Along with the Daily Show and Colbert Report, the Onion is perhaps the best source of political news in America today. The unfortunate irony is that none of the three are actual news sources. While all three are brilliantly funny, the truths that they tell wrapped in satire reveal the true decay of the mainstream media. With the media asking ridiculous questions about Obama’s choices regarding lapel decorations instead of discussing the travesty that is the FISA bill (giving retroactive immunity to phone companies for warrantless wiretaps), we must count on the Onion to reveal the truth about the disaster that has been the shrub presidency.  It’s still not to late to impeach!

My work colleague Sara Johns and her husband Brandon, recently bought a stake in Vinology.  Brandon was formerly the chef at the Chop House and practises his culinary craft in the kitchen of Vinology. The menu has been drastically pared down and several new dishes have been added.  We went to Vinology for Jules’ birthday dinner the other night and all the dishes were excellent.  The gnocchi with morels that I had was especially good and Jules loved her pan roasted chicken with a whole grain salad.  The asparagus salad with poached duck egg was also a fabulous appetizer. Brandon prefers to use local ingredients wherever possible and the menu will be adjusted periodically to take advantage of in-season produce.

If you’re looking for a great meal and you haven’t been to Vinology since the beginning of June, it’s definitely worth checking out.

What do you suppose the chances are that the media will celebrate this truth teller in the way they fawned over Tim Russert last week.  Unfortunately that won’t happen even though it should.  Carlin provided us with far more reality than Russert ever did.  We’ll miss you George.

On Monday I begin my tenure at ICON Creative Technologies and I’m looking forward to a long and fruitful relationship.   I’m shifting from engineering to being a full-time automotive journalist, a role in which I hope to inform and educate readers on the latest automotive technologies and advancements.  And I’ll be doing it from an office in downtown Ann Arbor!

Over the years I’ve gotten many, many calls from recruiters and none ever felt right. When the company that I worked for decided to unilaterally cut the pay and benefits of many of their best people while at the same time continually increasing the compensation of those at the top, I began to express my thoughts here on this forum. This place became my soap-box, a place to just spout off on whatever I felt like, the good, the bad, the obscene. This little corner that I carved out for myself allowed me to find another part of myself, to use the knowledge I had gathered over the years and to find my voice.

As it happens it also allowed others who otherwise wouldn’t to hear that same voice. Some liked what they heard, others carried on about their lives. After the incident that prompted my set up corner here, another opportunity arose that I meant to pursue, but my response to the message somehow fell through the cracks. A few months later it thankfully popped up again in a slightly different form and I went after it with a vengeance. It worked and my name began to appear on another nascent site related to cars. I began to make some contacts and not long after that opportunity presented itself yet again. My colleague Alex was busy and I was on vacation from the day job. A quick day trip to New York and back introduced me to a remarkable new car and a lot of very interesting people. That quickly ballooned as I talked to those people on a regular basis.

During one of those events I encountered a pair of gentlemen who would soon reappear. In the fall of 2007, barely a year after I stumbled into automotive journalism, the message appeared in my in-box. I called back. We talked and eventually the deal was struck. A new phase of my life and career would begin. I wish to express my gratitude to the clumsy, ham-handed HR department without whose bumbling, this may not have happened. Thanks to Sebastian and John for plugging in the amplifier that allowed my voice to spread to a wider audience. I look forward to continuing to work with you guys for a long time to come. To John, Rob and Scott for giving me a chance to make a left turn against the prevailing traffic. And most of all to Jules, Sofia and Max for supporting me so much as I make this momentous non-trivial change. Sometimes when opportunity knocks you need to respond in the affirmative.

At any rate Brenda made a remark in jest that after all her years in the business, she had come to the conclusion that all automotive journalists were either Jewish, gay or both.  Unfortunately my mental energy level at that point was at  low ebb at that moment and I found myself unable to respond with the same degree of eloquence and wit that I am told I exhibited during a verbal joust with our colleague Ray the preceding day.  For the record Ray (even though I doubt you will ever read this) Nothing personal, I’ve been stuck at the corner table many times myself over the years.  It just wasn’t your turn.

Anyway, back to my belated response to Brenda.  Keep in mind that printed word lacks much of the nuance of the spoken word, especially in person and none of the following is meant to offend, insult or denigrate anyone (except perhaps hypocrites like Larry Craig).  I have friends and colleagues are fall into either or both categories and many others and I appreciate and respect all of them.  Disclaimers aside, henceforth is what I might said to Brenda (who herself is Jewish, although I cannot attest to her other preferences) had I been more quick witted during our encounter.

Being at least partially of Middle Eastern descent, I’m certain that following my lineage back far enough would yield ancestors who were members of the tribes of Israel.  However, in recent decades, to my knowledge none of the members of my family have partaken in Yom Kippur, Passover or hanukkah as an active member of the faith.  I myself having been raised Catholic and becoming persuaded early on as to the futility of all religion am an unrepentant athiest.  As to the other half of the generalization, I am not nor have I ever been gay, although I’m sure when it comes time choose what color to paint the walls my wife would likely appreciate me a little more if I did have some tendencies in that general direction.

Alas these words did not emerge from my sometimes scattered mind until some hours after the fact.  Fortunately I have this little corner in which to record them anyway and perhaps she will someday see them.  Pleasure to finally meet you Brenda!

The Detroit Grand Prix returned to Belle Isle this week and Max and I were able to go as guests of Acura. The weather was perfect and Roger Penske did an awesome job of improving the facility. For next year though, they really need to do a better job of organizing the lines for the buses to get off the island at the end. Check out Autoblog.com for my posts from the event with lots of galleries.

Subject: Cadillac XLR-V Cop Car

The vehicle you saw on this blog site is loaned to our Public Safety Department by a local Cadillac dealer for a special event held up in the Detroit metropolitan area called the Woodward Dream Cruise. This event drew 1.2 million people this weekend to our area featuring vintage and muscle cars cruising down 16 miles of Woodward Avenue. I’m sure you remember cruising down a particular road in your hometown. You might want to check out our local newspapers online to see what this event is all about. The blogger who posted the Cadillac obviously needs to get his facts straight and a life!

Evidently this individual never actually checked out the site and was thus unaware of our extensive coverage of their little event. Perhaps this person is just stressed out from being stuck in traffic all day Saturday on Woodward but he/she might want to learn a little about sarcasm. Oh and get a life.

The problem we had yesterday was that most of the manufacturers display areas were at the north end of Woodward around 15 mile road.  We had our base of operations (including a live video stream) at Royal Oak Ford near 11 mile.   Getting from our base to where carmakers were took forty minutes and the crowds made photography tough.  Max went along with me and in spite of the crowds and periods of tedium he did great.  He took some awesome photos and was never complained.   If we do this next year we’ll definitely have to find a base of operations closer to Birmingham.  As for those million plus spectators I’m at a loss as to what draws them to set up chairs all along Woodward every year.   Plus it’s hard to find anything to eat south of 13 mile.

It sounds like someone in charge has a thin skin when it comes to criticism of their policies and if that’s the case they have no business being in politics.  Whoever made the decision reverse the approval should step forward and explain themselves.  This move is outrageous and the person/people behind it should be removed from office.  If indeed it was the mayor it shouldn’t be a surprise given the dirty politics they play during last year’s campaign.  Perhaps a recall should be on the ballot right next to the tax proposal.

The other problem with Riverside is their tubes are too small for adults to get comfortable on.  They had these funky tubes that had an inner ring in the center that prevents an adult from letting their butt slide down into the tube so you end up sitting up on top of the whole thing.  Aside from that the river was great and it’s an awesome way to spend a couple of hours.  The whole Traverse City area was nice and the beaches there and at the Dunes were wonderful.   We’ll definitely be going back.

1. AT&T. This alone should be all the reason anyone needs to stay away from the iPhone regardless of how good it may be. AT&T has cooperated willingly in the NSA domestic spying program and for that they should be punished by everyone refusing to do business with them. They have also recently announced plans to monitor the data that their DSL customers are sending and receiving so that they can notify the extortionists at the RIAA and MPAA when suspect content is being transmitted.
2. Cost. The 4GB model will be $499 and the 8GB version is $599. These are the kinds of prices usually charged for unlocked phones that can be used with any cellular provider. Usually when you buy a phone from a company like AT&T or Verizon they subsidize the price in exchange for signing up for a one or two year contract. If you leave your contract early you pay a hefty early termination fee. AT&T will be charging the ETF even though they are not subsidizing the phone.
3. More Cost. The phone goes on sale next Friday and AT&T has just released the service plans for the iPhone and they start at $60 a month for 450 minutes.  If you have a family plan you’re SOL, no sharing minutes.
4. If you currently have a GSM phone and plan, you can’t just buy an iPhone and pop in yor SIM card.  You have to sign up for a new two year service plan with AT&T
5. With a regular iPod you can enable disk mode and drag files onto the drive and use it for portable storage.  The iPhone has no disk mode.
6. With most phones today you can drop any mp3 file on the phone and use it as a ringtone.  The iPhone you can’t use your own files as ring tones.  You’ll have to buy from AT&T.
7. You can’t record video with the iPhone camera, stills only
8. You can’t swap out the battery.  If you have a cell phone that you use with any regularity you know the chances of the phone having any useful life by the middle of the second year is slim.  Presumably you can open up an iPhone like an iPod and replace the battery but it’s not trivial.  No one should sell a phone or media player without a user replaceable battery.
9. The durability of the glass face on the iPhone is still a very open question.  I’d wait and see on that one.
10. Finally and most importantly, AT&T is the only service provider. See reason No. 1 above.

