Farmers Market Video

There are people at the farmers market today filming a music video. It looks pretty lo fi, they are singing about food. All music should be about food or love for food. Come down to the farmers market and maybe they will let you sing, or you can make an attempt to video bomb.

Bell Tower .gif animation

Oscilabot has just posted a cool, if seizure-inducing, .gif animation of Central Campus' Burton Memorial Tower.

Construction at the old Borders Building

More book related news. While riding in to campus today I noticed it looks like there is some construction going on at the old Borders Building. Anyone know what's going on?

JSTOR announces Register and Read

Local journal archiving not-for-profit, JSTOR, has just announced a new program called Register and Read. The program targets folks in the general public who are not affiliated with institutions that subscribe to JSTOR. Anyone can now create a free account that grants you access to as many as 3 journal articles every two weeks from a selection of 1,700 participating journals. It's nice to see that there are some heavy hitting journals on the list including the entire catalogue of Ecological Society of America journals.

New bookstore coming to downtown

Literati Bookstore has just signed a lease for 124 E Washington. It'll be pretty exciting to have a general purpose bookstore in downtown Ann Arbor again.

Solar showdown on Plymouth Road

View Larger MapThe location of the solar panel installation

Following our earlier article about some local opposition to a potential wind power collaboration between the city and the public schools, comes this story about some residents who are up in arms about the installation of photovoltaic solar panels at the old Pfizer campus. Some residents don't like the five rows of solar panels which they see as an industrialization of that stretch of Plymouth Road. I feel obliged to point out that the particular location, which is across from a strip mall parking lot, was already an industrial location when it was owned by Pfizer. There are also complaints about the aesthetics of the solar panels. To be honest, I do understand where residents are coming from on this. The installation really does interfere with the previously pristine view of the small hill that blocks the view of the North Campus Research Complex's parking lot.

Ok, enough snaking. It seems like the feeling underlying the a lot of the complaints is that U of M executed this project without telling folks in the area that they would be doing it. I can understand people being upset that the panels seemingly appeared overnight and the feeling that they neighbors would want to be informed about changes in the neighborhood. That said, I can also understand why the U of M might be a little gunshy about involving neighbors in a projects. Considering that there is this much anger about a very small solar array going up on a previously industrial area that does not border any residential properties. If residents want U of M to be better at involving them in the planning process for projects in the city, they need to do their part to make sure that it's a productive one. I'm not saying the U of M has been great about involving the community in planning, but let's put on our imagination caps for a second here. If you were in charge of building a solar array somewhere for U of M and your options were to either build it wherever and get a lot of flack from some residents, or to have some community participation meetings where you get flack from residents and then to build it anyway and get more flack, which would you chose?

Daily Show takes on Matty Moroun

In a somewhat untimely segment, the Daily Show covered the debate we were having way back in fall 2012 about the new bridge to Canada and Proposal 6. That said, the clip is pretty funny, even if they do misreport that Proposal 6 was a Detroit specific proposal rather than a statewide one.

Michigan basketball, Wednesday night packed house

It is Wednesday night against Nebraska. The crowd is amped like this was a rivalry game. I've been waiting a long time to see this kind of excitement for basketball again. Jimmy King (of the fab five) is here and got a standing ovation from a packed house.

Local company seeking funds for Wireless Microcontroller, Pinoccio

So, I'll be honest, I don't really know a ton about mircocontrollers but this think Pinoccio looks pretty cool. The folks making it are seeking a total of $60,000 to cover FCC certification and the costs associated with the start of production. For a donation of $49 you get your very own Pinoccio and for $99 you get a Pinoccio with a wireless shield. Pretty cool.

Great new website

Chris Dzombak ‏has just turned me on to a cool local website, he made. The site answers the preferential question, "is someone dealing drugs in Liberty Plaza?" The aptly named, issomeonedealingdrugsinlibertyplaza.com displays just one answer:

But on a more serious note, what's the best course of action to take when you see drug deals taking place on your morning commute into work? Is there an anonymous tip line for the AAPD? If you call the Police, are you required to stick around and be a witness?