Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104

Marquette Mining Journal removes reader comments from newspaper web site

The Marquette Mining Journal recently ran this editorial regarding taking interactive comments off of the internet version of their newspaper, reading in part:

The comments were posted, without prior screening, in order to make it as easy as possible for Journal readers to submit their input directly. Unfortunately, a handful of participants abused the system. While most comments were astute and relevant, some relentless individuals decided to turn the comments section into a chat room that ventured, frankly, into the realm of inappropriate, sophomoric idiocy.

The roots of The Mining Journal’s editorial ethical standards go back some 163 years. In order for a letter to the editor to be considered for publication in our print edition, a name and other verifiable information must be included. Not so, however, with the Internet comments. Subsequently, on our Web site a small but persistent group of people threatened to tarnish The Mining Journal’s reputation for responsible journalism. A few Web comment submissions even consisted of cowardly anonymous personal attacks on local citizens. That could not be allowed to continue.

The New Orleans online newspaper, nola.com, also has unmoderated comments. Alan Gutierrez notes what this does to the discussion, quoting Mayor Ray Nagin:

Your news cast and the local newspapers are feeding these awful, ugly talk shows, that are feeding these blogs. You go look at these some of these blogs out there and some of the stories that come from the paper and you read the comments, it’s the most vile angry people that I’ve ever seen in this community.

Alan notes:

This is a common misconception in New Orleans, that the bloggers are the rabble. The city newspaper’s website, NOLA.com, is entirely unmoderated. NOLA.com calls these free-for-alls blogs.

Newspapers always run letters to the editor after verifying the identity of the writer. Should online newspapers be any different?

Helen Hill tribute at Ann Arbor Film Festival

The Ann Arbor Film Festival honored slain New Orleans filmmaker Helen Hill this week:

“I could never be bored in life because there are so many films yet to be made.”

She has been called the brightest light, a tireless saint, and a compassionate soul. Others have named her a loving wife, dedicated teacher, and caring mother. Inspiring every person around her, she was the playful artist, ambitious rebel, and a sparkling, subversive Southern Belle.

On January 4, 2007, Helen Hill was tragically murdered in New Orleans, Louisiana; and the loss of this innovative, inquisitive and joyful friend has affected us all. Helen celebrated life with a genuine sunny disposition and was a compassionate soul who would always go out of her way to help someone in need. Always generous with her love, support and inspiration, Helen touched the lives of every person who knew her, making her passing unbelievably painful.

She had screened several films at the Ann Arbor Film Festival (including The World’s Smallest Fair, Scratch & Crow, Tunnel of Love and Mouseholes), and was an honored juror at the 42nd Ann Arbor Film Festival. We consider her one of our own, and a member of the AAFF family.

Her animated films reflect her playful, innovative and inquisitive way of living life, and her caring and dedication to teaching show her value for the world around her. This wonderful person spent her brief time on earth joyfully and creatively. Helen leaves behind her husband Paul Gailiunas and their two-year old son, Francis Pop, her pet pig Rosie, and two cats.

In honor of the inspiration and memory that Helen has given all of us, we dedicate the 45th Ann Arbor Film Festival to her beloved memory. We will never forget you, Helen, and will continue to love and be inspired by you.

There's an ongoing record of Helen Hill's work and tributes in her name being kept on her blog. Please read Billy Sothern's In Lieu of Flowers from The Nation.

Technorati Tags: annarbor, aaff, film, movies, neworleans, sad, tragedy

Recently asked questions (with answers) from march 2, 2007

Jim Benson reminded me about the questions feed from 103bees. Here's some recent search query traffic and some hint at the answers that might go with them. I have edited and punctuated a little bit. My list does not include anything about peanut butter (salmonella, allergies, or Yahoo) or Ubik (but it might include Rubik at some point).

How late can you vacuum?

I usually don't vacuum when Jonathan is asleep, because I don't want to wake him up and sometimes the vacuum makes him cry. He's supposed to be in bed by 8, though that seems to be the exception, not the rule.

How to differentiate spider bite from insect bite?

Consult a physician. The Hardin Library at the U of Iowa has a thorough directory of resources on spider bites.

How to make greek lemon potatoes

I posted a greek lemon roasted potatoes recipe three years ago. We made it just the other night, and it was delicious. It's a winter dish to be sure, to take advantage of winter citrus.

What happened to mile.coop michigan?

