y p s i ~ d i x i t
Motto: "You must realize that until you have thrown off your bourgeois shackles and enjoyed a leisurely smoke while letting a Giant African Snail determine your cadence, you have not begun to demonstrate what has been lost to expertization." --L.F.

Who: Laura
Where: Ypsilanti, MI
What: Ypsi, Iraq, windfarm dumping
When: Aug. 7, 1967
Whence: Mt. Clemens, MI
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2004-08-02-9:33 p.m.: UP IN ARMS are residents of the neighborhood of 7 Mile and Telegraph. A proposal to build a Home Depot, Starbucks, and other retail in their neighborhood was approved by the Detroit Planning Commission and will soon go before the Detroit City Council for approval.

Here's the bit in this 8/1/2004 Free Press/News story that got my attention: "At least 81 homes must be demolished or relocated to vacant lots in other parts of the city to make way for construction."

Wait just a second, there. Am I to conclude that a municipality's power of eminent domain includes...destroying private property to put up crappy retail?

The GM Poletown plant was bad enough. Do private property owners have any remaining rights at all? Do these families actually have to sacrifice their homes and neighborhoods for...a cheesy coffee shop? That is completely and horribly wrong.

Detroit City ombudsman contact info: (313) 224-6000 (general complaint line) (313) 224-1911 (fax) or email [email protected]

2 comments--add a comment

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2004-08-02-7:48 p.m.: AMAZON.COM IS BATTENING DOWN THE HATCHES on its reader-review option, due to widespread abuse of the system by authors praising their own or their buddies' books, or people seeking to discredit an author. You may remember that the largely talent-free but canny McSweeney's founder and critics' lapdog Dave Eggers was exposed puffing his pal's book. Then there's the lambasting of enemies, which sometimes backfires--the dry, scathing reviews here immediately made me curious about the book.

I hope such entertaining prank reviews still squeeze through Amazon's new off-putting requirement-filter of providing a credit card # before submitting a review. Besides, we weren't fooled in the first place--it's usually clear, to anyone with a functioning brain, which reviews are discreditable--weighty lauds for some anemic postmodern drivel or semi-literate gushing over maudlin dreck by that "Bridges of Madison County" guy.

(via reason magazine).

0 comments--add a comment

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2004-08-01-9:09 p.m.: the sulphur yellow and cinnamon brown of black-eyed susans,
the pop and crackle of bratwurst and potato kebabs sizzling on the grill,
the heavy perfume of buddleia,
the excited yell of "Nina, Nina!" from a next-door neighbor's granddaughter just about to venture into the pool,
warm water sloshing around sandaled feet walking through a puddle,
the loud saw-buzz of cicadas high in the trees,
a yellow tiger-swallowtail butterfly and a monarch visiting flowers,
the brassy midday sun finally yielding to a pink sunset with just the treetops sunlit, and darkness gathering below,
a glass of wine on the patio,
windows open all night,
the whirr of crickets till dawn...
mmmmm, summer.

4 comments--add a comment

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2004-08-01-8:55 p.m.: BOOKS READ: "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Gets Wrong" by James Loewen.

This multiple-award-winning book is a well-written, engaging, eye-opening look at the selective biases inherent in American high school history textbooks. The author presents numerous examples of provocative bits of history that go unrecorded in the official "party line," such as Helen Keller's radical socialism or the Constitution's roots in the Iroquois League. Gripping reading, informative, and a superb reminder to apply critical thinking to such political texts as history books. Highly recommended!

"Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book." --Howard Zinn.

2 comments--add a comment

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2004-08-01-8:35 p.m.: HUMMINGBIRD: Ypsidixit watched raptly as a tiny thumb-sized hummer flitted around the backyard purple buddleia bush. I crept up to it at .003 mph and noted its iridescent green back, short, brownish tail, black curved beak, grey breast, and brown wings. As I crept closer suddenly the hummer took note of me, perhaps because I was wearing a red T-shirt. I froze and it hummed towards me, inspecting me from all angles from a distance of 6". Its thrumming buzzed in my ear: "vrrrmmmm, vrrrmmmm." It was just like that scene from the movie Dune when that guy's in the room & the motion-detecting cigar-sized lethal flying syringe thing comes out of the wall & checks him out as he stands there desperately motionless. Remember that? That's how I felt during today's hummingbird inspection.

