Post 43 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.
Embedded above is a clip of a longer, 9.17.15 ‘State of the City’ address from Whitewater City Manager Cameron Clapper. The original, full address is online at https://vimeo.com/140321184.
In this clip, City Manager Clapper contends that the digester-energy project has been scaled back, and offers a claim about what that supposedly scaled-back program would look like.
I’ll not offer an assessment of these remarks, this week. Instead, it’s fair simply to embed the city manager’s discussion on waste importation. It’s true (if unsettling to a few) that more people will learn about the digester-energy project from this website than from every city presentation, video, or local news account combined.
One should use that reach fairly (although other publications, in a similar position, certainly would not): here is City Manager Clapper’s uninterrupted, recent account of the project.
Next Week: Assessing the 9.17.15 description of the project.
Monday will be sunny with a high of seventy. Sunrise is 6:31 and sunset is 4:45, for 10h 14m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 59.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
There will be a Friends of the Effigy Mounds meeting at 6:30 PM.
The Hughes H-4 Hercules (also known as the “Spruce Goose“; registration NX37602) is a prototype heavy strategic airliftmilitary transport aircraftdesigned and built by the Hughes Aircraft Company. Intended as a transatlantic flight transport for use during World War II, it was not completed in time to be used in the war. The aircraft made only one brief flight on November 2, 1947, and the project never advanced beyond the single example produced. Built from wood because of wartime restrictions on the use of aluminium and concerns about weight, it was nicknamed by critics the “Spruce Goose”, although it was made almost entirely of birch.[1][2] The Hercules is the largest flying boat ever built and has the largest wingspan of any aircraft in history.[3] It is on display, and remains in good condition at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, United States.[4]
Puzzability begins a new series for the week, entitled, ominously, All Is Lost:
This Week’s Game — November 2-6
All Is Lost
This is a week of all or nothing. For each day, we started with a word containing the letter chunk ALL and removed that chunk to get a new word or phrase. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer ALL word followed by the shorter word.
Example:
Young, inexperienced Holstein
Answer:
Callow cow
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word phrase, with the longer one first (as “Callow cow” in the example), for your answer.
Our new month begins with sunny skies and mild temperatures, with a high of sixty-one. Sunrise is 6:29 and sunset 4:46, for 10h 17m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 69.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
The third-annual FW Halloween Monster Poll asked readers their favorite monster. This year, respondents gave zombies the top spot. (It’s been a different monster leading the results each year: ghosts in 2013 (at 28.89%), vampires in 2014 (at 32.26%), and zombies this year (at 29.03%).
On this day in 1959, Jacques Plante leads a transformation of hockey:
During the 1959–60 NHL season, Plante wore a goaltender mask for the first time in a regular season game. Although Plante had used his mask in practice since 1956 after missing 13 games because of sinusitis,[30] head coach Toe Blake did not permit him to wear it during regulation play.[31] However, on November 1, 1959, Plante’s nose was broken when he was hit by a shot fired by Andy Bathgate three minutes into a game against the New York Rangers, and he was taken to the dressing room for stitches. When he returned, he was wearing the crude home-made goaltender mask that he had been using in practices. Blake was livid, but he had no other goaltender to call upon and Plante refused to return to the goal unless he wore the mask. Blake agreed on the condition that Plante discard the mask when the cut healed.[31] The Canadiens won the game 3–1. During the following days Plante refused to discard the mask, and as the Canadiens continued to win, Blake was less vocal about it.[32]The unbeaten streak stretched to 18 games.[33] Plante did not wear the mask, at Blake’s request, against Detroit on March 8, 1960; the Canadiens lost 3–0, and the mask returned for good the next night.[34] That year the Canadiens won their fifth straight Stanley Cup, which was Plante’s last.[35]
Plante subsequently designed his own and other goaltenders’ masks.[36] He was not the first NHL goaltender known to wear a face mask. Montreal Maroons‘ Clint Benedict wore a crude leather version in 1929 to protect a broken nose, but Plante introduced the mask as everyday equipment, and it is now mandatory equipment for goaltenders.[37]
Plante was one of the first goaltenders to skate behind the net to stop the puck.[30][69] He also was one of the first to raise his arm on an icing call to let his defencemen know what was happening.[30] He perfected a stand-up, positional style, cutting down the angles; he became one of the first goaltenders to write a how-to book about the position.[30] He was a pioneer of stickhandling the puck; before that time, goaltenders passively stood in the net and simply deflected pucks to defencemen or backchecking forwards.[2]
On this date George Safford Parker was born in Shullsburg. While studying telegraphy in Janesville, he developed an interest in fountain pens. In 1891 he organized the Parker Pen Company in Janesville. The company gained world-wide acclaim for innovations like the duo-fold pen and pencil. Parker served as president of the company until 1933. Parker died on July 19, 1937. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, p.280]
Here’s the ninth annual FREE WHITEWATER list of the scariest things in Whitewater for 2015. The 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 editions are available for comparison.
