Sovok of the Week makes an intriguing comparison between Voronezh activsts of the early 80’s and Ann Arbor “conscientious grad students” of today, drawing from housing ads for co-ops and non-co-op houses. The best one is the two guys seeking “global friends.”
Goodspeed’s fellow student on the mayor’s Cool City Task Force, Eugene Chan, shares his ideas for what makes a city cool in a News story that frets about a possible “chilling effect” of the governor’s crusade. First of all, nicknames are key. “Just to say the city has a nickname makes it a somewhat cool city,” he says. A2, Tree Town, Ace Deuce…yep, we’ve got that covered. Also, people talking about their children and businesses in Starbucks, symbolizing a “blending of ages,” fits in somehow.
Is that some mitten envy-inspiring stuff or what?
It’s Ann Arbour - the Florida-based “alternative/emo” band, of course. With song titles like “Faceless” and “Breaking Me,” they do their namesake justice.
Thanks to George at 90% Crud - who decided, unbidden, to put our entire Diaryland site into Movable Type format - all of our archives are now available here (with titles that are just the first few words of the entry.)
ITCS finds out about this nifty little program called SSH, which allows you to log into machines remotely with encryption, unlike Telnet, which they’d been using up to now. Way to stay on the bleeding edge of the mid-90’s.
In other science/technology news, the Daily refers to users of the Gemini telescope as “astrologists.” Watch for future stories about philosophizers and mathematicists.
Do a search on “Athens of the Midwest.” The top ten hits: Madison, Madison, Madison, Madison, Iowa City, Madison, Madison, Columbus, Iowa City…and A2.
And it also turns up this Freep column speculating on what Detroit and the rest of the state would be like if the U of M hadn’t moved from Detroit. Most succinctly: “Ann Arbor wouldn’t matter.”
George Will on Ann Arbor (in an old anti-affirmative-action column): “The Athens of the Midwest, if it does say so itself, and it does.”
So are the Michigan State Spartans a conscious rebuke of A2? And where does Ypsi fit into all this?
The term “Oriental,” in reference to ethnicity, has deservedly fallen out of favor. But it didn’t always have a negative connotation - we remember times as late as the 80’s when it was the standard, value-neutral term. So why does Lauren Strayer assume that a friend of hers who uses it, a middle-aged man from a rural area, is at best willfully ignorant and at worst racist, rather than someone who made an honest mistake? And why didn’t she gently correct him to spare him future embarrassment rather than write about it in today’s Daily, unsure whether to be “disappointed in his social negligence or shocked at his racism”?
We just don’t know.
Here’s a more nuanced look at the issue, explaining why “Oriental” is no longer in use, but also pointing out that the evolution of language is complicated. The writer and his friends “have all chosen the incorrect terms for some groups because preferred words change - sometimes changing back to earlier terms.”
What were these students (well, they’re probably students, judging by the address) thinking, leaving a comforter and some medical records, not to mention coins, in plain view of an “unknown method of entry” to their residence?
Actually, this list of break-ins contains far fewer than the usual number of open front doors, but now open (we assume they mean unlocked) windows seem to be the thing. We’ll only say it once, since the townies say it often enough - lock your doors, kids, if only so we can point out how pervasive the crime against students is without feeling stupid. And if you don’t have window locks, get the slum - uh, landlord - to install some.
We’ve probably belabored the GEO/grad student researchers thing enough, but today’s deluge of pro-GEO letters alerted us to perhaps the most egregious line in the column that started it all, which we somehow missed - the part about graduate students receiving a “living stipend large enough that GSIs can live comfortably even in the outrageously overpriced realm of Ann Arbor apartments.”
Since when are salaries that reflect the cost of living in an area a luxury? All right, except for all of the Ann Arbor workers who can’t afford to live in Ann Arbor. But for the U of M not to offer such salaries to grad students - who are often willing to move anywhere for their graduate education, have to go between home and campus more times per day than a 9-5 worker, and are often young and single, making it cheaper to live wherever they choose - would be incredibly shortsighted. Fortunately, the university realizes this.