FREE WHITEWATER

Waste Digesters

Saying and Believing Anything

Adam Serwer, writing on Twitter in response to a series of distortions from the conservative Federalist website, states plainly the truth of Trump-supporting lies: There is no incentive to correct because the targeted audience will believe anything pro-Trump they are told, whereas acknowledging error would signal weakness and insufficient devotion to the Great Leader. Yes,…

Junk Reasoning Isn’t Simply a Problem at the Top

Helena Bottemiller Evich reports ‘It feels like something out of a bad sci-fi movie’ (‘A top climate scientist quit USDA, following others who say Trump has politicized science’): One of the nation’s leading climate change scientists is quitting the Agriculture Department in protest over the Trump administration’s efforts to bury his groundbreaking study about how…

Wagon-Circling Versus Persistence 

I’ve posted before about the unraveling of medical-diagnostics startup Theranos, and founder Elizabeth Holmes, now revealed as a multi-billion-dollar fraud. See, previously, Theranos as a Cautionary Tale. The story has useful lessons even for small-town Whitewater. I’ll illustrate one of those lessons today. There’s a thorough update of Theranos’s dodgy claims now online at Vanity Fair.…

Development

Post 69 in a series. Two weeks ago, I posted a simple question about Whitewater’s former Hawthorn Mellody milk plant: “If there had been no milk processing plant in Whitewater, would the city have constructed digester capacity as large as it now has, for importing waste into the city from other locations?” That’s seemingly a…

‘A Truck Loop Specified for Heavy Truck Traffic’

Post 60 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 mentioned that I would look at a few more aspects of Whitewater’s 12.15.15 meeting on wastewater upgrades and…

The Contentions Made in a Single Meeting

Post 59 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. On 12.15.15, Whitewater, Wisconsin considered both upgrades to her wastewater facility and as part of those claimed upgrades a…

Answering Three Questions

Post 58 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 received an email over the weekend which posed a few questions about this series (and then veered into…

The Water Problems in Wisconsin

Post 57 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 promised to begin reviewing by the particulars of a 12.15.15 discussion of waste importation. I’ll hold off to…

Boo! Scariest Things in Whitewater, 2015

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,…

The Not-So-Technical-After-All Memo

Post 42 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. The Donohue firm describes its memoranda about a wastewater upgrade as technical memoranda. Waste importation is described in Technical…

The Pilot Program

Post 39 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. (Every question in this series has a unique number, assigned chronologically based on when it was asked. All the…

Cold Fusion Research Wasn’t Bad Because It Was a Budget Buster

There’s a brief discussion at the end of Whitewater City Manager Clapper’s state of the city address from 9.17.15 that comes to mind this morning. (I’ll get to the substance of his specific remarks about a digester-energy project another time.) For today, I’ve a different perspective to offer. Consider this question: was cold fusion a…