WTF Ypsi?

By Mark | July 3, 2009

wtfypsi

[Just stumbled across this while walking the dog and thought it seemed oddly appropriate for Ypsi.... Seriously, Ypsi, what the fuck?]

Posted in Photographs, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Ypsilanti City Service Restructuring Options

By Mark | July 1, 2009

The following comes from Ypsilanti Mayor Paul Schreiber:

Dear Ypsilanti Neighbors and Friends:

Last year the city of Ypsilanti passed a balanced two-year budget to meet its economic challenges. This year’s budget preserves city staff levels and provides funding for road repair and energy conservation improvements (see tables below), but it doesn’t address the reduction in revenues for the upcoming years due to the sharp economic downturn.

Property tax revenues are expected to decrease by 8 percent in 2010, another 8 percent in 2011, and another 10 percent in 2012. State statutory revenue sharing (Michigan sales tax revenues distributed to local governments) is in jeopardy as state tax revenues drop. Ypsilanti’s police, fire, road maintenance, and administration expenditures will remain constant or increase as the city’s two highest sources of revenue decline. City council must make hard decisions that will affect the structure and delivery of services for years to come.

To inform city council and the public of the restructuring options, city staff will make cost-reduction and service-delivery presentations for police, fire, administration, and maintenance services. The dates for the public discussion of options are:

Thursday, July 9 ─ Police services
Tuesday, August 11 ─ Fire services
Tuesday, September 8 ─ Administration
Tuesday, October 13 ─ Public services (road maintenance, etc.)

All meetings will start at 7 p.m. in Ypsilanti city council chambers. I encourage everyone to attend these sessions.

The hard decisions ahead should not overshadow the recent great strides made in the city of Ypsilanti. The SPARK East small-business incubator is training people, J. Neil’s Mongolian Grille and the Keystone Martini Bar are new downtown attractions, the Hope Clinic on Harriet Street is undergoing a $3.2 million renovation, and $850,000 in grants will restart demolition at the Water Street property this year. We must continue development so that Ypsilanti can stay on track as it transforms itself from an industrial city to a city of knowledge, culture, and entertainment.

Best regards,
Paul Schreiber
Mayor, City of Ypsilanti

I know it sounds bad on the face of it, but it’s really not. For one thing, I know for certain that no police and fire personnel will be cut. If you’ll recall, the leaders of the Anti-City Income Tax movement, promised as much. I was concerned about it myself, but I was repeatedly assured that our Mayor was just using “scare tactics” when he talked of such cuts being necessary, should the tax not go through. At any rate, I just wanted to let you to know that you shouldn’t worry about that part of it. Apparently there’s lots and lots of fat to be cut in other areas. (And, yes, that was sarcasm.)

And, here, for those of you who are interested in such things, are the numbers.

ypsibudget09b

Posted in Politics, Rants, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 42 Comments

The return of America’s cities…. except Detroit

By Mark | July 1, 2009

The Census Bureau released new figures today, and they contain some good news. Apparently, after years of decline, people are reentering America’s older cities.

It only stands to reason that, as fuel prices rise, people would congregate in cities - especially cities with decent mass transportation, infrastructure and access to jobs. Unfortunately, however, it doesn’t look as though Detroit is going to be able to share in the rewards of this national trend. While other cities are growing, Detroit’s population is continuing to plummet.

Here’s a clip from today’s Detroit News, on the same census data:

…Detroit experienced the largest population drop of any city in the country in 2008, according to population estimates released Wednesday.

The numbers are not surprising: Early estimates of state and county populations showed that Michigan suffered the worst losses of any state and that Wayne County lost the most people.

