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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

A Bit More About Methane

WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 55 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.

I’ve posted before about methane, but only as a foretaste of more on the subject (Methane on 11.23.15 and What’s a Greenhouse Gas? last week on 1.4.16).

Here’s another appetizer along those same lines. My point is not that Whitewater, Wisconsin would see huge methane leaks, but that touting methane gas as clean and green is an effort grounded in either ignorance or chicanery.

Consider the scene from the Pacific west, now afflicting the unfortunate residents of Porter Ranch, California, with an honest assessment of methane:

The single biggest contributor to climate change in California is a blown-out natural gas well more than 8,700ft underground, state authorities and campaign groups said Monday.

The broken well at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage site has released more than 77,000 metric tons of the powerful climate pollutant methane since the rupture was first detected on 23 October, according to a counter created by the Environmental Defense Fund.

Methane is a fast-acting climate pollutant – more than 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year time frame.

Experts believe the breach, which has forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents from the town of Porter Ranch, is the largest ever in the US.

Locals have complained of headaches, sore throats, nosebleeds and nausea, caused by the rotten-egg smell of the odorant added to the gas to aid leak detection by SoCalGas, the utility that operates the natural gas storage site.

About 1,000 people are suing the company. There are also concerns about the leak’s effect on smog and ozone. The company said it was monitoring air quality….

SeeA single gas well leak is California’s biggest contributor to climate change @ The Guardian.

Methane may be found or recovered: it’s deleterious either way.

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Appearing at whengreenturnsbrown.com and re-posted Mondays @ 10 AM here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Monday Music: Poker Face

One can guess that I don’t have much familiarity with the music of Lady Gaga. The loss, no doubt, is mine. At the Golden Globes last night, afternoon noticing that Leonardo DiCaprio was laughing at something (perhaps at her), Lady Gaga decided to give him a taste of her displeasure as she walked to the stage to receive her award. (Embedded below is a Vine as she glances past DiCaprio, and his reaction.)

It’s not that one dislikes DiCaprio (he’s a fine actor, and seems personable); it’s that Ms. Germanotta manages the encounter so very well.

Daily Bread for 1.11.16

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday starts the week off with a high of sixteen and a probability of late afternoon or evening snow showers. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:41, for 9h 17m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission is scheduled to meet tonight at 6:30 PM.

It’s Alice Paul’s birthday:

Alice_Paul1915Alice Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American suffragist, feminist, and women’s rights activist, and the main leader and strategist of the 1910s campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which prohibits sex discrimination in the right to vote. Along with Lucy Burns and others, Paul strategized the events, such as the Silent Sentinels, which led the successful campaign that resulted in its passage in 1920.[1]

After 1920 Paul spent a half century as leader of the National Woman’s Party, which fought for her Equal Rights Amendment to secure constitutional equality for women. She won a large degree of success with the inclusion of women as a group protected against discrimination by the Civil Rights Act of 1964….

It’s also conservationist Aldo Leopold’s birthday

2004-0005_blackOn this date Aldo Leopold, a major player in the modern environmental movement,  was born. A conservationist, professor, and author, Leopold graduated from Yale University and worked for the U.S. Forest Service in the Southwest. He rose to the rank of chief of operations. In 1924 he became associate director of the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison. In 1933 he was appointed chair of game management at the University of Wisconsin. In 1943, Leopold was instrumental in establishing the first U.S. soil conservation demonstration area, in Coon Valley in 1934. As a member of the state Conservation Commission, he was influential in the acquisition of natural areas by the state. His reflections on nature and conservation appear in A Sand County Almanac (1949). [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, p.227]

Puzzability‘s Monday game begins a new week-long series entitled, Band Mates:

This Week’s Game — January 11-15
Band Mates
Glad you’ve joined us for this week’s musical pieces. For each day, we started with the name of a famous rock band that contains at least one repeated letter. Each day’s clue is the chunk of letters between such a pair, with any spaces removed.
Example:
GSTO
Answer:
The Rolling Stones
What to Submit:
Submit the band’s name (as “The Rolling Stones” in the example) for your answer.
Monday, January 11
RLJ

Daily Bread for 1.10.16

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday will be cold, but with increasing sunshine on a day with a high of nine degrees.  Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:40, for 9h 16m 24s of daytime.  It’s a new moon, with just .4% of that natural satellite’s visible disk illuminated.

Clemson or Alabama tomorrow?  That was the FW poll question for Friday, and most respondents (68.18%) picked Alabama to win.

