response 1 of 55:

Dec 2 20:01 UTC 2003

Heh.  Anyplace that has me in it probably can't be all that cool ... socially.

response 3 of 55:

Dec 2 22:58 UTC 2003

Where are you from, khamsun?

response 5 of 55:

Dec 2 23:09 UTC 2003

Probably need more people as well.  Did Detroit finally drop below the
million person mark?  Hard to create a strong sense of civic committment
when half the city is abandoned.

response 7 of 55:

Dec 2 23:58 UTC 2003

No, I think Detroit had a million people as recently as the 1990 census. 

Detroit has some corruption, sure, and a history of brutal and racist
policing, but it is NOTHING like New York, or Philadelphia, or Boston, or
Chicago, or Miami.  Corruption in those cities is deeply woven into the
civic culture, and all kinds of bribery and abuses are just taken for
granted. 

Detroit is not like that.  Just for example, the governmental affairs VP
of one of the contracting firms which built the RenCen said afterwards
that Detroit was the first major U.S. city they had ever worked in where
the building department was not on the take.

Meanwhile, one of the Chicago newspapers secretly bought a neighborhood
tavern and staffed it with investigative reporters.  They documented that
bribes and payoffs and kickbacks were demanded almost daily, backed by
credible threats to shut down the place.

People who have lived their lives in Michigan (squeaky-clean compared to
the national average) have no idea what real municipal corruption is like.

As someone who believes in reform and good government, it has always been
a frustrating contrast that deeply corrupt Chicago is "a city that works,"
whereas comparatively clean Detroit is "a city that failed."

response 11 of 55:

Dec 3 15:08 UTC 2003

Re resp:7: Someone I knew from Chicago once remarked that "Detroit gives
corruption a bad name" because Chicago government is corrupt but the
city works, and Detroit government is corrupt but always fails utterly.
 In many ways, though, Detroit government isn't so much corrupt as it is
ineffective.  Racial conflict, backstabbing, and the tradition of every
new mayor abandoning all the previous mayor's projects in order to
create new ones leads to a government that's unable to accomplish
anything substantial.

Personally, I think a lot of Detroit's current economic problems started
during the white flight of the 50's.  It fell into the classic
inner-city downward spiral that very few cities manage to get out of. 
Now it's stuck in the catch-22 of not having enough of a tax base to
raise the money to make the improvements that would attract businesses
and expand the tax base.  It's possible that someday Detroit will be a
nice place to live, but I don't expect to live to see it.

response 13 of 55:

Dec 3 17:37 UTC 2003

Michigan cool?  Be warned that we contenance no toadying.  The grex BBS might
be centered about its Ann Arbor home, but the handles seldom identify the
origins of the posters.  

Although in support of your supposition, Michigan laws are eerily similar to
both California and New York in matters of civil, criminal and consumer
rights.

response 15 of 55:

Dec 3 21:41 UTC 2003

#3, aruba:
I began in life as a spaniard, then I turned french, then I adopted
Norway some years ago.
BTW, I apologize for mistakes in english.
Never took the time for some short stay in the US, despite a good friend
of mine for now 15 years is a guy from Pittsburgh.
Last time I was in Montreal/Canada (other old friend there) was thinking
about a trip either to Boston/NY or to Michigan/Wisconsin but (canadian)
beer kept me busy :-)..

#10, clees:
yes, so it seems to be something special (ly nice) about grexers. Say,
maybe like Hobbitland in Middle Earth :-)...the Power must have been
strong to carry you from the shores of Old Europe to the New World...
well, on my own I don't feel prejudices against americans.I just tend to
be upset by the foreign politic of the think
tanks/neo-conservative/bushies fellows.But well, I will not fork()
here... I mean at any place governments and peoples are not always in
sync.

#13, fitz:
it's the fact that this Ann Arbor bbs keeps getting say, mmh, valuable
?, that is somewhat remarkable.I was wondering if that has to do with
cosmic radiations at the place, or genetical variations, or 
proximity with Can...humm. Well I'm kidding of course.
To be more serious I really was wondering about the kind of "regional
identity",if one,people could have in Michigan.
As an european I tend to have the cliche that regional differences are
very weak in the US, because the country is young and people move around
more easily than in Europe (if you are living in Germany or France
or Spain,etc,differences are much much stronger).
But as I have no experience of the US (a little one of Canada)...

That said, if laws are similar to California or NY, Michigan can be
called rather "liberal" ?

All I know of Detroit is about car industry and pop music (from Iggy Pop
to White Stripes).In Europe Detroit was cited as a kind of Liverpool
(the english city) that has not yet recovered from a brutal breakdown.A
kind of victim.
#2, slynne: that must be indeed very sad.But I guess the inhabitants are
working hard at getting their city strong again.By finding out other
activities than car plants ?
All the comments in the threads about Detroit/Chicago are anyway very
instructive.
Anecdote: here in Norway we get the David Letterman show.Once he invited
Jack and Meg White (the White Stripes).He announced them as coming "from
the beautiful city of Detroit"...I found that word to be rather cynical
but it can be sometimes hard to tell what David Letterman has in mind...

A good point for me about grex is that it's running under unix (still
sunOS on sun4 arch ?), and unixers are way cool and open-minded...

response 17 of 55:

Dec 3 22:45 UTC 2003

  re #15:

  > All I know of Detroit is about car industry and pop music
  > (from Iggy Pop to White Stripes).

  Don't forget Motown and Detroit Techno, two other major musical
  contributions from Detroit..

response 19 of 55:

Dec 3 23:26 UTC 2003

Ann Arbor *is* a lot like being on one of the coasts.  Detroit like Liverpool?
Actually that's a pretty good comparison.

Parts of the state are totally different than this corner, though.  

Hey, my brother now lives in Norway.  Say "hi" if you see him, OK?  ;)

response 21 of 55:

Dec 4 00:07 UTC 2003

  re #18:  Well, OK, good point..
  Ann Arbor can be a bit full of itself sometimes..

response 23 of 55:

Dec 4 02:28 UTC 2003

  re #22:  recently?  I haven't heard of anything like that lately and
  the local paper here is pretty heavy on Alaska news.  On the other hand
  I've been pretty out of it for the last couple of days due to flu.

  I believe there were effects like that in the wake of the monster 9.2
  quake that hit Anchorage in 1964, though, and it's possible to have
  tsunami activity in Alaska caused by earthquakes surprisingly far
  across the Pacific.