UM prof Jeff Liker, best know for his book “The Toyota Way” is quoted today in a Bloomberg News article about the Japanese automaker’s plans to build its Prius in the U.S. “They bet wrong on the truck market,” Liker says of Toyota’s previous decision to build the Highlander SUV stateside. “They’ve been really good about not screwing up like that in the past.’” [Source]
GayWired.com reports that author Bradley Fowler has filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District Court of Ann Arbor, charging that two Christian publishers altered text in the Bible – changes that make homosexuality a sin. This story originally appeared in the Grand Rapids Press on Wednesday. [Source]
On her relatively new blog, local artist Jill Wagner posts a watercolor painting of an Alber Road farm: “The last couple of weeks I have been wandering around the back roads painting the beautiful old farmsteads in our area,” she writes. “I want to capture them before they become subdivisions filled with tract housing. This farm was pretty ricketty but scenic just the same…” [Source]
An Associated Press article, published in the Detroit News and elsewhere, reports that the man who scaled up The New York Times building on Wednesday was David Malone, who “dropped out of the University of Michigan in 1995 to study al-Qaida full-time. He wore a ragged black Ann Arbor T-shirt during his climb.” [Source]
Debbi Snook posts a review of Ann Arbor as a weekend getaway on The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s travel blog. “College is this city’s year-round business, which keeps the idealistic culture continuously flowing,” she writes. “Spring and summer bring the bigger festivals, fewer students and more parking spaces.Thank goodness for more parking in this densely metered little city. Bring lots of loose change – of the pocket and of the mind.” [Source]
Several papers, including the Chicago Tribune, picked up AP’s article on Olympic contender Erik Vendt filing a countersuit in a some bizarre swimwear litigation. Vendt is a swimmer who trains in Ann Arbor. He’d been sued by the California firm TYR Sport for breaking a contract when he decided to wear a competitor’s swimsuit. [Source]
Get a glimpse of the detailed rules for RC (radio control) dirt racing in this HobbyTalk entry by the owner of Washtenaw RC Raceway. The raceway is actually built at the Washtenaw Farm Council grounds, and races begin in mid-November (yes, there’s a long lead time). [Source]
The Freep’s Word of Mouth column reports that Eve Aronoff, owner of Eve the Restaurant in Ann Arbor, will be cooking dinner at the James Beard House in Greenwich Village next month. It’s a prestigious invitation-only opportunity, according to columnist Sylvia Rector, who saysthe five-course meal will feature corn pudding and Moroccan-spiced scallops with carrot-lime puree and crème fraiche. [Source]
Chris Easthope’s car does, in fact, have a perfectly centered Easthope for Judge bumper sticker;
at Washtenaw Dairy, the well-dressed investing consultant gets harsh sartorial critique: “Did your kids buy you that shirt for your B-day?”
We’ve finally arrived at the rose garden stage of gardening,” Ann Arbor’s 20 Minute Gardener writes today. “I used to think that only gardeners with a certain amount of experience and maturity could grow roses. It seems that we’ve arrived at this point, after 25 years of gardening, sort of by surprise– a little bit like the surprise one feels when one finally concedes that perhaps one is middle-aged.” [Source]
Sancho Panza reveals a secret on the A2 District Library blog: “I must admit, I’m one of those people who loves the Art Fairs. I love the crush of people downtown, the car-free streets at nighttime, the fair food, and especially the sale where you get to dig through boxes of cheap clothes at Urban Outfitters. Even art on a stick makes my heart go pitter-patter.” [Source]
In today’s Freep, UM business prof Scott DeRue has this comment on Mitt Romney as a potential McCain VP: “The challenge for vice presidents is: Can they check their ego at the door and support and promote the president’s decisions and agenda? Romney has the persona and looks the part, but if you go back to their discourse and the way they engaged each other, neither of them looked very presidential during those debates because of how they were attacking each other.” [Source]
The Los Angeles Times Health column reports on a new UM study that says you’ll be less likely to fracture your hip if you learn to fall like a sky diver. [Source]