Despite Detroit’s successful 2007 challenge of its population count last year, after which the U.S. Census Bureau “added” more than 47,000 to the city’s estimate, the government estimated the city lost another 4,900 people from 2007 to 2008, leaving it with 912,062. It remains the 11th largest city in the country…

And it’s not just the city of Detroit. It’s the entire state. The only other state close to matching our drop in population, from what I’ve read, is Rhode Island. They’re no doubt losing people to more successful urban areas, like Boston and New York, just like we’re losing people to Chicago. People are gravitating toward functional urban centers. And this is good news. It’s something that we should be encouraging. Not to bring everyone down, but, with the end of the cheap oil era, it’s the only way we’re going to survive. We need to encourage people to continue this new trend toward urbanization. We need to start bulldozing far-flung suburbs. And we need to start returning the areas outside of urban centers to agriculture. We know all this. What remains to be seen, though, is whether Detroit will see the benefits of this trend, along with the rest of America’s older cities. Right now, it doesn’t look as though it will. It looks as though, without a functional urban center of our own, we’ll continue losing people to Chicago, and it’s a crying shame.

It didn’t have to be like this either. We could have invested in Detroit when we had the money. We could have taken steps to diversify our economy. We could have chosen not to bury our heads in the sand concerning the twin realities of global warming and climate change. We could have elected competent officials… or, at the very least, a few that weren’t crooks. And instead of placing our most recent bet on the film industry, we could have placed it on wind power, like Utah did. While I loved having Robert DeNiro living 20 feet from my front door, I’d rather have the alternative energy industry putting down real roots, building factories, and hiring skilled workers… Sorry if I sound bitter tonight, it’s just that I hate seeing other metropolitan areas starting to grow while we continue to sit on the sidelines, making stupid move after stupid move.

OK, I should probably end on a positive note… Here it is… Although it’s true that we’re losing people, the people we do have are getting larger. So, in a way, I guess we’re kind of offsetting it, right?

Posted in Observations | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Scientific Translation Requested

By Mark | July 1, 2009

I want to send this to my father-in-law and ask him to translate it for me, but I’m afraid he’ll think I’m an even bigger loser than he thought previously.

And, yes, this is how I spend evenings when Linette is out. I troll YouTube for footage of animals with human heads.

So, if someone could translate this from Chinese, so that I don’t have to go to Linette’s dad, I’d appreciate it.

Oh, and my favorite is the trout with Bronson Pinchot’s head. I like him even better than the quail man, who we see licking his own feathers, or the octopus man, who appears to be built from liverwurst.

Posted in Mark's Life, Other | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

A proposition for Rob Reiner

By Mark | June 30, 2009

reiner

[Please feel free to distribute as you see fit]

Posted in Ann Arbor, Art and Culture, Food, Pop Culture, Special Projects | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments

Burger King, a lot to swallow

By Mark | June 30, 2009

0_21_bk_350Apparently, Burger King isn’t just making news in Ypsi today. According to FOX News, their new suck on our sandwich like it’s an enormous, throbbing cock campaign is raising eyebrows. A representative for the company has said, “Burger King Corp. values and respects all of its guests,” but some aren’t buying it. Using sex to sell greasy fat and salt patties, of course, isn’t anything new, but people seem to feel as though maybe Burger King should have stopped with their Whopper virgins campaign… At any rate, I just thought that it was funny that we forced the Ypsitucky Jamboree - a one day event - to change it’s name because it offended our delicate sensibilities, but we’re welcoming Ejaculating Cock Burger to Water Street with open arms… or should I say throats… forever.

[Thanks to Ypsiman for bringing this to my attention.]

Posted in Food, Local Business, Marketing, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Algenol Biofuels

By Mark | June 29, 2009

We haven’t talked about advances in algae-derived biofuels in a while, so I thought that I’d pass along this story about a cooperative venture between Dow Chemical and Florida’s Algenol Biofuels from today’s New York Times. I haven’t done any due diligence yet, but, on the face of it, it sounds incredibly cool. Here’s a clip:

Dow Chemical and Algenol Biofuels, a start-up company, are set to announce Monday that they will build a demonstration plant that, if successful, would use algae to turn carbon dioxide into ethanol as a vehicle fuel or an ingredient in plastics.

Because algae does not require any farmland or much space, many energy companies are trying to use it to make commercial quantities of hydrocarbons for fuel and chemicals. But harvesting the hydrocarbons has proved difficult so far.