The MiLE inter-library loan system was damaged by hackers in 2005. The Ann Arbor District Library switched its automated interlibrary loan to MeLCaT, and I couldn't be happier about it - the system is easier to use, has a wider range of libraries covered, and runs on a modern catalog.

how to fold paper for peerflix

Peerflix is a DVD swapping service; think "peer to peer netflix". Techcrunch is skeptical. If you want to mail CDs or DVDs and don't want to buy mailers, you can do origami mailers using the MESH paper cd case design based on work by Tom Hull.

how many miles from from michigan to new orleans

Michigan is a big state; the answer and the route will differ a lot if you pick Houghton vs. Ann Arbor as your starting point. The Ann Arbor route is 1055 miles via Cincinnati and Birmingham Alabama; the Houghton route is 1353 miles via Madison, Memphis and St. Louis.

What to say to incoming kindergarten parents

Welcome! We're glad to see you! The bathroom is down the hall.

what do pelicans eat?

Pelicans eat fish. Pelicans eat oystercatchers, oystercatchers eat blue crabs, blue crabs eat spartina. White pelicans eat 212.4 to 265.5 lbs of fish. each year. American White Pelicans eat mainly small 'rough' fish with little commercial value. Throughout their range pelicans eat mainly “rough” fish of low economic value that occur in shallow wetlands but they may also take deep-water fish such as the tui chub (Gila bicolor) when they are spawning in shallow water or sunning themselves near the surface.

What businesses closed in ann arbor from july to d...

The best ongoing source for business closings and openings in Ann Arbor is the Ann Arbor Observer, available free to residents but only on paper.

Customer who need clean his office in ann arbor mi...

I don't have a good answer to the question of a good reference for downtown Ann Arbor office cleaning.

How to charge block heater from portable source?

We don't have an engine block heater in our car, so I don't know the answer from experience. A first guess at the ability to do a block heater from a portable battery looks bad - too much juice needed. Most people run extension cords. Use a timer to avoid consuming too much power, you only need 3-4 hours to warm up an engine.

i was pfired

T-shirts at Elmo's on Main St. in Ann Arbor, or via Cafepress.

what is in the bag of useful things

43 Folders wiki has an in your bag list with many suggestions. Elizabeth Fry, an English Quaker, gave a bag of useful things to women being transported on convict ships to Botany Bay, Australia to give them tools to make a patchwork quilt. I carry a laptop, charger, mini earphone, A to mini B USB cable, and a couple of quadrille notebooks in my bag.

michigan power outage on thursday march 1st, 2007?

High winds took out power briefly to a part of Huntington Woods today (March 2 2007) - I know this only because the person I had a scheduled phone call with this afternoon was in the dark at 3pm. The CMS Energy Palisades reactor in South Haven, MI went down Feb 26 for maintenance to prepare it for the peak summer season.

how to unfilter things

I have no idea.

Technorati Tags: faq, questions

Lowe's Home Improvement: The Katrina Cottage

This page was hard to find on the Lowe's site, so I thought I'd surface it here.

To help address permanent-housing issues caused by Gulf Coast storms, designer Marianne Cusato created the Katrina Cottage. Designed to be functional, efficient and affordable, the cottage is a permanent residence constructed of quality materials.

Additional uses—as a vacation retreat, campground cabin, or guesthouse, the Katrina Cottage's quality materials and quick assembly make it a perfect permanent solution.

The Katrina Cottage Home Page has a model gallery with cottage floor plans, a list of stores in Louisiana and Mississippi that will be the first to sell these kits, and an FAQ (pdf).

You can see how these plans and kits compare to actual soon to be demolished New Orleans architecture by looking at the Squandered Heritage blog, part of the Think New Orleans project.

Katrina Cottage Plans

Steven Mouzon has a thin 79p book on Katrina cottages available at Amazon ($3.95) - that would be where I would start if you're looking to build your own from plans.

From the Katrina Cottages site and The Guild Foundation:

Katrina Cottages aren't just great ideas anymore; many of them also include working drawings from which you can build your very own Katrina Cottage. You can find many of the Katrina Cottage designs for which there are working drawing on this site, but Katrina Cottage Plan Portfolios are now beginning to be released that contain some designs not currently carried here. And their variety is growing all the time. Katrina Cottage Types keeps track of all the variations.

The USA WEEKEND Katrina Cottage is a 523-square-foot "Kernel Cottage" designed to grow to 1,303-square-feet with the addition of two wings. Designed by New Urban Guild founder Steve Mouzon, the cottage was produced in a South Louisiana factory by Housing International Inc. and trucked to Maryland for USA WEEKEND's celebration of Make a Difference Day.

There's more in the October/November issue of New Urban News:

“It is unprecedented, to my knowledge, that a building type would be conceived, designed, and executed in four out of five planned delivery methods by such a diverse group of designers, builders, and manufacturers in one year’s time,” Mouzon told members of the Gulf-Urb listserve.