My bird book has gone AWOL but I'll guess this was a juvie ruby-throated?

3 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-31-1:01 a.m.: [WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT]: VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR member John Kerry, speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971 [he didn't become a senator till 1984]:

"Over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia...[many troops] had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up he power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."
--John Kerry, quoted in James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong p. 239.

Kerry admits to war crimes, (Quicktime mp3; note weird editing blip after "machine guns") including participation in free-fire zones and the burning of villages, that violate the Geneva Conventions.

Ypsidixit, an Independent voter who is not a Bush fan, to put it mildly, notes that Kerry prides himself on his nuanced, non-black-and-white view of things. So, honoring that spirit of nuance, she's keeping in mind that there's more to Kerry's story than flag-waving for a war hero.

0 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-30-9:00 p.m.: X-RAYS WERE A BIG POP CULTURE FAD in the late 1890s. Not just for medical applications--for fun!

After the discovery of X-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen, this novel technology became a popular pastime. There were studios where people could obtain their "bone portrait." "Soon every house will have a cathode-ray machine," one fan enthused.

X-rays damage cells, and several early X-rayers suffered [WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTO] from radiation-related diseases, or horrible malformations of the equipment-holding hand.

As late as the late 40s and early 50s, it was common to have X-ray mini-modules in shoe stores (pictured, at left). You'd put your shoed foot in and the X-ray would supposedly show how well it fit. Note the 3 viewing portals...for you, the salesman, and...an interested passerby? The last shoe store X-ray device was discovered in a West Virginian store in 1981--still in use--and removed to a museum.

5 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-30-12:37 p.m.: THE YPSI LIBRARY has put Internet filters into place, after a protracted battle.

So much for my ornithology paper.

10 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-29-11:30 p.m.: STATE QUESTIONS BRENDA STUMBO'S ELECTION MAILINGS: Stumbo's office recently mailed absentee ballots to Ypsi Twp. residents. In a separate mailing, she mailed materials that included a copy of the ballot with her people highlighted. The state is looking at this tactic closely. Ypsidixit thinks this is technically OK--God forbid that anyone were dumb enough to vote for anyone because some stupid junk mail told them to.

4 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-29-9:22 p.m.: THE NOMINEES' BIKES: Bush rides a $3,100 Trek Fuel 98 mountain bike with front and rear suspension. This light, fast cross-country bike is generally well-rated--jiminy, at 3 grand I'd hope so--but said to be a bit high-maintenance. Kerry rides a custom $8,000 Serotta Ottrott (as well as another $5,000 bike). The award-winning Ottrott is a top of the line competition road racing bike. Now, these gentlemen move in a different circle than you or me. Yet both purchases seem just a tad overdone for two recreational riders. Like her hardy pioneer forefathers, Ypsidixit doesn't leave home without her vise grip and key ring of Allen wrenches, and believes in not riding a bike too complex that you can't fix everything yourself--but to each their own.

Here's a dry little article from the world's best newspaper about Bush's bike jaunts.

6 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-29-6:37 p.m.: FEELING PEPPY? How about a 13-hour "adventure race" that involves 40 miles of biking, 30 miles of hiking, and 6 miles of canoeing? Last weekend in Brighton Recreation Area, participants clambered up a 50-foot cargo net, swam through a mucky pond, piled mountain bikes in canoes, and flew down a rope on a pulley. These people are tough. One person rope-pulleying smacked into a tree. "It slowed me down for a few minutes," she said. "But it's the kind of thing you just walk off." Phew.

2 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-29-8:37 a.m.: "IT'S ELECTION NIGHT, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.
"When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.
"This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel...in Los Angeles City Beat." The rest of the article. The L.A. City Beat story.

2 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-28-10:12 p.m.: BRITAIN IS CONTEMPLATING VACCINATIONS that would "inoculate" babies against future drug use. EXCERPT: "Doctors believe the childhood jab would block the euphoric effects of drugs later in life, rendering useless narcotics such as heroin and cocaine." Ypsidixit, who doesn't use drugs outside of occasional wine and beer, and who recognizes the many corrosive effects of drugs, nevertheless finds this plan so wrong on so many levels that she's well-nigh speechless. Story.

