New Media Watch Section

Ann Arbor’s new municipal center – also known as the justice center, where the Ann Arbor police department and 15th District Court are located – gets a mention in a FARK.com thread about America’s ugliest buildings. [Source]

An article in the Quadrangle – a publication of the University of Michigan Law School – tells how wood from trees torn down on UM’s campus are being turned into bowls, clocks and other objects, and sold at the UM Museum of Art store. From the report: “The artists also have made many objects from an elm tree – in particular, an elm that stood just east of Hutchins Hall and south of the Legal Research Building. The elm tree had to be removed in July 2009 to make room for the Robert B. Aikens Commons, the new two-story, 16,000-square-foot, glass-roofed space that will include gathering spots and studying spaces for [law] faculty and students. But it also needed to … [Full Story]

A post on Boing Boing highlights the recent deal between the Ann Arbor District Library and Magnatune, allowing patrons to access digital music. The news was discussed at an April 2011 library board meeting covered by The Ann Arbor Chronicle. [Source]

On Mother’s Kitchen blog, coriander is featured in May’s “spice rack challenge”: “Post your recipes from May 14 – May 20 to be included in this month’s roundup, which will happen on May 25. Maybe spring will have sprung for us by then! It’s been chilly and rainy this week in Michigan. The river is running really high…today, I watched the fire department rescue a guy who got caught up in the hydraulics near the Mast Rd. bridge in Dexter with his kayak. The water’s still too cold to be in it for very long. Hopefully he is having a nice hot toddy somewhere tonight by a warm fire, whoever he is. … [Full Story]

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. for the Tuesday, May 3 elections. Some school districts – though not Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti – will be electing school board candidates. Voters in several communities will also be asked to weigh in on ballot proposals – here’s a list of those. There is only one proposal on the ballot in Ann Arbor: the special education millage renewal, which is being sought countywide. Not sure where to vote? The county clerk’s office has a list of polling locations, by municipality. The Ann Arbor city clerk’s office includes a map of precincts, with the location of polling places for each precinct.

One of the University of Michigan’s “Out of the Blue” videos features a “green brewery” project by UM students, who worked with Matt and Rene Greff – owners of Arbor Brewing Co. in Ann Arbor and Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti. Students analyzed the operations at Corner Brewery and developed ways to make it more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable. [Source]

On his blog There Is No Gap, Karl Pohrt posts his conversation with Donald Lopez, a University of Michigan professor, Buddhist scholar and author of “The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography.” Pohrt poses this question: “My first encounter with ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’ was in the late 1960s when I saw a stack of copies in a bookshop on State Street. I noticed that it was published by Oxford University Press, one of the oldest and most prestigious academic presses in the English speaking world. The Oxford imprint carries a certain caché, and I assumed it was legitimate. When I finished your book I was reminded of Dostoyevsky’s remark that Don Quixote was the saddest book … [Full Story]

Local photographer Myra Klarman, writing on her blog Relish, encourages readers to attend Pioneer Theatre Guild’s production of “Seussical”: “I took production photos on not just one occasion, but two — this show is that captivating! And this handy-dandy, decoy blog-entry (featuring thematically-related pictures of my oh-so-adorable son, Max, dredged up from the archives) will buy me more time to pick and choose from my massive haul of Seussical images. Now, don’t even dream of telling me that you hoped to see my pix before you bought your tix. Don’t you dare! Because, as good as my pix may be, they cannot compare to being there. (I swear.)” Performances are set for Friday, April 29 through Sunday, May 1. [... [Full Story]

Xconomy Detroit reports on the Michigan Growth Capital Symposium (MGCS), an annual event now in its 30th year that’s organized by UM business professor David Brophy: “Since Brophy created MGCS in 1981, the symposium has morphed into the state’s premier investor event for startups seeking money. For the symposium’s 30th anniversary next month in Ypsilanti, Brophy and his team did a little number crunching. Over the past decade, 300 companies have presented at MGCS, with 71 percent of them eventually raising a total of more than $1.7 billion in capital. Twenty percent of those startups later enjoyed successful exits.” [Source]

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, an Ann Arbor area resident, has now become a verb – as in, “You’ve been Snydered.” From an entry in the Urban Dictionary: “Famous Governor of Michigan that is becoming well-known for his tax increases on the poor and tax cuts for the wealthy. … This term is often used to convey the sense of brutal violation – physical, emotional or any other kind.” [Source]