Catherine Lord, director of UM’s Autism and Communication Disorders Center, is interviewed in a Wall Street Journal article today about new technologies used to diagnose autism. [Source]
Myra Klarman, the “official” Top of the Park photographer, posts some stunning photos from this year’s event. She credits some new equipment – a Nikon D3 – as helping with some of the low-light shots. [Source]
Science News magazine posts an article about dopamine research, including work by Kent Berridge, a UM neuroscientist and psychologist studying how dopamine affects emotional responses. [Source]
The Freep covers the campaign to end Michigan’s ban on embryonic stem cell research, quoting UM’s Sean Morrison about the need for lifting the prohibition. Morrison is director of the UM’s Center for Stem Cell Biology. [Source]
A UM researcher is highlighted in a US News & World Report article on the dangers of childhood obesity leading to adult diabetes. Joyce Lee is a pediatric endocrinologist at the university’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, and her recent research is also featured in the July issue of Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. [Source]
Doug Fox, owner of Ann Arbor Automotive, tells the Detroit News that 2008 sales for his four dealerships are better than last year. It’s not surprising to learn that he sells Misubishi, Kia, Hyundai and Nissan, not Ford or GM vehicles. Says Fox: “There is a definite shift occurring away from pickup trucks and larger sport utility vehicles, and the shift is coming our way.” [Source]
Best imagined description of Ann Arbor in recent weeks, from the Meet Me At The Mirror blog: “Ann Arbor rang similar to a cute older woman who used to be a hippy and now spends her days sleeping outdoors and making wacky crafts inspired by her younger, LSD-induced life.” Plus a great narrative about finding a man in the bushes outside her room. [Source]
Blogtrotter makes a stop in Ann Arbor, posting lots of pretty pictures of his travels in our fair city. [Source]
Maize ‘N Brew counts down the days left until the start of Michigan football (59, if you care), and provides #80 and #79 in his 100 Reasons To Love Ann Arbor. [Source]
The blog Women Like Sports wants to show how soccer affects lives, and so runs an article about a homeless street soccer player in Ann Arbor. (The profile originally was posted in February on the Street Soccer USA site.) He’s apparently part of a local soccer team for the homeless organized by Sara Silvennoinen of the Washtenaw County PORT (Project Outreach Team) program. [Source]
The Forest Street Kitchen blog lays out a simple recipe for Penne with Sugar Snap Peas and Prosciutto, using peas from the farmers market. “At our house we ate the dish alongside a beautiful piece of cod baked with butter and lemon, but my mother ate hers all by itself, savoring every still-crunchy pea.” [Source]
CNN.com is among several news Web sites that picked up an AP story about the crash of a Kalitta Air cargo flight near Bogota, Colombia. This is the second crash within two months that a plane owned by the Ypsilanti-based Kalitta has crashed. In May, a plane broke apart on take-off from Brussels, Belgium. And on Sunday, a plane owned by USA Jet Airlines, also based at the Ypsi Willow Run Airport, crashed in Mexico, killing its pilot. [Source]
The Detroit News is a little late to the game in reporting on the feasibility study released last week for the Washtenaw to Livingston rail line, known as WALLY. This was in the A2 News last week, but it’s good to see the story getting regional play. The study found that costs for such a venture would be much higher than anticipated. [Source]
Nevada Thunder posts an article by Adam Doster that first appeared in the June issue of In These Times. In it, Doster describes how Obama could change the way this presidential election unfolds. He describes the experience of Lynne Schwartz, an Ann Arbor clinical psychologist and Washtenaw County organizer for Obama. “(H)er biggest thrill,” Doster writes, “came when the national campaign tapped her to run the local branch of the Vote for Change voter registration drive, a signal that the folks in Chicago were taking her organizing seriously.” [Source]
In a Wall Street Journal Business Insight column, three UM researchers – Jonathan Whitaker, M.S. Krishnan and Claes Fornell – discuss their study on how offshore outsourcing influences customer satisfaction. Guess what? It doesn’t make most people happy. [Source]
Unlike the rest of the city, the Ann Arbor Lebowskys aren’t yet sick of fairy doors, and post a photo of the one at Nicola’s Books in the Westgate Shopping Center. [Source]