The list runs in reverse order, from mildly frightening to truly scary.
10. The Coming Ferret Invasion. Alternative title: The Unprepared Will Be Doomed. Earlier this year, I predicted that Whitewater would experience a massive invasion of ferrets. Why? Because I correctly guessed that New York City would not lift its ban on ferret ownership in that city. In consequence, the aggrieved, hidden ferrets of the Big Apple are sure to decamp for another location.
Whitewater, of course.
In my estimation, they were supposed to be here by mid-October, but perhaps they’re walking more slowly than I’d calculated.
In any event, there’s a way to protect ordinary, decent residents from the rodent takeover. (It’s mistaken to say that this website does not offer solutions to problems. It often does. I would also
remind officials of Whitewater that the easiest way to avoid problems is not to take actions that cause problems.)
Here’s how to protect Whitewater against thousands of invading ferrets. First, find a city official who has time on his hands. That’s the easy part. Second, station that official miles from Whitewater, in a rural location between here and the ferrets’ path. Third, as these small, voracious mammals approach, it will be the official’s job to associate a picture with food, happiness, etc., in the ferrets’ minds. That way, they will seek the location in the picture, and avoid residents’ homes and businesses. The entire advancing horde will congregate only at the location depicted in the photograph.
I’ve just the place in mind:
Problem solved.
9. Key People. I heard a presentation recently where the presenter tried to reassure others that she would seek the input of key people. There are no key people – at least not in a way that makes it worth using the term. There are only key ideas. All the rest is an attempt at flattery or an expression of insecurity.
A group of supposedly key people is no match for one ordinary man or woman with a key idea.
8. One’s Own Words. They must be scary; one hears them so seldom. There are a few who think that somehow they’re better off relying on poorly written and poorly read publications than speaking and writing on their own. That’s a mistake. Servile papers and websites will not prove enough, anymore; the readership dynamic in this city shifted irreversibly against their publications.
(Actual traffic measurements of various publications are nothing like how insiders or publishers want to portray them; realistic measurements show how far insiders’ publications have declined or stagnated, and how much others have gained. One can be very confident about the future in this regard.)
Talented people – including many officials individually – are simply throwing away their opportunities when they rely on publications markedly inferior to their own abilities.
7. Potholes. They must be scary, because we’re avoiding them, and spending more on big projects than we’d need for simple street repair.
6. Gaps. The greatest republic in human history (ours) grew in liberty and prosperity though careful examination of projects and ideas. We did not develop word-class technologies by believing ‘close is good enough’ on engineering or fiscal projects. When, however, someone asks that American standards be applied to Whitewater’s projects, officials whine that identifying gaps is unfair, nitpicking, etc.
In what society do they think they live, for goodness’ sake?
America is great, in significant part, because she – unlike foul Third World autocracies, for example – expects high standards from her leaders and their proposals.