The ethanol would be sold as fuel, the companies said, but Dow’s long-term interest is in using it as an ingredient for plastics, replacing natural gas. The process also produces oxygen, which could be used to burn coal in a power plant cleanly, said Paul Woods, chief executive of Algenol, which is based in Bonita Springs, Fla. The exhaust from such a plant would be mostly carbon dioxide, which could be reused to make more algae…

The company has 40 bioreactors in Florida, and as part of the demonstration project plans 3,100 of them on a 24-acre site at Dow’s Freeport, Tex., site. Among the steps still being improved is the separation of the oxygen and water from the ethanol. The Georgia Institute of Technology will work on that process, as will Membrane Technology and Research, a company in Menlo Park, Calif. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an Energy Department lab, will study carbon dioxide sources and their impact on the algae samples.

Algenol and its partners are planning a demonstration plant that could produce 100,000 gallons a year. The company and its partners were spending more than $50 million, said Mr. Woods, but not all of that was going into the pilot plant. The company had applied to the Energy Department for financing under the stimulus bill, but would build a pilot plant with or without a grant, he said…

It sounds like they’ve still got significant issues to work out, but I’m encouraged by the fact that Dow is involved… not necessarily because I love the company… but because it demonstrates that large corporations are finally acknowledging the fact that we’re running out of oil, and seriously investing in alternative solutions. That gives me hope.

Posted in Alternative Energy | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Totally Quotable Clementine: Biblical edition

By Mark | June 29, 2009

crossgun2

I hesitate to post this, as I think it may lead to some unpleasant calls from relatives, but apparently Clementine doesn’t know what a crucifix is. I’ve told her about Jesus, and she knows that he was a revolutionary thinker who encouraged people to take care of the poor, practice forgiveness, love thy neighbor, and any number of other equally non-intuitive and admirable things. But I guess I still haven’t gotten around to telling her about how he was brutally nailed to a cross, and how people now, for some reason, take comfort in seeing perpendicularly intersecting pieces of wood. Call me unchristian if you want to, but I don’t see how it’s the most relevant part of the story. Anyway, I’ve chosen to keep that from her. For what it’s worth, I’ve also never shown her the second half of The Sound of Music, when the Nazis stop singing and start shooting. I figure there’s plenty of time for stories about decent people getting murdered for doing the right thing, tours of hog processing plants, mentions of relatives who’ve committed suicide, and the like.

So, why am I talking about this now?

Yesterday, after a play date with some friends, when we were cleaning up, we noticed that one of them had left behind what seemed to be a Sunday school craft project, a light blue crucifix with the word “PEACE” on it. Clementine brought it over to me, and we talked about returning it to the little girl who had left it. And, at some point in the conversation, either Linette or I asked Clementine what she thought that it was. I don’t know what kind of answer we were expecting, but we didn’t foresee her saying, “Is it a gun?”

It was a weird scene there in our living room, me sitting on the couch, my daughter leveling a sideways crucifix at my chest, like it was gun and pretending to pull the trigger… It’s one of those things I should file away for that screenplay I’ll eventually write.

Posted in Mark's Life | Tagged , , , , , , , | 27 Comments

This is me a few minutes ago

By Mark | June 28, 2009

mmjuly09photo2

It’s occurred to me in the past that it would be fun to just post pictures of myself writing every night, and not the actual posts themselves…. I think it would be hilariously funny, for instance, to have photos of me blogging, with captions like, “This is me writing about an important issue coming up before City Council,” and nothing else, but I don’t think anyone else would share my enthusiasm.

Posted in Mark's Life, Photographs | Tagged | 10 Comments

On Michael Jackson passing

By Mark | June 28, 2009

I was going to post something about Michael Jackson’s passing the other day, but nothing seemed to work. I wrote for hours, but just couldn’t find the right balance. So, I’d made up my mind that I wasn’t going to post anything at all. Then, today, I stumbled across a video of 11 year old guitar prodigy Sungha Jung playing Billy Jean, and it occurred to me that it would make a simple, fitting farewell for an insanely talented, yet very troubled man… Here’s hoping that he finds peace, and that maybe we as a culture learn something from his passing about the fine line between childhood fame and child abuse.

Posted in Art and Culture | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments