Nimble Books LLC » Ann Arbor For Better Or Worse

Access : Q&A: The art of transmutation : Nature

Fred Zimmerman — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:50:14 +0000

There’s been a big brouhaha in Ann Arbor recently because the city’s public art fund decided to spend around $770,000 on a sculpture for the new ($47M) City Hall building. The sculpture will be by renowned storm water sculptor Herbert Dreiseitl, and advocates of the installation made much of the fact that Dreiseitl is the world’ s leader in integrating public art with proper techniques for storm water drainage.

Imagine my pleasure, then, when I saw this article in Nature about another one-of-a-kind public artist with scientific profiency.

James Acord is the only sculptor licensed to work with radioactive materials. Formally trained in nuclear physics, he tells Nature why he thinks contaminated nuclear sites should be marked for future generations and explains his obsession with the nuclear age.

via Access : Q&A: The art of transmutation : Nature.

Let’s get Mr. Acorn into Ann Arbor for a project at the decommissioned Ford Nuclear Reactor on North Campus. The budget starts at $770,000.

Borders $BGP back to its roots? (#AnnArbor @arborupdate @a2chronicle)

Fred Zimmerman — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:24:04 +0000

Given the litany of negative numbers in the rest of the article, it’s hard to believe that this will actually happen, but at least the guy’s got the right strategy.

What’s ironic is that Borders was, at one time, a world-class retailer, a pioneer in the use of information technology.

Ron Marshall acknowledged that Borders faces “lots of challenges,” but said that the company has the resources to become a world-class retailer. His vision for the chain is to return it to its roots–a chain “that caters to book lovers, where a customer will walk out smarter than when she walked in.”

via Despite Big Loss, Marshall Confident of Borders’s Future – 3/31/2009 2:23:00 PM – Publishers Weekly.

GM, Chrysler => prepackaged bankruptcy #annarbor @arborupdate @a2chronicle

Fred Zimmerman — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:00:06 +0000

I have been telling everyone on the ArborUpdate the Ann Arbor Chronicle discussion boards that this is going to happen for about six months. Now it has happened. Things aren’t looking great for the Michigan economy for the next several years. Do we really need a $770,000 piece of public art for the new $47 million city new?

U.S. stocks declined on Monday after the Obama administration said that the best chance for success for General Motors and rival Chrysler may be bankruptcy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down about 220 points. All its components were lower. GM shares, which have slumped to their lowest levels in decades in recent months, were down more by than 24% early on, falling below $3. Given the shares’ low price, however, the decline took less than 10 points off the Dow.

via Article – WSJ.com.

So much for the big Two.

wfz-admin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:34:45 +0000

That’s frightening.

The administration will put the task of revamping G.M. and Chrysler in the hands of a presidential panel led by Timothy F. Geithner and Lawrence H. Summers.

via The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia.

-13 in Ann Arbor

wfz-admin — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:36:07 +0000

It was -13 in Ann Arbor at 9 am. That is so cold! I don’t remember it ever being this cold here.

Rationale for PlasmaGate

wfz-admin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:00:14 +0000

Reason #1 is obviously bogus. The others seem ok. Procedural issues aside, this is not the stuff of high scandal.

Wheeler was wired for these TV’s so this was just finishing the installation
TV’s were needed for weather reports because Wheeler staff handled snow removal
TV’s were used for employee training (safety videos, etc) and for conference presentations. It was more convenient to have employees train at Wheeler than go to the downtown HR conference room, which also has a TV for training.
McCormick said the largest TV (first one purchased) was put in the Wellness Center because of the viewing distance. I found the Wellness Center. The TV was in front of the stationary bikes and the viewing distance appeared closer than the one in the conference rooms. If the TV encourages people to exercise and reduces health care costs it could be the best deal of the bunch.

via Arbor Update: Ann Arbor City Council Retreat Recap.

PlasmaGate Burns On

wfz-admin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:11:03 +0000

Scandal rocks Ann Arbor.

I don’t think that it’s “hateful” to question the purchase of the HDTV’s…especially when the folks that purchased them went outside of the normal procedures to buy them. Sounds like accountability more that “hatin”. Folks in government-work can’t use public funds as if they work in a privately run business. Just my two cents….and of course the opinion of the auditor.

via Arbor Update: Ann Arbor City Council Retreat Recap.

Adventures in [not very] Multicultural Living

wfz-admin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:20:30 +0000

Wow, I wish the author had spend a little less time patting herself on her back for her love of diversity, and a little more time shedding her irrational cultural prejudices.

It all started when my husband first asked me to marry him.

I said, “Under one condition, that we never live in the Midwest.”

He agreed. We got married in my parents’ backyard in California in front of 200 relatives and friends, and off we went on a four-year adventure doing anthropology and international development in Kathmandu, Nepal. Upon our return, I thought we would be heading for Berkeley, California, as planned. Imagine my surprise when he insisted that we return to Michigan “for only two, at most, three years,” while he wrote up his dissertation.

We have now been living in Michigan for 19 years.

So what to do with the children?

My children are well-educated in not only their own cultures (Chinese, Greek, American), but many cultures. We have watched Cambodian dance, played the gamelan, pounded mochi, blown a shofar, learned Thai dance, listened to stories in Arabic, performed Chinese Lion Dance and Chinese Yo-Yo, attended the symphony. We have eaten barbeque in Texas, Mexican food in California, falafel in Dearborn, dim sum in Vancouver, kalua pig in Hawaii.

[How about Metzger's and Bill Knapp's?]

With a strong sense of self and ethnic pride, my children are surprised rather than crushed whenever they encounter racist stereotypes and discrimination. They laugh, “How come those people do not know what Chinese people are really like?”

With this column, I invite you to walk with me and my four children as we go about our “Adventures in Multicultural Living.”

via The Ann Arbor Chronicle

Ann Arbor needs an open source mashup for Snow Removal Status, etc.

wfz-admin — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:54:28 +0000

After the recent Big Thread on the Ann Arbor Chronicle about snow removal status, may I suggest that the Ann Arbor online community needs a Google Maps mashup of the city where it is possible to add layers relating to various issues. E.g.

Layer 1: unshoveled sidewalks by location and date of snowfall
Layer 2: problems with garbage pickup
Layer 3: problems with Orangeburg tile

etc.

I wish I could do this, but I don’t have the skills or the time. I know it’s doable, though, and it would be a great asset to the city.

Fred

Redactive Firefox Plugin

wfz-admin — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:06:28 +0000

I have had an idea for a browser plugin cooking in the back of my mind
for a long time.

What i want to do is create a “redactor” plugin that substitutes
politically correct language (from any political perspective) for the
actual text appearing on a web page. E.g., when you see “President
Bush,” substitute “war-mongering President Bush”, when you see “meter
maid” substitute “community standards officer” (this is a real world
example from Ann Arbor!), when you see “firefighter” substitute
“fireman”, etc., etc., limited only by your ingenuity. the Web 2.0
way would be to allow people to create “redactor” profiles and share
them.

This is my rather sardonic take on the Internet’s tendency to
encourage people to talk only in their own vocabulary to their own
groups, but I think it would have an audience …

I have thought about taking an existing Firefox plugin and modifying
it but in all honesty this is probably a bit over my head.