More at DCist: Darling Affordable Housing in Silver Spring

For the next several weekends in Silver Spring, you can get a close-up look at a different solution to the affordable housing dilemma, one that’s received tons of press coverage in the Gulf Coast in the last year: the Katrina Cottage. Conceived in response to the poorly planned, terribly designed, and often permanent trailer encampments erected by FEMA, several versions of the Katrina Cottage have been designed by New Urbanist architects. All have the same goal: to provide decent, inexpensive, easily constructed housing that complements a community rather than blight it. Sponsored by USA Weekend magazine, and supported by many of their Make a Difference Day volunteers, Silver Spring’s cottage is being constructed in the parking lot of a community center to maximize exposure. Upon completion, it will be moved to a nearby neighborhood for a local family to move in.

Wet Bank Guide's article on Katrina Cottages has NOLA photos.

Technorati Tags: cottage, dcist, katrina

Lowe's is hiring people to sell Katrina Cottages

As seen on Peopleclick, positions open at Lowe's. Read more about Katrina Cottages at Wet Bank Guide, or my recent summary.

Job ID #: 23231
Position Title: Sales Specialist - Katrina Cottages
Location: New Orleans, Louisiana
Functional Area: Store Operations
Employment Type: Regular Full-Time
Education Required: High School Degree or Equivalent
Experience Required: Less than 1 year
Position Description:
This position will be focused on Lowe's Katrina Cottage initiative. Openings are available in the following store locations: - Gautier MS - Waveland MS - Central New Orleans LA - Jefferson Highway LA

The Sales Specialist will work with customers that are interested in an affordable alternative to FEMA trailers and will show customers the options available within the Katrina Cottage offerings. Additionally, they will help the customer select the appropriate model, and sell the entire package and utilize vendor/GO contacts to ensure timely delivery and see the sale through via the Lowe’s order management system.

Additional responsibilities include: maximizing sales and margin within assigned area by identifying sales opportunities and demonstrating a detailed knowledge of all stock and special order merchandise; feature benefits, application, warranty information, etc. to customers. Assistance should be provided to customers in the form of sales tab, flyer and ROP review as well as locating, selecting, carrying and loading merchandise as needed. Customer follow-up should occur to ensure all project requirements are satisfied. When not assisting customers, the Sales Specialist should ensure inventory levels are adequate to support sales through personal review, intervention and frequent communication with management and that advertised products are available and properly displayed.
Position Requirements:
Minimum 2-5 years sales experience in hardlines retail with a demonstrated ability to achieve sales and margin budgets. Possess a thorough knowledge of Lead and Contact Management. Product knowledge in the plumbing, kitchen, flooring, appliances and/or millwork fields is preferred.
Preferred Qualifications:
- High Volume Retail Management Experience
- Basic real estate knowledge and exposure to construction is preferred

Katrina cottages: tiny, Lilliputian, cute, beachy, adorable - and not for sale just yet

From the October 2 Christian Science Monitor:

OCEAN SPRINGS, MISS. – A model home here that gives Katrina's displaced an alternative to trailer living is starting to take the country by storm.

The Katrina cottage - with living quarters about the size of a McMansion bathroom - is now appealing to people well beyond the flood plain. Californians want to build one in their backyards to use for rental income to help with the mortgage payment. Modestly paid kayakers in Colorado see it as a way to finally afford a house. Elsewhere, people envision building one so a parent can live nearby.

Flying in the face of a "big house" trend, designers of these tiny abodes seem to have found a new housing niche. Some experts cite an interest by some Americans in downsizing their habitats, a reaction to the supersized home, and note the challenge of heating and cooling a big house at a time when family budgets are flat. Others note that changing demographics - more empty-nesters and single adults - may mean a timely debut of the Lilliputian homes.

"It's resonating with people because it's a market that did not exist," says Marianne Cusato, a New York-based designer who drew up the plans for the Katrina cottage. "In the past, you had to go either to an apartment or a trailer."

The Arkansas Democrat Gazette has a favorable editorial (Feb 2006)

MARIANNE CUSATO stands about 5-foot-nothin' with a headful of shoulder-length black curls that won't stay in place when she talks. She has the nervous energy symptomatic of youth, raw talent, and unleashed want-to. Miss Marianne claims to be 31, but she'd be hard-pressed to buy liquor without an ID.

A Manhattan-based architect from Anchorage, Alaska, by way of South Bend (Go Irish!), Ms. Cusato talks so fast a Southerner needs subtitles.

Say again? Pardon?

She's kind enough to repeat herself. Repeatedly. In fact, she just did, telling us once more that we can't call her an architect yet; officially, she's a designer. Okay. Yes ma'am.

She's also got visual aids. That helps.

She's holding up designs for something she calls the Katrina Cottage. Cute as the dickens. All beachy angles, peaks and front porches. Looks like something out of Adorable Coastal Living for the Incredibly Wealthy magazine.

