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| 25 new of 55 responses total. |
bhoward
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response 8 of 55:
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Dec 3 00:08 UTC 2003 |
Probably a good reason to remember the value of having a diversified
local economy.
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tod
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response 9 of 55:
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Dec 3 00:25 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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clees
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response 10 of 55:
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Dec 3 07:18 UTC 2003 |
Michigan cool?
At least I know some cool grexers personally, and I am from Europe as
well.
In truth the Grex community has rid me of most prejudices I held
against americans. This realisation eventually lead to me visiting Ann
Arbor on several occasions. It also has made me cycle the continent
resulting in even more friends.
Resuming: Grexers are cool, at least.
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gull
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response 11 of 55:
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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.
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tod
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response 12 of 55:
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Dec 3 17:10 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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fitz
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response 13 of 55:
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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.
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mcnally
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response 14 of 55:
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Dec 3 21:26 UTC 2003 |
Michigan's cool in a low key, easy-to-get-along-with, and fun-to-be-around
kind of a way, not in a flashy-clothes, self-consciously-hip kind of way,
the way "cool" might be defined on the more fashionable coasts. Perhaps
most of all, it's cool in a doesn't-take-itself-TOO-seriously way..
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khamsun
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response 15 of 55:
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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...
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gull
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response 16 of 55:
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Dec 3 21:52 UTC 2003 |
How liberal or conservative Michigan politics are depends a lot on where you
are in the state. Urban areas tend liberal, rural areas tend conservative.
In many places you get a lot of the odd socially conservative/fiscally
liberal mix that you find anywhere that has a heavily unionized workforce.
This kind of schitzophrenic mix of opinions is why Michigan is an important
swing state in national elections.
Michigan does have some surprisingly liberal things in its past, though.
For example, the death penalty was banned in Michigan almost immediately
after it became a state.
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mcnally
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response 17 of 55:
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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..
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tod
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response 18 of 55:
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Dec 3 23:19 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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scott
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response 19 of 55:
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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? ;)
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tod
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response 20 of 55:
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Dec 3 23:48 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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mcnally
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response 21 of 55:
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Dec 4 00:07 UTC 2003 |
re #18: Well, OK, good point..
Ann Arbor can be a bit full of itself sometimes..
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tod
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response 22 of 55:
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Dec 4 00:18 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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mcnally
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response 23 of 55:
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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.
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fitz
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response 24 of 55:
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Dec 4 02:29 UTC 2003 |
Yeah, for the most part, Michigan laws would be comfortable to liberals. Not
liberal enough to decriminalize marijuana, but liberal enough to think nothing
of the rather active socialist, communist and survivalist organizations that
still believe that they will start the revolution with a memeograph machine
and a street corner.
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gull
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response 25 of 55:
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Dec 4 16:07 UTC 2003 |
Re resp:21: Ann Arborites as a group also tend to have a slightly
paranoid idea of what Detroit is like. This is especially amusing since
to many of them, anything east of Carpenter Road seems to be part of
Detroit.
I actually had someone from Chelsea tell me once that they wouldn't want
to live in Ypsilanti because it was "too close to Detroit." The
physical distance between Ypsi and Detroit is signficantly larger than
the distance between Chelsea and Ypsi, but the psychological distance
seems to be something else entirely.
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remmers
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response 26 of 55:
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Dec 4 16:40 UTC 2003 |
Heh. I had someone from northern Michigan tell me once that they'd
be very nervous about even visiting anywhere in southeast Michigan
because it's "too close to Detroit".
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flem
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response 27 of 55:
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Dec 4 18:15 UTC 2003 |
Southeastern Michigan tends to be more liberal than worthern and western
Michigan. At least in my, admittedly narrow, experience.
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twenex
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response 28 of 55:
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Dec 4 18:21 UTC 2003 |
Re: 16: I'd say that rural conservativism and urban left-wingism happens
pretty much everywhere. In 1975 when Franco died, the supposedly
proportional new democratic election system in Spain was explicitly
modified to give more weight to the more conservative rural areas.
RE: #25,26: In England the definition of "Northern England" and "Southern
England" (or rahter, the definition of where one changes into the other)
changes according to whether one is a Northerner or a Southerner. To a
person from Yorkshire or further North, "the South" sdtartsd at the
Southern Border of Yorkshire, whereas to someone from the very south of
England, (London, Essex, Kent, over to Devon), "the North" starts somewhere
above Birmingham, at least 100 miles South of the Southern border of
Yorkshire. Northerners and Southerners alike therefore tend tio forget that
the disputed area pretty much covers "the Midlands".
Also, in the Western Isles off the West Coast of Scotland, "the mainland"
is mainland Scotland, whereas in the Orkney and Shetland Isles, "the
mainland" is the largest island of the group, and mainland Scotland is just
"Scotland". The dialect spoken on the O. and S. Isles is not a form of
Scots English, but a form of English mixed with Norwegian, as before the
Isles became Scottish, they were ihabited by Vikings.
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bru
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response 29 of 55:
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Dec 4 19:14 UTC 2003 |
I had a black friend who wouldn't let me drop him off at his house, just at
the end of the street, because he said it wasn't safe for white people on his
street in Ypsilanti.
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happyboy
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response 30 of 55:
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Dec 4 19:41 UTC 2003 |
*yawn*
he was playing with your racist fears, stink-o.
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tod
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response 31 of 55:
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Dec 4 19:51 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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mcnally
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response 32 of 55:
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Dec 4 21:07 UTC 2003 |
re #31: ahhh, I thought it might've been Valdez or Skagway from your
description, but that was based on the assumption that it was the '64
quake. dunno about '59. Valdez was almost completely trashed in '64,
though.
The earthquake's shaking immediately caused failure and
liquefaction of the material along Valdez' waterfront.
A giant portion of the unconsolidated sediments, with
dimensions approximately 1,220 meters long and 183
meters wide, slid into the sea. The landslide carried
the dock area of Port of Valdez and a large portion of
the waterfront. Within two to three minutes after the
landslide, a destructive local tsunami wave, 9- 12 meters
high, slammed into the remaining waterfront. The wave
demolished what was left of the waterfront facilities,
causing the loss of Valdez' fishing fleet, and inundating
about two blocks ot the town. Additionally, the waves
caused the tanks at the Union Oil Company to rupture,
starting a fire that spread across the entire waterfront,
and thus destroying the few structures that were still
standing.
Interesting photo of a fishing vessel, driven onto the shore by
the force of the wave, where it struck and destroyed a Texaco
chemical tanker:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/alaska/1964/photosmaps/1964valdezweb2.jp
g
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