Here’s schedule of posts for the week ahead (if there are changes I’ll explain why):

  • Today: DB, weekly Animation
  • Monday: DB, weekly Music post, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN post, evening post
  • Tuesday: DB, new weekly feature launched, evening post
  • Wednesday: DB, weekly Film post moves to Wednesday, what accreditation means for UW-Whitewater, evening post
  • Thursday: DB, weekly Food or Restaurant post, brief remarks on Downtown Whitewater, Inc., evening post
  • Friday: DB, weekly Poll, weekly Catblogging, remarks on a sports financial-impact study
  • Saturday: DB, evening post

On this day in 1941, Pres. Roosevelt submits Lend-Lease:

On this day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program is brought before the U.S. Congress for consideration.

Roosevelt devised the Lend-Lease program as a means of aiding Great Britain in its war effort against the Germans. The program gave the chief executive the power to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of” any military resources he deemed in the ultimate interest of the defense of the United States. The idea was that if Britain were better able to defend itself, the security of the U.S. would be enhanced. The program also served to bolster British morale, as they would no longer feel alone in their struggle against Hitler.

Congress authorized the program on March 11. By November, after much heated debate, Congress extended the terms of Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, even though Stalin’s USSR had already been the recipient of American military weapons and had been promised $1 billion in financial aid.

By the end of the war, more than $50 billion in funds, weapons, aircraft, and ships were distributed to 44 countries through the program. After the war, the Lend-Lease program morphed into the Marshall Plan…

On this day in 1883, a fire kills scores in Milwaukee:

1883 – Newhall House Fire

On this date in 1883, one of America’s worst hotel fires claimed more than seventy lives when the Newhall House burned at the northwest corner of Broadway and Michigan Streets in Milwaukee. Rescued from the fire were The P.T. Barnum Lilliputian Show performers Tom Thumb and Commodore Nutt. The fire, shown here, was discovered at 4:00 a.m. on the 10th, but sources give the date variously as 1/9/1883 or 1/10/1883. [Sources: The History of Wisconsin, Vol. 3, p.452; WLHBA]

 

 

Daily Bread for 1.9.16

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a cloudy Saturday with a high of thirty-four.  Updated: Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 4:39, for 9h 15m 02s of daytime.  We’ve a new moon today.

On this day in 1975, scientists made a discovery previously-known only to residents near the Sierra Madre Mountains, in eastern Mexico: the discovery of the Mountain of Butterflies, where monarchs in North America migrate.

 

On this day in 1863, the 23rd Wisconsin sees action:

1863 – (Civil War) Battle of Arkansas Post begins

The Battle of Arkansas Post, also called Fort Hindman, began on this day near the mouth of the Arkansas River. The 23rd Wisconsin Infantry was in the thick of the action all three days.

Daily Bread for 1.8.16

Good morning, Whitewater.

Our first work week of the years ends with rain (not snow!), and a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:38, for 9h 13m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1877, Crazy Horse fights his last battle:

On January 8, 1877, General Miles found Crazy Horse’s camp along Montana’s Tongue River. U.S. soldiers opened fire with their big wagon-mounted guns, driving the Indians from their warm tents out into a raging blizzard. Crazy Horse and his warriors managed to regroup on a ridge and return fire, but most of their ammunition was gone, and they were reduced to fighting with bows and arrows. They managed to hold off the soldiers long enough for the women and children to escape under cover of the blinding blizzard before they turned to follow them.

Though he had escaped decisive defeat, Crazy Horse realized that Miles and his well-equipped cavalry troops would eventually hunt down and destroy his cold, hungry followers. On May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse led approximately 1,100 Indians to the Red Cloud reservation near Nebraska’s Fort Robinson and surrendered. Five months later, a guard fatally stabbed him after he allegedly resisted imprisonment by Indian policemen.

Here’s the Friday game in Puzzability‘s Sweet Sixteen series:

This Week’s Game — January 4-8
Sweet Sixteen
Happy 2016! For each day this week, we’ll give an eight-letter word or phrase and a trivia question. The 16-letter answer to that question (a title, name, or place) uses only the eight letters given.
Example:
HISTOGEN: What Rod Stewart song was his first U.S. #1 after “Maggie May,” five years later?
Answer:
“Tonight’s the Night”
What to Submit:
Submit the 16-letter title, name, or place (as “Tonight’s the Night” in the example) for your answer.
Friday, January 8
ORGANIST: What song about the weather from The Fantasticks was recorded by Barbra Streisand for her debut album?