It's not. What the Katrina Cottage is, is an alternative to the FEMA trailer. No joke. And get this: It costs less. Where the woefully inadequate, tiny, yack-ugly, hospital-white trailer preferred by the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency runs us taxpayers about $75,000 per, Ms. Cusato thinks her cottage could be manufactured for about 45 grand. Or less.

Lowe's has plans to sell kits retail, but you can't order them yet. Home Depot passed on the opportunity.

Katrina Cottages to be sold at Lowe's

Affordable prefab housing in the vernacular style of the New Orleans Creole cottage, Katrina Cottages are designed to be put up for the cost of the much-hated FEMA trailer.

(link thanks to Wet Bank Guide via Think New Orleans)

UPDATE: According to Treehugger, these Katrina Cottages will be sold at Lowe's. More at the Wall Street Journal:

Lowe's Cos., the second-largest U.S. home-improvement retailer after Home Depot Inc., will sell the plans and materials for a neotraditional Katrina Cottage at about 30 stores in Louisiana and Mississippi beginning in November. The announcement comes after Marianne Cusato, a New York designer, struck a deal with the Mooresville, N.C., company to market her concept.

Though not exactly a kit, the Lowe's product will provide just about everything short of a foundation and heating and cooling. The cottages, in four floor plans ranging from 544 square feet to 936 square feet, are made to withstand heavy rains and winds as high as 140 miles an hour. Though Lowe's has yet to put a price tag on the houses, company officials say packages will sell for about $45 to $55 a square foot, or from about $25,000 to more than $50,000.

More at Veritas et Venustas:

AT ONE OF TODAY'S EVENTS commemorating Hurricane Katrina's strike, Governor Barbour cut the ribbon for a small square with twenty Katrina Cottages in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. The concept was born at the Mississippi Renewal charrette last October, and the cottages are now produced and sold by Lowe's. The architectural establishment criticizes New Urbanism, falsely calling it an elitist movement for the rich, but it is the New Urbanists who have produced more than paper schemes since Katrina. (And who other than a small, esoteric elite wants those neo-modern paper schemes?)

and at the Raleigh News and Observer:

Lowe's plans to offer blueprints for the homes at its stores nationwide in November, but initially, the complete home packages will be available at only 30 stores in the Gulf Coast area. The company would eventually like to offer the complete package at all of its stores.

"Our goal is to get those stores [in Louisiana and Mississippi] up and running," Wilson said. "We are in talks about the second phase to have them move across the country."

Four floor plans will be offered, ranging from 544 square feet to 936 square feet. On average, the cottages will take four to six weeks to build. They were all designed to allow for future expansion.

The homes were developed by New York designer Marianne Cusato, along with several leading architects. Shortly after the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Cusato began campaigning for weather resistant, low-cost housing to help rebuilding efforts in the affected areas. In January, she displayed a prototype of the cottage at the International Builders Show in Orlando, Fla

Technorati Tags: katrina, neworleans

Rising Tide Conference, New Orleans LA, Aug 25-27 2006

Join New Orleans bloggers at the Rising Tide Conference at the New Orleans Yacht Club Aug 25-27 2006.

The Rising Tide Conference will be a gathering for all who wish to learn more and do more to assist New Orleans' recovery from the aftermath of the natural disasters of both Hurricane Katrina and Rita, the manmade disaster of the levee and floodwall collapses, and the incompetence of government on all levels. We will come together to dispel myths, promote facts, share personal testimonies, highlight progress and regress, discuss recovery ideas, and promote sound policies at all levels. We aim to be a "real life" demonstration of internet activism as the nation prepares to mark the one year anniversary of a massive natural disaster followed by governmental failures on a similar scale.

One of the organizations that will be at the event is the New Orleans Oral History Project which has a podcast of local voices from New Orleans.

An attempt to archive an audio record of New Orleans during and after the disasters that accompanied Hurricane Katrina. The stories and views of real New Orleanians in their own voices.Inspired by the Indiana University's Dept. of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and the Story Corps Project. The New Orleans Oral History Project is a Humid City Production.

Thanks to Maitri for alerting me to this event.

Technorati Tags: katrina, neworleans, conference

How to Rig an Election for Fun and Profit, New Orleans edition

As seen on Digg: Outsourcing Democracy - How to Rig an Election for Fun and Profit. New Orleans is picking city planners for rebuilding through an online poll accessible by anyone with an email address. This is wrong in so many ways. It's trivially easy to vote even if you're dead and live in Chicago, which is bad enough. More to the point of New Orleans, it's really hard to vote if all you have is a cell phone and a FEMA trailer, and that's too many people right now.

More details and commentary at Think New Orleans.

Technorati Tags: vote, election, neworleans