9 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-28-7:38 p.m.: IN WARTIME, with awful stories streaming out of the radio and saddening pictures in the paper daily, the bike ride to work has unexpectedly become a soul-healing sanctuary.
Cruise down Forest, over the tracks, up into the deserted EMU campus. Through empty side streets and into the cool leafy bird-filled green tunnel behind the stadium. Down Hewitt to St. Joe�s and a quiet cruise across its campus, then the slightly unnerving gravel-filled stretch down to Dixboro. Zoom down Dixboro into the best part, the Gallup Park stretch. Here I�ve been watching the sumac grow berries and the teasel bloom the past few weeks. I like to stop in the little loop between the dam and Huron River Drive and have a drink of water and look at the sun twinkling on the river. Then on through the gaggles of Canadian geese eating grass, past the soccer bots in the Fuller fields, and down the hill to the Gandy Dancer, then up to Kerrytown. It is so restful a time that I was sorry, coming home today, that the Gallup stretch was finite. I just wanted to keep rolling and rolling on and on over an endless summer path, surrounded by green and watching a hawk slowly circling under piled serene white clouds.

7 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-28-12:44 p.m.: THE NEW TRAIL going in behind St. Joe's is part of a larger trail that eventually will stretch from one side of the county to the other. Pretty soon bikers will be able to travel from Ford Lake to Dexter without braving car traffic. Nice! Story.

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2004-07-27-6:24 p.m.: MICHAEL MOORE is to appear on Bill O'Reilly's show tonight on FOX at 8 & 11 p.m. Ypsidixit has no TV but hopes to be filled in by kind readers (as if there were any doubt as to how it'll turn out).

3 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-27-3:05 p.m.: TRANSCRIPT of Clinton's stirring, moving, brilliantly written speech from last night. Other transcripts from the DNC.

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2004-07-27-12:20 p.m.: MICHIGAN Department of Labor and Economic Development director David Hollister stopped by Ypsi yesterday as the first stop on a 20-city tour to get a closer look at the "Cool Cities" grant-winning cities. "We're impressed with the vision in Ypsilanti," he said. EXCERPT: "Hollister said there will be more grants available and Ypsilanti will be used as a model for cities that want to participate in the project." Story.

4 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-27-8:22 a.m.: IF YOU THINK a part-time job working with rocks would be fun, you're in luck. Ypsi's best rock shop, WORLD OF ROCKS, is hiring. "Interested parties must enjoy rocks." 481-9981.

6 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-26-11:18 p.m.: ONE MORE REASON WHY YPSIDIXIT IS GRATEFUL that she's been without TV for the past 2 years: the Brits are coming out with a new reality TV series that pits 2 guys against each other to see who has the fastest sperm. Both enjoy relations with a woman, and then hi-tech medical photography lets lucky viewers see the valiant sperm battling towards the blushing egg. Lovely.

One detractor from this inspired idea complains, "If the child learns that he or she was fathered, not out of love, but for the purposes of a TV programme, that's extremely psychologically damaging." Oh, really?

8 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-26-10:37 p.m.: THE "REMOVE EMU REGENTS" PETITION is up to 284 signatures as of Monday night! Question: when will it be sent to Granholm, and who's in charge of it? When's the cutoff for sending the petition, if any? Is it better to just alert Granholm to the ongoing accumulation of signatures? I see the phone # on the page & will call tomorrow to find the answers to these questions.

2 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-26-9:37 p.m.: WE'RE LIVING IN ONE OF THE 28 areas designated by the government as "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas." Southeast Michigan (Washtenaw, Wayne, Macomb, Oakland, and also Allegan, Genesee, Kalamazoo, Kent, and Van Buren counties) is swimming in drugs.

Some comes in on Canadian trucks hauling trash into our landfills. Some comes in on the over one million boats in MI--many spots between Canada and MI are less than half a mile apart. Some comes in through Metro Airport.