Inside Higher Ed reports on the recent vote by University of Michigan’s board of regents to extend the allowable timeline for achieving tenure to 10 years: “The regents’ vote Thursday came as a blow to many faculty members in Ann Arbor, whose governing body, the Senate Assembly, in January voted nearly unanimously, 54-1, against the plan. ‘I think a lot of us are disappointed,’ Edward Rothman, professor of statistics and chair of the assembly, told Inside Higher Ed. The faculty had wanted, he said, to take more time to examine the problem ‘carefully and numerically’ and to explore options that were ‘consistent with a win-win atmosphere since we’re all part of the same university.’” [Source]

A video posted on YouTube shows the April 14 flash mob by dozens of University of Michigan students, dressed in blue graduation gowns and caps, dancing on the Diag to Rusted Root’s “Send Me On My Way.” [Source] Other related videos feature Erik Heitz, a UM musical theater major who coordinated the event, which was sponsored by GoEnnounce.com. [Source] [Source]

The Friends of Matt Kelley blog has announced plans for a day-long reading marathon on Friday, April 22 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. to raise funds for his family. Kelley, a University of Michigan lecturer in the Sweetland Center for Writing and Lloyd Hall Scholars Program, was 41 when he died earlier this year soon after one of his graduate classes. Students will read from one of his favorite books, The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, at 2435 North Quad. The readings also will be broadcast live on the group’s website. [Source]

On the Whole Brain Group blog, Kyle Stuef writes about the “great divide” between Ann Arbor and the rest of metro Detroit, and offers some ideas for making better connections: “What are you doing to help build our community? Not the Detroit community or the Ann Arbor community – the Michigan community. I’m starting in May. Along with Tiffany Risner, we will be launching Tweetea Ann Arbor. With the help of the other Tweetea locations, I’ll be doing my part to make a connection between the people I’ve come to love and the resources I know should be working together. What are you doing to bridge the gap between communities in metro Detroit?” [Source]

A post on the Motown to Tree Town blog provides commentary on a recent Washtenaw County board of commissioners meeting that focused on the county’s transit master plan, being developed by the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority: “AATA needs to assume it is facing an uphill battle, and it should prepare for some pretty close votes both before the county commission and countywide voters. The fact is that the majority of voters in the county do not reside in the core service areas of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. AATA should be very careful about when the millage is put on the ballot. If possible, it needs to be put to a vote in November 2012, when turnout … [Full Story]

Chelsea photographer Burrill Strong’s recent collection of shots from the Chelsea Music Boosters’ friends and faculty talent show includes a name that will be familiar to readers who track The Chronicle’s coverage of the Washtenaw County board of commissioners: Rob Turner. He appeared on stage accompanying his daughter, Molly, who performed the song, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. As Strong’s photo illustrates, Turner fully embraced the role of the lion. [Source]

Ben Brainerd describes the basic premise of a webseries he’ll be producing if a Kickstarter fundraising campaign he’s launched is successful: “Nate Porter has had a rough week. First his girlfriend dumps him and then, just as he’s ramping up to an epic sulk, he wakes up to find that everyone is dead. Neighbors? Dead. Classmates? Dead. The annoying dog down the street? Totally dead.” The webseries is called “Apocalyptia: Urban Life at the End of the World.” The project was conceived several years ago – so not necessarily in response to the recent gloom of southeast Michigan. [Source]

The Green Thumb Black Dog blog provides an antidote to Friday’s gray and rain: Photographs of some “springy arrangements” by Pot & Box owner Lisa Waud. [Source]

Writing for Poor Mojo’s Newswire, occasional columnist for The Ann Arbor Chronicle David Erik Nelson comments on The Chronicle’s Open Meetings Act lawsuit, which was recently dismissed: “But, even with all this failure, we–the folks that live in Ann Arbor–still get a slightly better government, because there is one small kind of fuckery that *isn’t* gonna happen any more. … So that’s what the Press is for: The reduction of fuckery.” [Source]

