I'm happy to have a chance to keep working on this, since even the smallest amount of money from new sales covers the direct costs of coffee to do the writing.
Release Notes
April 9, 2013.
This release updates the first 7 chapters of the book plus the introduction. Most of the changes are to fill in gaps, small reorganizations of the text, and line edits; there's not a ton of new original materials. Chapters 8 through to the end are unchanged.
One of the things that's new in the Michigan FOIA world is that Muckrock (Appendix A) now supports FOIA requests to a number of Ann Arbor cities. My first trial with this worked a little bit well, and I'm going to keep trying to improve how that system works so that I get the best writeup of it.
A document trove from a recent FOIA request is a log of all FOIA requests to the City of Ann Arbor over the span of two months. Look for a future set of edits to expand the "sample requests" considerably based on that collection, since I'm still digesting them.
If anyone has tried the "send to Kindle" feature, let me know how it went.
Some sources for information on the Duck Lake Fire, which started on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 and is burning rapidly in Luce County, north of Newberry, MI. The fire is dangerous and has caused evacuations; if you are reading this and you are in the area, seek authoritative and current information from official sources.
The fire brings to mind the 2007 Sleeper Lake Fire which burned over 18,000 acres in Luce County.
At this point, the Duck Lake Fire area is 55 percent contained.
The latest estimate on structure loss is that there are 138 properties within the perimeter of the fire; 115 sites have been inspected to this point, with 23 sites remaining. Inspections are ongoing, and it is anticipated that they will be completed today. A total of 115 structures have been lost.
8:00 pm Tuesday, May 29 map. From the DNR:
The Duck Lake Fire team really needs to hear from people who have property located within the fire area (especially those property owners that may be out of state). U.P. residents call 211; all others call 800-338-1119. Please give your name, fire number and road, and contact info so we can provide updates as damage assessments are completed. (Folks who've already called and provided fire number and road name do NOT need to call again.)
11:00 pm Sunday map: Duck Lake fire map from Sunday at 2040 (8:40 pm). Note the new dozer line at the south end of the fire, some expansion to the east, and a better detail on the western edge of the fire. The inset map now shows the fire in context relative to Newberry.
New GPS data show that the fire is now estimated to cover 20,255 acres. Forty-eight percent of the fire area is contained.
The south end of the fire is 14 miles north of Newberry and 7 miles west from Tahquamenon Falls State Park campgrounds. The fire is long and narrow and stretches 11 miles to the north to Lake Superior. There are currently 40 miles of fire line. Of that fire line, 6 miles is Lake Superior shoreline, 13 miles is completed line (includes County Road 500), and 21 miles is uncontained fire line. Access is very difficult with few roads.
The fire is now 21,114 acres in size, having grown slightly overnight. The south end of the fire is 14 miles north of Newberry and 7 miles west from Tahquamenon Falls State Park campgrounds. The fire is long and narrow and stretches 11 miles to the north to Lake Superior. The fire area includes 6 miles of Lake Superior shoreline and 29.5 miles of uncontained fire line. Access is very difficult with few roads.
11:00 pm Friday update: new fire map, marked 5-25-2012 1200. Compared to the one below from 0530, this shows expansion of the fire along the northeast and eastern edge and a new acreage estimate of 17935 acres burned. Courtesy Michigan DNR.
National Weather Service, Marquette, MI Duck Lake Fire Decision Support Hazard page. Weather and fire maps, radar and aerial imagery, and forecasts. This is a false color MODIS image from Friday, May 25, showing the burn scar and the plume of smoke heading towards the Soo. Facebook: US NWS Marquette.
As of 7 a.m. Friday, May 25, the Duck Lake Fire in Luce County continues to grow and is approximately 17,000 acres. Air crews are working the fire and an incident management team is on the ground. Multiple structures have been lost and others are threatened. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been notified. Updates will be posted as information becomes available.
This fire map shows the situation as of Friday a.m.
FAA NOTAM 2/4255: Flights are restricted from the surface up to 8000 feet MSL in an area near Newberry in order to "provide a safe environement for fire fighting".
Local news sources:
WNBY, AM 1450 in Newberry, MI is a good source of local news if you are in the area. The 1450 WNBY Facebook page is a rallying point for community news and information.
You can Depend on Newberry's Information Leader. We're going to get an update from the 4pm DNR briefing and will have the latest on the air on 1450 WNBY and here online . Very helpful that the DNR Office is across the road from Newberry's Radio Station. If you have pictures, updates or infomation you can call us at 906-293-3221 or email Travis in our News Center at travis@wnby.net .
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources said the blaze it’s calling the Duck Lake Fire was in an area north of Newberry that includes Lake Superior State Forest land and approached Lake Superior. It was detected Wednesday after a lightning strike and intensified Thursday — burning along the tops of jack pine trees in the forest.
Winds shifted early Friday morning, causing 50 mile an hour wind gusts to hit the fire and change directions of the blaze. Gary Willis, Public Information Officer for the DNR, says the east end of the fire is now the head of the fire and that there was zero containment as of Friday morning. Officials also say that flame heights reached 200 feet in some places.
The DNR says if the fire continues on its current path, it will get to within one mile of the Upper Falls viewing area by Friday night. Officials urged visitors to avoid the Tahquamenon Falls area during the Memorial Day weekend.
Friday 6:00 pm update: Governor Snyder declares state of disaster in Luce and Schoolcraft counties. All state resources available to support response efforts. Snyder also issued Executive Order 2012-8 activating the National Guard to provide assistance. A hotline has been established for the public to check for status updates, call 855-440-6424 for the latest information.