Once it's here, here are the going rates in Detroit: $10-$50 for a rock of crack, $10 for a hit of heroin, 50 cents to $1.50 for a milligram of Oxycontin, $750-$1,300 for an ounce of cocaine. There are reports of some dealers trading the coveted Canadian marijuana "BC Bud" pound for pound with cocaine. And Southwest MI is a hotspot for meth labs. More info. With the exception of the relatively harmless pot, Ypsidixit is sad to see the entrenched nature of the MI drug trade.

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2004-07-26-6:03 p.m.: THERE ARE TWO INSTANCES of RFID CHIP TECHNOLOGY in my life. One RFID chip in my work pass lets me unlock the door just by holding my bikebag up to the reader, which can read the chip through two layers of wallet, a pile of stuff in my bag, and the bag's thick fabric. The other example is a chip implanted in my dog's neck by the Humane Society. If Clover gets lost & winds up at the shelter, they can read the chip & trace it to me.

Convenient--till you reflect that there's talk of implanting these chips, which are the size of a grain of pepper, into clothing and a range of products. Any store or agency with a reader can read the chip hidden in someone's new jacket or shoe, and, given a database of purchases and RFID-enabled credit cards, can conceivably tell who's coming or going.

The Army has ordered suppliers to have the technology in place by 2005, in the thought that RFID technology will streamline inventory control (the way barcodes were supposed to do). Maybe. But there's a bit too much potential for abuse here in my view. Story.

2 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-26-1:26 p.m.: BIKE MAP INFO: I deleted an entry just as Mark Maynard commented on it. Sorry to delete you Mark! You asked, "Do you happen to know if there exists an up to date map of all the bike trails in our area?" Yes, there is a good one showing the Ann Arbor-Ypsi area on one side and the whole county on the other. Made in 2001, it's available for free (although it's printed with "$2") at Ann Arbor's rec center at Washtenaw at Platt, and at the AA Parks administrative offices right next door to the rec center.

3 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-26-8:47 a.m.: WOULD YOU BELIEVE yet another street brawl in Ann Arbor? What is WRONG with these people? In other Police Beat news, a burglar swipes "some cans," and a robber in Saline gets a smackdown from alert residents.

5 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-24-11:19 p.m.: BITTERWAITRESS.COM'S database of miserly tippers includes one waitress's scathing account in Ann Arbor. More bad tippers in MI. And the whole database.

Ypsidixit sticks by the 20% rule for anyone who provides a personal service--the waitress at Abe's, hair lady at Modern Shades. Ypsidixit steadfastly ignores all tip jars in coffee shops (and refuses to refer to those people as "baristas") and to-go restaurants, viewing them as unwarranted. EXCEPTION: I feed the tip jar in Mysore Woodlands since the people there are so consistently nice. Ypsidixit wonders what you think the unwritten tipping rules are.

15 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-24-9:55 p.m.: WHO NOT TO VOTE FOR FOR YPSI TWP CLERK: Samantha Adkins-Buescher, running for clerk in the August elections, has a criminal past. She gave a phony license [presumably a nursing license] to Corner Health Clinic and worked there as a nurse. After the license was found to be fake, she was fired. Hope her former patients were not injured by her lack of qualifications.

EXCERPT: "She said she pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor because she was charged with a felony and she wanted to save her security guard license. Otherwise, she would have fought the charges and prevailed, she said."

Nonsense. If it had been unambiguous that she was in the right, she would have gone to trial for the felony charge. The bit about saving her security license is dubious at best. I don't think we need this sort of duplicitous person for Ypsi Twp. clerk. Story.

9 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-23-12:43 p.m.: I TOOK THE PLUNGE and bought the Easy Racer Sport, and I LOVE it! (Scroll down to see a picture--mine's black). This is one super-sweet bike. I've been biking for three hours since I got it, and I'm not tired or sore in the least (the 1-hour AA-Ypsi commute kinda wiped me out on my wedgie). It handles like a dream, is much faster than my old bike, and it elicited lots of approving comments in Riverside Park, where they're setting up for the Beer Festival. It is so fun to ride that after installing a kickstand & bell I'm going to pack a picnic & head off to Gallup Park just for the sheer fun of riding this wonderful bike. Bicycles in Town gave me a huge discount on this beauty--by far the lowest price of all the shops I checked out--and when I went back later to buy the bell they dropped everything & offered instant excellent service as always. If you ever have some spare time, stop by BIT and give the Easy Rider Sport a test-bike just for fun...you might end up falling in love with it as I did.

