response 37 of 55:

Dec 4 23:15 UTC 2003

Try this one:
   http://www.drgeorgepc.com/Tsunami1958LituyaB.html

response 39 of 55:

Dec 5 14:24 UTC 2003

I think if the suburbs don't like the deal they're getting from Detroit
they can form their own water companies.  No one forced them to tie into
the Detroit system, which is straining to keep up with the sprawl the
suburbs have been encouraging.  It seems to me that the suburbs want new
areas covered and the old ones upgraded, and they don't want to pay for
any of it.

The suburbs hate Detroit, and if they get control of the water company
they'll no doubt cut off maintenance for everything inside the city
limits and just let it decay.

response 41 of 55:

Dec 5 14:50 UTC 2003

"especially if you DO NOT happen to be located on a river"

response 43 of 55:

Dec 5 15:04 UTC 2003

I have to agree with gull. No one is forcing the suburbs to use 
Detroit's water system. If they dont want to buy water from Detroit at 
the price Detroit sets, they can start their own water utilities. One 
doesnt have to be near a river either. Ann Arbor isnt tied into the 
Detroit system and gets most of its water from wells. 

response 45 of 55:

Dec 5 17:08 UTC 2003

Even here in Michigan, there are a lot of small cities that are having
to either dissolve or merge with other cities because they're no longer
able to fund services on their own.  Hamtramick is one example.  I'm not
sure splitting up Detroit is the answer; I think you'd just end up with
a bunch of Hamtramicks.

response 47 of 55:

Dec 5 19:57 UTC 2003

Yeah, is Highland Park doing all that much better than Detroit?

response 49 of 55:

Dec 6 03:48 UTC 2003

Re #17: yes, Motown ! (I don't know why, I was seeing Motown in
Minneapolis or Chicago :-[..).About Detroit Techno: I had no clue, never
associated the techno movement with Detroit, but well since I generally
don't like techno, I never paid much attention...

Re #19: scott, if I meet your brother in Oslo where i live now, i
promise we'll have some drinks to Michigan. Sk l ! (And Oslo is such a
small place I maybe shop each day at the same market than him...)

Re #18 & #21: Ann Harbor snobbish ?

Re #24: >organizations that still believe  that they will
        >start the revolution with a memograph machine and a street    
               
        >corner.
kind of hippies or heritage of old good unionism ?
BTW, I was recently reading again "The Jungle" of Upton Sinclair (meat
packing plants in Chicago) and I made the connection with the life of a
famous norwegian writer who spent 3 and then 2 years as a young
scandinavian immigrant in Illinois/Michigan/Minnesota/Wisconsin.He got
very interested by the anarchists and unionists movements of that time
(end 19th).Then he went back to Norway and gave out some very critical
essays against capitalism in the US. 
From all that one gets the feeling that north mid-west has been the
working core of strong industrialization in the US.Truth ?

As candidates are going in the race for next year election, there must
be more "street corners" around ?

Re #28: about north/south. Considering Norway it's rather funny.The
country has a shape like Chile: very long from south to north and very
tight. One can figure you put a line in the geometrical middle to have
south and north parts.No. "south" is the very southern east cost under
the Oslo fjord and in front of Danmark, "west" is the very south-western
coast looking south to the skottish islands (O. & S.)."East" is the very
small piece between Oslo and the southern swedish border."north" is from
the polar circle to the russian border.The big gap in between is
geographically...nowhere. Then they are two words for south: "s r" is
the one to name a southern place _in_ Norway, and "syden" is the one to
name countries in the south _of_ Norway. Ie. almost the rest of the
world after you cross the danish border...
As i am not a native and I began by living in the very north whose
climatical, geographical and cultural characteristics extend to
Trondheim (about 20 hours boat south of polar circle) I always felt Oslo
(600 kms south of Trondheim) is very in the south.But osloers feel they
are really far enough north from the "south".On the phone I must pay
attention to tell people I live in Oslo and not in the south, or they
figure out I'm living about 200 ou 300 kms south of my real place...

Oops, sorry for that long speech.

In used to spend autumn in Scottland, Western Ross, in the mid-90's.
Very very pleasant places (and good whiskies...)

response 51 of 55:

Dec 6 10:15 UTC 2003

I forgot to mention the curious practice,
indulged in by southerners, of referring to the
counties around London as "the Home Counties". so
what are therest of the counties? The Foreign
Counties? Maybe the rest of the country should
secede and see how well the South gets on
witrhout aqll the manpower it getsd from people
moving to the South-East.

response 53 of 55:

Dec 7 00:34 UTC 2003

"Home Counties" sounds like the "Out West/Back East" thing in the US.  I used
to hear people in MIchigan refer to the Western US as "Out West," which made
sense because the Western US was a long way away.  In California, I hear
life-long California residents, and even life-long California residents whose
ancestors never lived in the Eastern US, refering to pretty much anythin East
of Nevada as "Back East."

Having lots of small cities clustered together rather than having a single
big city is a rather complicated issue.  Smaller cities are nice in that they
allow the city government to focus on local neighborhood issues that would
get lost in a bigger city.  On the other hand, the lack of a regional
government can create some tricky issues, and the motivations for splitting
an area off as its own city are often anything but good.  In the case of the
Bay Area (which, not being in Michigan, maybe isn't relevant to this item),
with nine counties and who knows how many cities, anything involving regional
coordination seems to require the creation of a special district with its own
elected board.  Furthermore, it means that while I have more say than I
otherwise would in what happens in my own immediate neighborhood (part of the
City of Berkeley), I get no vote at all three blocks away (City of Albany),
or in the downtown area where I used to spend most of my waking hours (City
and County of San Francisco).  In the Detroit area, the situation is arguably
a lot worse.  While most of the Bay Area cities tend to be pretty diverse,
stretching from poor areas near the Bay to rich suburban areas in the hills,
the Detroit suburban boundaries have been used extensively as a way to enforce
racial and economic segregation.  Leaving the racial issues aside, separating
the tax base from the areas which most need the government services is rather
destructive.

response 55 of 55:

Dec 13 06:13 UTC 2003

I just got back from the4 Bay Area myself - Tampa Bay. (They call it
that there.)