     h. Ypsilanti High School Nickname Reinstatement Recommendation (Enclosure #9)

All of us with some common sense need to call Mr. Reiber and tell him that the students have selected a new nickname and it’s time for the adults to start acting like grown ups instead of whiny little babies and get over it.  The kids are.

You can reach Tom Reiber at home at (734) 434-1425 and by e-mail at techtom@comcast.net.  Everyone should come out to the board meeting on Monday night and speak out against this.

I’ve got two kids in the Ypsilanti Schools. My daughter has been in the Ypsilanti public schools for ten years and my son for seven. In that decade aside from ridiculously cursory HIV awareness, they’ve gotten absolutely zero reproductive health education. The fact that this district has failed to provide any comprehensive health education to it’s students is an absolute disgrace. Just because one very vocal opponent has repeatedly spoken up at every single meeting of this board and some administrators may be squeamish about teaching kids about condoms, it’s not an excuse for continuing to stall on a very important element of these kids education.

Earlier this year you saw the results of a survey that was conducted by the Reproductive Health Advisory Board where almost seven hundred parents overwhelmingly said they want comprehensive reproductive health education. Some people may want to just tell kids not to have sex before marriage but the reality is that sticking your head in the sand like that will do absolutely nothing to protect kids. No matter how much you urge kids not to have sex the reality is that it will happen. Not all of them will but a significant number will. They always have and they always will. Believing anything else is deluding yourself.

Given that we need to make sure that we teach kids about healthy relationships, alternatives to intercourse and how to minimize risks if they do choose to have sex. The reproductive health advisory board has spent more than two years evaluating curricula and have chosen a comprehensive plan. They presented it to you and in public presentations. It’s time to stop stalling just because certain members of this administration and a very vocal minority of the population are uncomfortable with reproductive health education. The parents have spoken and the kids need this. We must face the reality that kids will have sex and most parents are just as uncomfortable as you are when it comes to talking about sex to them. Any parents that don’t want their kids to get this education are free to opt out of either the whole program or any individual lesson.

Finally on an unrelated note, this board in a previous iteration made a difficult and correct decision to retire the Braves nickname. It’s just a nickname and people need to get over it and move on. It offends a group within our community and tradition doesn’t make it OK. I urge you not to re-open this issue and not to restore the name. Starting this fall and over the coming years the kids will get used to a new name and within a few years none of them will care about the old name. Meanwhile alumni will always have their memories. Thank You.

In engineering there is an old saying that in every project there comes a time when you have to shoot the engineers and get on with the job. It appears that someone needed to whack Mr. Chase at some point and finish the damn story about four years ago. As the wait time for each season stretched out the result seemed to be that Chase was just trying to jam in too many meandering, pointless story lines. The Sopranos needed some serious editing, but most definitely not the kind the final episode got last night.

By the time we finished watching that final hour last night, it seemed like they had shot three or four hours of footage from three or four separate scripts produced by different writers and then just through threw together randoms sequences from each into a one hour episode. At the end Chase looked at what they had wrought and just said “Aw Fuck It!” and turned off the lights. That was without a doubt the most unsatisfying ending I have ever seen. For a series that brought us so many brilliant performances over the years along with exposing some great but obscure music to go out in this way was a disgrace.

The purpose of property is to better manage the allocation of scarce resources. Since the resource is limited and not everyone can have it, property rights and property law make complete sense for a civilized society, allowing those with rights to the property to buy, sell and exchange their property. This allows for resources to be efficiently allocated through commerce and the laws of supply and demand. It’s a sensible system for the best allocation of scarce resources. However, when it comes to infinite resources, there’s simply no need to worry about efficient allocation — since anyone can have a copy.