12 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-22-9:18 p.m.: When three Army soldiers died in January, Jennifer Granholm ordered Michigan flags to be lowered to half-staff. When Army sergeant Aaron Elandt died on July 19, this past Monday, I heard no similar plea in the media from Granholm. I noticed that, and noticed the lack of lowered flags around town. Granholm actually signed an order last December specifying the lowering of flags every time a Michigan soldier is killed. Did you hear Granholm asking Michigan residents to lower flags for Sgt. Elandt this past Monday? I didn't, and I listen to NPR on WUOM for eight hours every day at work. Puts me off from dallying at the Art Fair tomorrow, even though I have a day off.

One list of the 28 Michigan soldiers killed in Iraq includes Lila Lipscomb's son Michael Petersen, killed April 2, 2003.

11 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-22-8:55 p.m.: ARMY PERSONNEL CAN GET FREE BREAST ENLARGEMENTS, nose jobs, and liposuction on the taxpayer's dime. Recruitment tool? Oh, no. The Army says it's so that their surgeons can get needed practice. Bull. Practice for what? Reconstruction surgery for a soldier injured in the face is a completely different field from giving a nose job. CNN reports that between 2000 and 2003, the Army performed 496 breast enlargements and 1,361 liposuctions on soldiers and dependents. The New Yorker will have an article on it next week. The story in the Globe and Mail.

0 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-22-6:30 p.m.: VACATION IDEA: Bolivian piranha-fishing.

EXCERPT FROM ONE VACATIONER'S REPORT: "It's not how you catch the piranha but how you reel it in," [the fishing guide] explains sagely. "Do it wrong and he'll 'ave your finger off with his last breath."

The trip's low, low price of only $399 includes meals (hopefully you're not one of them).

0 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-21-8:27 p.m.: FRESH-FACED 27-YEAR-OLD NEW JERSEY dating coach and event planner "Blaire"--yes, there is such a thing as a dating coach, apparently--wants to get married by the end of the year. So she launched the website "Do You Know My Husband?" Don't miss the "Not My Husband" link, which includes rejectee photos.

2 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-21-6:41 p.m.: IMPROVING THE SHOOT-TO-KILL RATE: After Gettysburg, "27,574 muskets were recovered from the battlefield. Of these, an astonishing 90% were still loaded, and 6000 contained from three to ten rounds." Lots of soldiers, unable to bring themselves to kill, faked it.

During WWI, so many soldiers deliberately fired high that an officer wielding a sword would walk behind the trenches, yelling at soldiers to stop aiming above the enemy's heads.
During WWII, 15-20% of frontline soldiers actually shot at the enemy, a figure based on a military historian-journalist's interviews with thousands of survivors.
Alarmed at this statistic--and clearly taking the research seriously--the Army switched from using bulls-eyes for firing practice to human-shaped targets that fell when hit.
During the Korean War, 50% of soldiers shot at the enemy.
During Vietnam, the rate rose to 95%. The whole article.

0 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-21-12:57 p.m.: BIKE UP l'Alpe d'Huez the easy way--via photos taken by a biker. Note micro guard rails!

0 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-21-12:40 p.m.: READER QUESTION: A kind reader posted a question way down there in a comments section, so I thought I'd post it here:

"How can I get people involved or at least generate interest in organizing a grass roots campaign to remove the board of regents from EMU. Quite serious about this endeavor, and in light of the recent articles in the A2 news, I think this is long overdue. Any pointers? S"

28 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-20-7:27 p.m.: THE ANNUAL BULWER-LYTTON AWARDS FOR BAD WRITING have been published. Pick your favorite. Mine:

"The cat's whiskers twitched like the wings of a butterfly, not a large butterfly like a monarch, but a small one, like an Eastern Pine Elfin, which camouflages wonderfully with the bark of trees, not just pine trees, but also elm trees, whose slender twigs wave in the early spring breeze, looking like the twitching whiskers of the cat, which I have just mentioned."