Ghostly International has posted a compilation of songs, available for download, in partnership with TEDxUofM 2011, a daylong event featuring speakers on the topic of encouraging crazy ideas: “Music for Ideas is meant to awaken the creative flow, the tenet on which TEDxUofM 2011 is based.” The University of Michigan’s version of the popular TED talks will be held on Friday, April 8 at the Michigan Theater and streamed live over the Internet. [Source]

Local historian Laura Bien posts a 3-minute video on YouTube that documents her drive from downtown Ypsilanti to Saline, on her way to give a talk to the Saline Area Historical Society on April 3, 2011. The video includes scenes from the historic Rentschler Farm. [Source]

A post on The Lunch Room blog documents construction of an eponymous vegan food cart. It will be one of the vendors at Mark’s Carts, a new food plaza that’s opening later this month next to Downtown Home & Garden, at Washington & Ashley. [Source]

Photographer Lon Horwedel posts images from the April 2 Hash Bash, which drew several thousand people to the University of Michigan Diag. [Source]

At least a couple of local websites are getting into the spirit of April 1. Monahan’s Seafood reports a “shocking” new species discovery: “Looking down on one of thousands of oysters I’ve shucked in my life, NEVER has one looked back up at me!” [Source] Over on the Water Hill Music Fest site, “Filmmaker (and Ann Arbor native) Ken Burns confirmed today that he and his crew will attend Water Hill Music Fest again this year to continue work on his documentary ‘Dripping With Talent: The Music of Water Hill’.” [Source]

On her blog Relish, Myra Klarman posts photographs she took at luminary-making workshops for FoolMoon, a parade and celebration in downtown Ann Arbor that runs from dusk until midnight on Friday, April 1. She also includes photos taken of puppet-making for the April 3 FestiFools parade, now in its fifth year: “FoolMoon aspires to shimmery, shadowy, mysteriousness (I’m totally curious to experience the vibe of this new event); whereas FestiFools is more bold, blatant, in-broad-daylight.” [Source]

Writing on Slate, David Weigel reports that a recent Paul Krugman column might have prompted Michigan’s Mackinac Center to file Freedom of Information Act requests for information from the University of Michigan’s Labor Studies Center, as well as from other universities: “These labor centers at the universities have long been targets of the business community in Michigan, which sees them – as the state’s Chamber of Commerce president once said of the Wayne State center – as ‘wholly owned subsidiaries of the UAW.’ … In 2010, the Mackanic Center published a litany of problems with the labor centers, arguing that they were basically taxpayer-funded organizing hubs for the Left.” [Source] The FOIA request was also reported in an article … [Full Story]

The Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition is using an online survey to gather data on local behaviors and knowledge about crosswalks among those who regularly drive in Ann Arbor. WBWC indicates that survey data will be used to help guide a community-wide education campaign in the spring and summer of 2011. [Source]

An article in Xconomy Detroit reports that despite a struggling economy and budget cuts, efforts at Michigan’s public universities to support entrepreneurs are still getting funded. The article quotes Tim Faley, managing director of the University of Michigan’s Samuel Zell and Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies: “Ten years ago when we were talking about competitiveness and that sort of thing and then you could talk about research. But now when the whole discussion centers around jobs, then research is too far out, the discussion is really what are you doing to help job creation. Entrepreneurship is a great thing for that.” [Source]

A video of the March 22, 2011 panel discussion “Our Water, Our Lives” is posted on the Ann Arbor District Library website. The panel, moderated by UM professor Mike Wiley and hosted by the AADL, included Harry Sheehan of the Washtenaw County water resources commissioner’s office; Molly Wade, manager of the city of Ann Arbor’s water treatment services; Matt Naud, the city of Ann Arbor’s environmental coordinator; Laura Rubin, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council; and Earle Kenzie, manager of the city of Ann Arbor’s wastewater treatment services. The event included discussion of the Pall Gelman dioxane plume – the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality is holding a public meeting on that issue on Wednesday, March 30 at … [Full Story]

Ann Arbor Chronicle editor Dave Askins is featured on the Great Lakes Cycling & Fitness website’s Spotlight on Local Cyclists, which includes a 10-question Q&A. Answering the question “Is there something the City of Ann Arbor could do to make cycling in the area better?” Askins says: “No. What makes a place more bicycle-friendly is people on bicycles. The more people who ride, the safer it’ll be for everyone. I don’t really look to the city to make that happen.” [Source]