5. Open Government & Temporary Amnesia. Every public body has a website, on which they publish every big boast, but somehow these same officials can’t seem to remember how to post key public documents prominently. They seem to forget, but only temporarily and selectively.
4. WEDC money. Not just worthless – it is – but worse: a diversion of resources from far greater needs. The many poor in this city get nothing from this money.
3. Data. Presenting scores in a realistic context is harder for Whitewater’s school administrators than facing a pack of savage wargs.
2. Filth, Scum, and the Flimsy Scheme to Bring Them to the City. I’ve a series about this, in WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN. There’s a burn-the-village-to-save it quality to waste importation as a means of revenue. (And yet, the sadness here is that the entire digester-energy project was unnecessary, and the obloquy it brings being wholly deserved for being unforced.)
1. The Ethical Indifference of Act Utilitarianism. Some of the large public institutions of this city show time and again that they care more about their reputations – and that means the reputations of their leaders – than the health and safety of their ordinary members.
The worst example of this has been the repeated downplaying of violent assaults against women on campus while touting accomplishments that cannot, ethically, matter as much as those injuries. These have been self-protective, morally empty, and ultimately futile attempts at diversion and subject-changing.
A climate like this has invited and will invite further tragedies; the worst of this, sadly, surely is not over.
We’ll have a rainy 10.31 in Whitewater, with a high of fifty. Sunrise is 7:28 and sunset 5:48, for 10h 19m 48s of daytime. The moon is waning gibbous, with 79.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Filmmakers at the The Saline Project have turned their spooky Halloween photos (shared last year at FW) into a video:
In his address, the king spoke about the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the revolutionary leaders who signed it, saying, “for daring and desperate is the spirit of those leaders, whose object has always been dominion and power, that they have now openly renounced all allegiance to the crown, and all political connection with this country.” The king went on to inform Parliament of the successful British victory over General George Washington and the Continental Army at the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, but warned them that, “notwithstanding the fair prospect, it was necessary to prepare for another campaign.”
On this date the Milwaukee Bucks claimed their first victory, a 134-118 win over the Detroit Pistons in the Milwaukee Arena. The Bucks were 0-5 at the time, and Wayne Embry led Milwaukee with 30 points. Embry became the first player in Bucks history to score 30 or more points in a regular season game. [Source: Milwaukee Bucks]
(They’re not truly bad luck, of course. In fact, they make good pets, and most shelters have a least a few black cats who would be fine additions to any family.)
Friday in our small city will be partly cloudy with a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 7:27 and sunset is 5:49, for 10h 22m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 87.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Two annual posts are on the way: this morning the third-annual Favorite Halloween Monster Poll, and tomorrow the ninth-annual Scariest Things in Whitewater post.
“The War of the Worlds” is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on Sunday, October 30, 1938, and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmakerOrson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells‘ novel The War of the Worlds (1898). It became famous for allegedly causing mass panic, although the reality of this mass panic is disputed as the program had relatively few listeners.[3]
The first two thirds of the one-hour broadcast was presented as a series of simulated news bulletins, which suggested an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show without commercial interruptions, adding to the program’s realism. Popular legend holds that some of the radio audience may have been listening to Edgar Bergen and tuned in to “The War of the Worlds” during a musical interlude, thereby missing the clear introduction that the show was a drama, but recent research suggests this only happened in rare instances.[4]:67-69
In the days following the adaptation, there was widespread outrage in the media. The program’s news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast and calls for regulation by the Federal Communications Commission.[3] The episode secured Welles’s fame as a dramatist.
1914 – First 4-H Club in Wisconsin Organized
On this date the Linn Junior Farmers Club in Walworth County was organized. This club was started five months after Congress passed the Smith-Lever Act which created the Cooperative Extension Service whereby federal, state, and county governments participate in the county agent system. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers]
Friday brings the concluding game in Puzzability‘s week-long No Tricks series:
This Week’s Game — October 26-30
No Tricks
It’s all sweet talk this Halloween week. For each day, we started with a candy brand and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for every occurrence of the letters in TREAT.
