rail locations By Nick Crowley The Daily Cardinal
photo Courtesy Forest Banks
Graphic by natasha soglin
An aerial view depicts the Seasonal Equipment Site which remains in the same location during summer drilling.
By Jeremy Berg The Daily Cardinal
In one of the coldest places on Earth, UW-Madison scientists are building the world’s largest telescope to search for some of the universe’s smallest particles. Located at the South Pole, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory will, as its name implies, look for tiny, subatomic particles called neutrinos, which are produced by nuclear reactions that take place in the cores of stars and in other deepspace phenomena. Because neu-
trinos are far smaller than even a single atom, and because they have no electric charge, they can pass through large, solid objects, such as the Earth, or strong magnetic fields. As a result of these properties, they come straight from their source without being deflected or absorbed. This makes the neutrino an ideal messenger particle to convey information about events occurring far across the universe. UW-Madison professor Francis Halzen, the lead researcher on the IceCube project, believes neutrinos
have the potential to change the way astronomy is done. “The important thing is, they’re just like light,” Halzen said. “People have done astronomy with light since they had eyes, and so, we want to do astronomy with neutrinos.” Being able to detect neutrinos and determine where they are coming from will help researchers peer into the depths of space and hopefully expose some of the greatest mysteries confronting modern astronomy and physics, such as the nature of supernova explosions,
black holes, dark matter and other deep-space phenomena. The same properties that make neutrinos an ideal messenger particle, however, also make them extremely difficult to detect. Trillions of neutrinos stream through the human body every second, but few, if any, ever interact with atoms. And if a particle never interacts with any of the matter around it, it is essentially impossible to detect. icecube page 4
The Madison Downtown Coordinating Committee discussed possible train station locations Thursday night for the highspeed rail set to connect Madison to Milwaukee and potentially to the Twin Cities. Set to open in January 2013, the Amtrak railroad station in Madison would integrate the city into a series of railroads that facilitate transportation between major cities in the Midwest. The state and federal government have already allocated $810 million to the project, but logistics such as the station location have not yet been worked out. The council deliberated between two sites, one adjacent to the Madison airport on the outskirts of the city and the other near the Fiore Shopping Center, a downtown location. Barry Gore, a city planner with experience in railroad planning, presented the benefits of a downtown station location. Gore said the accessibility of a downtown station to students and government workers was a key motive for a station within the city. “The station would be surrounded by bus stops, sidewalks and bike trails,” Gore said. “People would step off the train and see the capitol as a rail page 3
“…the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”