2 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-20-6:15 p.m.: LINDA RONSTADT KICKED OUT OF ALADDIN CASINO IN LAS VEGAS AFTER DEDICATING A SONG TO MICHAEL MOORE: After Ronstadt dedicated "Desperado" to Moore, a quarter of the audience walked out. The dedication "angered some Aladdin guests who spilled drinks, tore down posters and demanded their money back, said casino spokeswoman Sara Gorgon. "We had quite a scene at the box office," she said. Story.

3 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-20-12:29 p.m.: TODAY'S COLORFUL POLICE BEAT features a semi-nude biker on the Diag, a human biting, and in the poor judgment department (not that semi-nude public biking is good judgment) a guy took, straight from the bus stop to his apartment, a lady he met on the Internet--things didn't turn out too well.

3 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-19-11:24 p.m.: AFTER THE STRENUOUS BLOOMFEST OF JUNE, the garden plants seem to have be pausing to draw a breath. Lots of black-eyed susans and gloriosa daisies, tiny pods forming on the milkweeds, and as a bonus I ate a handful of cherries off the sand cherry shrubs today. Asiatic lilies are fading, daylilies still faithfully blooming, Shasta daisies are going...and buddleia are making fragrant purple plumes of flowers. Some volunteer sunflowers sprouted from birdseed, surrounding the feeders, are blooming. Tomatoes golfball sized, hibiscus in full force. What's blooming in your garden?

13 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-19-12:08 p.m.: IS ANN ARBOR becoming a city of street brawls? On top of the recent Bird brawl, there was a brawl last night at Touchdown Cafe, and also a "large street fight" involving a guy in a Superman suit in front of a houseparty. Bonus: a car-exiting, spitting, screaming episode of duck-induced road rage. Police beat stories.

11 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-19-1:42 a.m.: LEFT I ON THE NEWS points out (scroll down to "Washington Post scoops the Onion") that the Bush team has a handy new color-coded system to monitor who's welshing out in Iraq:

"To track commitments, the Bush administration keeps a color-coded chart of coalition members: red for countries withdrawing, yellow for nations considering, and green for countries staying."

Left I notes, "I guess a color-coded "threat" system and a color-coded "coalition of the fleeing" system is quite appropriate for a President for whom My Pet Goat is quite possibly the longest thing he's read since he's been presdient" [note: possibly not true: he read that dopey Da Vinci Code, allegedly].

4 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-19-1:21 a.m.: ANN ARBOR-BASED JOURNALIST Dave Enders reports that it's 130 degrees in Iraq & that he's adopted the Iraqi habit of taking a nap between 2 p.m. & nightfall.

0 comments--add a comment

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2004-07-19-12:54 a.m.: TIRED OF SEMI-RECUMBENT-BIKE POSTS YET? No? OK--well, after frenzied research and a slew of phone calls, I've narrowed down the search for a commuter bike to this lovely model, the Easy Racer Sport. It's better than other semi-recumbents on hills, it's fast, and it looks cool. Best of all, it's available at Bicycles in Town on Michigan Ave. BIG SURPRISE: Ann Arbor bike shop Two Wheel Tango had never *heard* of semi-recumbents. You'd think they'd be at the forefront of this trendy trend, with a zillion models available. Nope. Not one ("but we might be able to special-order"--no thanks). Meanwhile Ypsi is swimming in semi-recumbents. Draw your own conclusions. Review of the Easy Racer Sport.

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2004-07-19-12:18 a.m.: COP ZAPPER STOPS CARS COLD: British and U.S. police are rolling out a new device that beams a powerful radio wave at a suspect's car, knocking out the computer system and stalling the car. It'll work for most cars less than a decade old (vintage looks better and better). Ypsidixit wonders who pays for fixing the fried computer (or, possibly, cardiac pacemaker) if the driver's innocent, and guesses that "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't mean the cops can't trash your car regardless, the possible reduction of high-speed chases notwithstanding.

(via the guardian).

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