Example:
**TTER****ER
Answer:
Butterfinger
What to Submit:
Submit the candy name (as “Butterfinger” in the example) for your answer.
In the video above, Sec. Clinton tells Steven Colbert that she’d let big banks fail. There’s something in her (briefly stated) position for a libertarian to admire, although other points to doubt. (I’d not urge breaking banks up, but would surely urge government to allow large banks or businesses to fail. Clinton, admittedly, is referring to banks alone. No one, by the way, is talking about abandoning depositors’ insurance; that change is not needed to enforce market discipline in these cases.)
For Whitewater, there is also a huge irony in this: unlike so many proud, self-declared conservative officials in this town, it’s actually Sec. Clinton who here takes the position of (implicitly) favoring the market over government rescues.
Clinton’s not a conservative, of course, but the contrast shows that Whitewater’s conservative officials are almost uniformly big-government conservatives, flacking every last dime of spending they can.
A genuine, small-government conservative official in Whitewater has much in common with a needle in a haystack.
Worse, their idea of big-government is toadying to the biggest businesses in the community. Ignorant or indifferent to sound economics, and consequently disdainful of free markets, they’ve nothing but the buzzwords of so many striving, scheming new men.
Whitewater’s economic development officials will develop nothing more than bad ideas and stalerhetoric so long as they embrace economic manipulation on behalf of their favored establishments.
These town squires are so lost that the leading Democratic candidate for president, the member of a party that enthuses over economic intervention, still shows a better grasp business intervention than they do.
That’s a whole new order of being lost, an extreme condition in which even the smartest St. Bernard, with the most developed senses, would be of no help.
Thursday in town will be cloudy and windy with a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 5:26 and sunset 5:51 for 10h 25m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s city government will hold a Zoning Code Review Committee meeting at 7 PM tonight.
On this day in 1929, prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. The New York Timesreported the large declines the next day:
Stocks Collapse In 16,410,030-share Day, But Rally At Close Cheers Brokers; Bankers Optimistic, To Continue Aid
CLOSING RALLY VIGOROUS
Leading Issues Regain From 4 to 14 Points in 15 Minutes INVESTMENT TRUSTS BUY
Large Blocks Thrown on Market at Opening Start Third Break of Week. BIG TRADERS HARDEST HIT
Bankers Believe Liquidation Now Has Run Its Course and Advise Purchases
Stock prices virtually collapsed yesterday, swept downward with gigantic losses in the most disastrous trading day in the stock market’s history. Billions of dollars in open market values were wiped out as prices crumbled under the pressure of liquidation of securities which had to be sold at any price.
There was an impressive rally just at the close, which brought many leading stocks back from 4 to 14 points from their lowest points of the day.
From every point of view, in the extent of losses sustained, in total turnover, in the number of speculators wiped out, the day was the most disastrous in Wall Street’s history. Hysteria swept the country and stocks went overboard for just what they would bring at forced sale.
Puzzability‘s No Tricks series continues with Thursday’s game:
This Week’s Game — October 26-30
No Tricks
It’s all sweet talk this Halloween week. For each day, we started with a candy brand and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for every occurrence of the letters in TREAT.
Example:
**TTER****ER
Answer:
Butterfinger
What to Submit:
Submit the candy name (as “Butterfinger” in the example) for your answer.
Hundreds of costumed dogs descended on a New York City park Saturday for what was billed as the nation’s largest Halloween dog parade. Thousands of spectators mingled with about 300 four-legged contestants in Manhattan’s Tompkins Square Park. (Oct. 25)
Post 43 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.
These town squires are so lost that the leading Democratic candidate for president, the member of a party that enthuses over economic intervention, still shows a better grasp business intervention than they do.