Damn Arbor highlights the fact that Washtenaw County showed the largest increase in Facebook profile photo changes this week, using the red and pink “equal” sign to support marriage equality. The changes were analyzed by Eytan Bakshy on the Facebook Data Science Team. The Human Rights Campaign had urged Facebook users to change their profile photos on Monday, March 25, as the U.S. Supreme Court began debating two same-sex marriage cases. [Source]
Editor’s note: This column appears regularly in The Chronicle, roughly around the third Wednesday of the month.
David Erik Nelson
Listen: Today I’m hoping to convince you that our opinions are largely a cost with no corresponding benefit, and that the vast bulk of these opinions are unaffordably expensive.
We’re in Ann Arbor, where any two folks seem to have at least three opinions on a given topic, so I don’t imagine this is going to go super well, but hear me through.
Before you rush to the comments, I wish to assure you that I am indeed aware of the irony of writing an opinion column about how opinions are maybe something that we shouldn’t reflexively whip out like Glocks in a cop film.
And, if that lil proviso doesn’t give you pause, maybe this should: The opinions I share today are the result of about 18 months of meditating on the underlying costs and benefits of sounding off; if you’ve likewise spent a year-and-a-half working through this, then please chime in.
If you’re jumping to the comments to put me in my place, I invite you to take a few minutes, maybe an hour, or maybe, I dunno, 550 days or so to stew on this before giving me a piece of your mind. I’m not coming to this lightly or flippantly, which is apropos, because it’s the way we rack up opinion debt with such spendthrift flippancy that’s costing us so dearly. [Full Story]
A recent Tweet by the Nonprofit Enterprise at Work (NEW), commenting on Wednesday's Cultural Alliance meeting.
The newly renovated and expanded University of Michigan Museum of Art is a social place: Tuesday night, several hundred people attended a kick-off fête for the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, while Wednesday brought members of the Cultural Alliance of Southeastern Michigan together for their annual meeting. The focus of Wednesday’s day-long event was also social, as in social networking – specifically, how nonprofits can use social media like blogs, Twitter and Facebook to fundraise, market and strengthen their organization.
Being social animals ourselves, The Chronicle dropped by both events, but was able to spend a bit more time at the Cultural Alliance forum, which was well represented by Ann Arbor groups, including the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, University Musical Society and Arts Alliance, among others. [Full Story]