Perhaps what we need to do to make some progress in this whole discussion is to change the terminology to words that are more accurately represent what we are talking about. The whole term intellectual property should be discarded immediately in favor of Ideas. Once we are talking about Ideas the tone of the argument changes. When a company like HBO or Disney starts talking about getting a perpetual monopoly (and a copyright or patent is a government granted monopoly) on an Idea, it might start getting average people’s attention so that they stand up and say NO MORE! Check out the rest of Techdirt’s article here.

I don’t know what Tesla Motors was thinking when they allowed such a post on their blog.

To this all I can say is LIGHTEN UP! Some environmentalists are just far to earnest for their own good. Sometimes you just need to relax and smile a bit.

On an unrelated note, I also want to send best wishes to Dr. Maggie Brandt. Maggie is a trauma surgeon and also Steve Pierce’s wife as well as an army reservist and she is heading off to Iraq at the end of this week. Unfortunately it looks like she is going to be very busy for the next few months repairing the physical damage being done to troops over there. Stay safe Maggie.

During the last three Ypsilanti School Board meetings leading up to the resignation of High School principal Layne Hunt, a lot of people including one Lee Tewson (not sure about the spelling) hurled accusations of racism at members of the board, even though no one on the board ever publicly accused Hunt of anything or even called for his dismissal. The accusations were completely uncalled for. During this entire episode the only thing that I think the board did wrong was Amy Doyle’s the motion to accept Hunt’s resignation. I think Andy Fanta was correct in his comments that the board did not need to accept or reject the resignation. Once the Superintendent accepted the letter, it was not rescindable and there was nothing the board could do. I think that this motion was a mistake only from a politcal perspective as it was unnecessary. But that is neither here nor there.

As Eric mentions the irony of this whole thing is that many of the people standing up to accuse the board of racism were the very same people who criticized the same board for dropping the Braves nickname. This is sheer hypocrisy! It appears that many of the people were speaking in Hunt’s defense based only what they had heard from Hunt himself without any knowledge of what was apparently going on at the High School. Kathleen Conat at the Ypsi Courier has evidently done some actual investigating and it appears that the issues with Hunt go way beyond personality conflicts with staff. It appears that many incidents in the building that should have been documented and report to Superintendent James Hawkins were never reported. Hawkins has declined to speak publicly about personnel matters regarding Hunt and rightfully so.

The fact is almost none of us know what was really going on at the school. For anyone to start hurling accusations of racism around without knowing the whole story is divisive to the community and counterproductive. If this is not about racism, and it certainly doesn’t look like it is, it’s like crying wolf. Every time people cry race when it has nothing to do with it, people are less likely to listen next time. You can find a link to the recordings of all the school board meetings on the Ypsi Government Podcasts page at the top of this page.

Update:I removed Amy’s name as it turns out that although she read the motion she did not originate it.  Amy explains the process:

What happens, most times, is that the wording of the motion has already been determined by the superintendent or board president.  Then it is typed up and included in the board packet.  At the time of making that motion, the board president calls upon a trustee to read it.  I was merely called upon; I did not originate it.

My mistake.  Sorry Amy!  I just want to say one more time that I think that both Amy and Cam did a great job during their tenures on the board and dealt with a lot of difficult issues in difficult times.  The Ypsi School District was lucky to have them as active participants.

Manhattan on the other hand seems to have the solution.  Rack mount parking that provides the maximum density of parked cars per area available.  There is little wasted space and it’s probably cheaper to install than a parking structure.  I saw all kinds of these structures during my cab rides between the hotel and Javits Center and the airport.

With my limited time in the city, I didn’t get to really do any sight-seeing.  Manhattan is a very densely populated city with stuff going on everywhere you look and all kinds of noises.  The city is very much alive and an interesting place to visit, but the kind of place I’d want to live.  It seems like the majority of actual moving cars on the streets of Manhattan are yellow cabs, with most of the private vehicles sitting in those racks.  Given the traffic in the city, that’s probably just as well.

Getting out of New York was a real pain in the ass.  The Javits Center is on the western edge of Manhattan island while JFK airport was east of Manhattan in Queens.  Judging from my several cab rides over 48 hours in town plus my previous visit in December, going north-south in Manhattan is pretty straight-forward.  Going east-west on the other hand is anything but.  My ride to the airport involved the cabbie continuously turning norht or south trying to find an east-west route that wasn’t backed up.  The 17 mile ride took about an hour and a half.  It’s a good thing I left with plenty of time.  more later…