 

Caffeinated Pastry’s Only a Matter of Time

Alternative title : Biophysicist-Inventor Possibly One of the Greatest Americans Ever.

Thanks to a biophysicist, caffeinated muffins could be coming soon to a coffee shop near you — and they’ll also be loaded with antioxidants. Professor Daniel Perlman of Boston-area Brandeis University has invented a coffee flour milled from par-baked green coffee beans that can be used in baked goods; a patent for the process was approved in December.

As the Boston Globe notes, a number of studies have been done in recent years focusing on the health benefits of coffee, but while many researchers agree that a few cups a day is good for you, they have yet to pinpoint what exactly is responsible for coffee’s beneficial effects — though they suspect it may have something to do with “chlorogenic acid (CGA), an antioxidant that appears to modulate how rapidly the body breaks down glucose.”

Perlman’s newly patented process involves par-baking green coffee beans at a relatively lower temperature for a short period of time, which retains the CGA that’s typically lost in the regular coffee roasting process. The resulting light-colored beans are no good for brewing and drinking, so instead, he turned them into a finely milled flour that has up to four times as much CGA as regular roasted coffee beans.

Via Newly Patented Coffee Flour Could Fuel Caffeinated Baked Goods @ Eater.

Daily Bread for 1.7.16

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’re seven days into the new year, and the seventh of those days arrives in whitewater with an even chance of rain and a mild high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:37, for 9h 12m 28s of daytime. The moon today is a waning crescent with 7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Every so often, someone will write to me and ask why the Daily Bread post often includes moments in history from other places in Wisconsin or America.  (Thanks, as always, for those questions.)  There are two reasons: first because it seems to me to be interesting, and second because I believe a hyper-local focus without daily reflection on events in faraway places leads to myopia.  Local policy is made better when one begins with a reminder of the obvious: that we are no mere place of beauty, but a place of beauty made incomparably lovelier by its connection to a continental culture and civilization.

On this day in 1945, General Montgomery unjustifiably claims credit for himself, but eleven days later Prime Minister Churchill rightly sets the record straight:

On this day, British Gen. Bernard Montgomery gives a press conference in which he all but claims complete credit for saving the Allied cause in the Battle of the Bulge. He was almost removed from his command because of the resulting American outcry….

Montgomery had already earned the ire of many American officers because of his cautiousness in the field, arrogance off the field, and willingness to disparage his American counterparts. The last straw was Montgomery’s whitewashing of the Battle of the Bulge facts to assembled reporters in his battlefield headquarters—he made his performance in the Ardennes sound not only more heroic but decisive, which necessarily underplayed the Americans’ performance. Since the loss of American life in the battle was tremendous and the surrender of 7,500 members of the 106th Infantry humiliating, Gen. Omar Bradley complained loudly to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who passed the complaints on to Churchill. On January 18, Churchill addressed Parliament and announced in no uncertain terms that the “Bulge” was an American battle—and an American victory.

On this day in 1901, Fighting Bob first takes office as Gov. La Follette:

1901 – Robert Marion La Follette Inaugurated as Governor

On this date Robert M. La Follette was inaugurated as governor after winning the November 6, 1900 election. La Follette was born in Dane County in 1855. A Wisconsin Law School graduate and three-term member of congress, La Follette was renowned for his oratorical style. He was the first Wisconsin-born individual to serve as governor.

Here’s the Thursday game from Puzzability‘s week-long Sweet Sixteen series:

This Week’s Game — January 4-8
Sweet Sixteen
Happy 2016! For each day this week, we’ll give an eight-letter word or phrase and a trivia question. The 16-letter answer to that question (a title, name, or place) uses only the eight letters given.
Example:
HISTOGEN: What Rod Stewart song was his first U.S. #1 after “Maggie May,” five years later?
Answer:
“Tonight’s the Night”
What to Submit:
Submit the 16-letter title, name, or place (as “Tonight’s the Night” in the example) for your answer.
Thursday, January 7
CORDELIA: What luxury car was appropriately developed for the manufacturer’s fiftieth anniversary?

 

Larry Wilmore of The Nightly Show on Bill Cosby’s Arraignment

 

At the conclusion of his remarks, Wilmore observes that

“Even if he doesn’t get convicted, this is still a good thing, because for too long, the women who have accused him of this crime were not being listened to, because they were being silenced by a powerful man and a complicit culture. And, now, finally, regardless of what happens next, they’re being heard. And that’s a start.”

Yes, it is.