This map is from the Michigan Department of Community Health and was last updated in 2009; it shows counties with confirmed and with risk for Lyme disease based on populations of Ixodes scapularis (Black-Legged Tick), the vector species for Lyme disease.
Reports from the Secretaries of State and War on the subject of the Ohio and Michigan boundary.
January 12, 1836.
Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
To the House of Representatives of the United States :
Having laid before Congress on the 9th ultimo, the correspondence which had previously taken place relative to the controversy between Ohio and Michigan, on the question of boundary between that State and Territory, I now transmit reports from the Secretaries of State and War on the subject, with the papers therein referred to.
ANDREW JACKSON.
Washington, January 11, 1836.
- 30 -
Mandatory FTC disclosure
Promotional considerations for this message were provided by Garrett Scott, Bookseller.
The University of Michigan hockey team defeated the University of Nebraska Omaha 3-2 in overtime in Frozen Four action in St. Louis. The winning goal was scored by Kevin Lynch at 17:25 in overtime. Officials reviewed the replay for ten minutes before declaring the goal a winner.
Live blog: Michigan Daily. The Daily runs a photo of a Rust v Hudson faceoff taken tonight by Jake Fromm, and has a full period by period scoring run down.
It wasn't clear why it took officials so long to make a call on the play. Apparently, Lynch nudged a rebound past goalie John Faulkner after Greg Pateryn's shot from the point.
AnnArbor.com has a story written by staff, updated with game details but running only a file photo; in a later update, they run a photo from Tim Vizer via Icon SMI.
FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. Icon SMI reserves the right to pursue unauthorized users of this image. If you violate our intellectual property you may be liable for: actual damages, loss of income, and profits you derive from the use of this image, and, where a
Official game recap: MGoBlue.com. Flower Mound, TX is wrong; Lynch's bio says he's from Grosse Pointe, and forward Chris Brown is from Flower Mound. A later edit gets it right.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- In overtime, sophomore center Kevin Lynch's (Flower Mound, Texas) shot deflected underneath the Nebraska-Omaha netminder, and after a lenghthy video review, it was confirmed it crossed the goal line, sending the No. 6-ranked University of Michigan ice hockey team past the 14th-ranked Mavericks, 3-2, on Friday (March 25) and into the NCAA Regional final at the Scottrade Center.
Census data for Michigan from the 2010 census will be used for reapportionment. When the data is available, this chart will show it. The release date was at 2:00 p.m. on March 22, 2011.
More, much more, when it actually shows up; from census.gov.
Data for Michigan show that the five most populous incorporated places and their 2010 Census counts are Detroit, 713,777; Grand Rapids, 188,040; Warren, 134,056; Sterling Heights, 129,699; and Lansing, 114,297. Detroit decreased by 25.0 percent since the 2000 Census. Grand Rapids decreased by 4.9 percent, Warren decreased by 3.0 percent, Sterling Heights grew by 4.2 percent, and Lansing decreased by 4.1 percent.
Do a cartogram with the data. You have a shapefile of Michigan counties, a tool called ScapeToad that does the Gastner/Newman [2004] diffusion-based algorithm, and an editor (which must exist) to insert in the appropriate data into the file.
Cartograms of Michigan for reference; from DailyKos in 2006, Blue Wave in Michigan. This map shows margin of error by congressional district, in 2006. It's not 2010 census data, but...if you had the cartogram to show what was happening with population change, you could start to see some redistricting expectations.
This is election data, but I'm looking for census data in the same style.
Edward Vielmetti writes Vacuum, a weblog since 1999.
The Michigan Today article, "What colors are maize and blue", explains how several different blues have come to represent Michigan.
The University wordmark is Pantone 294 (blue) and 7406 (maize). Intercollegiate athletics uses Pantone 282 (blue) and 116 (maize, coated) or 109 (maize, uncoated). The Ross School of Business's color chart has Pantone 2965 (blue) and Pantone 7406 (maize), with Pantone 653 is a secondary blue. The College of Engineering has Pantone 288 (blue) and 123 (maize, coated) or 109 (maize, uncoated). All of the identity guidelines that you might ever want are at logos.umich.edu.
Duke Blue is Pantone 287, according to "The origin of Duke Blue" from the Duke University Archives.
Facebook Blue is #3B5998; I don't have a Pantone equivalent handy.
Twitter Blue is #33CCFF; I don't have a Pantone equivalent handy.
Visitors to the Triangle area of North Carolina are advised to keep very close watch on the particular shade of blue that they wear to any given occasion, and residents are advised to have at least one outfit in each appropriate hue so that they can visit neighboring communities without arousing undue interest.
The Lewis Cass ran for president in 1848 and lost to Zachary Taylor. This bit of ephemera from the campaign is from the Cornell University Political Americana Collection, ID number 2214.TK0011.
The Great Lakes Coastal Forecasting System has recent history, current conditions, and near term forecasts for wind, waves and temperatures across the Great Lakes. There's a windstorm coming which is predicted to create serious waves; look at the 24+ foot predictions on Lake Superior near where the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in 1975.
February is thirteen months long in Michigan. - A Primer, Bob Hicok, The New Yorker
Looking forward to February, a civic project: a Marcel Duchamp readymade project, a retrospective civic installation of his work Prelude to a Broken Arm (1915). See Shearer, 1997 for more.
The installation would provide a convenient hook for each of these readymade pieces. Care must be taken to ensure that the works of art be completely decorative and not functional.
More: Tout-Fait, the first interactive, multi-media journal focusing on the French-American artist Marcel Duchamp.
More: Archaeology, Modernism, Modernity, an introduction by Jeffrey Schnapp, Michael Shanks, Matthew Tiews in Modernism/Modernity, v11n1, 2004.
