grist for the mill

Official Google Blog: The road to better path-finding

VI. Of the Training of Black Men. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk

"The second thought streaming from the death-ship and the curving river is the thought of the older South,—the sincere and passionate belief that somewhere between men and cattle, God created a tertium quid, and called it a Negro,—a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitations, but straitly foreordained to walk within the Veil"

MUSIC:Kaya Project: Album - Elixir; Song - Dark Tabla

REFERENCE POST (GF): American Prison System

REFERENCE POST (GF): Mount Rushmore

REFERENCE POST(GF): Marcus Garvey

Wikipedia Quote: Garvey is best remembered as an important proponent of the "Back-To-Africa" movement, which encouraged people of African ancestry to return to their ancestral homelands. This movement would eventually inspire other movements ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement, who see him as a prophet.

REFERENCE POST (music): http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Le+Peuple+De+L%27herbe+-+Ph+Theme

REFERENCE POST (GF: Black Separatist)From MLive.com - Milton Henry Dies

http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/michigan/index.ssf?/base/news-37/1158100762224450.xml&storylist=newsmichigan

Oakland County, MI

The 60% Solution

For a lot of people, part of the difficulty in reducing committed expenses comes from the need to make big monthly credit card payments. If you're carrying a substantial amount of non-mortgage debt, I'd suggest using the 20% that would otherwise go to retirement and long-term saving to aggressively pay down your debt -- but only after you cut up those cards.

Every dollar in interest that you don't pay is just like getting a guaranteed, risk- and tax-free return on your money equal to the interest rate on the debt. When your debts are paid off -- and it won't take long using 20% of your gross income -- immediately redirect that money into savings.

CNN.com - Mysterious red cells might be aliens - Jun 2, 2006: "In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples -- water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis's home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001 -- contain microbes from outer space."

Rise in heroin use among area teens: "An investigation by the multijurisdictional drug unit since January has identified about 10 to 15 heroin users between the ages of 15 to 21 in Kalamazoo County, mainly in Portage and the southern half of the county, Coleman said. ``I think it's about time that this community takes a serious look at this problem before it gets out of hand,'' Coleman said."

Reason: What Detroit Can Learn From Bangalore: A booming city’s lessons for a town in decline: "To be sure, Detroit has many of the trappings of wealth that come from sitting in the lap of the richest country in the world: an excellent freeway system, a sparkling riverfront, good sanitation. Bangalore, in turn, has many of the afflictions of a poor country: pollution, open sewers, slums. But there is a palpable buzz in Bangalore’s air that comes when industrious people are engaged in creating wealth. That’s missing in Detroit, where a big chunk of the population lives off welfare.

While Bangalore grows, Detroit continues to lead the United States in population decline. Every week, on average, 370 residents leave its crime-ridden, economically depressed neighborhoods for a better life in the suburbs or elsewhere in the country. The city’s population, close to 2 million in the late 1950s, has shrunk to less than 900,000. Formerly the fifth largest city in the country—bigger even than Chicago—Detroit is now smaller than San Jose."

THE SHRINKING CHILDHOOD: Children are in a rush to grow up: "Today, parents buy cell phones and ultra low-rise jeans for their 10-year-olds. Middle-schoolers post profiles of themselves -- sometimes claiming they are older than they are -- on Web sites like MySpace.com. Kids as young as 13 go to dances with dates in limousines."

Someone asked me once if my child liked Usher. When I replied in the negative they asked me "why." "Because I don't like Usher," I replied. "She is partial to Al Green and Ray Charles though. I haven't gotten her to appreciate Mingus, but she is coming around to Coltrane." Basically what I told him was that if she listened to music at all, it was what I listned to. The person looked at me as if I had 2 heads (I get even stranger looks when I tell people that she doesn't watch much TV). My daughter was 5 at the time (7 now). How in the world do you give a 5 year old the leeway to make those types of choices? I'm sure that in the teen years there will be a major culture clash. It's what I signed up for. But until then, I get to make the rules. - Barry

From the Boston Globe: A group of small retailers and wholesalers in Michigan is asking for a change in the way the state administers the federal assistance program. The merchants hope that spreading out food stamp distributions can eliminate such swings in customer traffic, which make it difficult to keep stores adequately staffed and stocked.

Stephen Wiltshire

In February 1987, the BBC aired a program on Savant Syndrome entitled "The Foolish Wise Ones." One segment featured a then twelve-year old autistic boy, Stephen Wiltshire, drawing from memory on camera a remarkably accurate sketch of St. Pancras station which he had visited for the first time only briefly several hours before. As the camera recorded, he quickly and assuredly drew the elaborate and complicated building exactly as he had seen it with the clock hands set at precisely 11:20, the hour he had viewed them.

Stress – the Invisible Killer: Magnopro - The New Stress Reliever: "Research has shown that stress may be the most misunderstood and underestimated debilitating condition of the century. If you are experiencing pain than you have not addressed the stress in your life. Stess may be the root cause of all pain & disease. Research has also shown that when stress levels have been relieved, most body inefficiencies and malfunctions simply disappear."

A new residency rule for Detroit is unwise - 04/19/06 - The Detroit News: "Detroit should not want to turn itself into the East Berlin of major cities, advertising its own undesirability by building the legal equivalent of the Berlin Wall around itself for top appointees.

Nor does it want to get into the kind of embarrassing imbroglio of a decade ago, when it fired the nationally renowned curator of 20th-century art at the Detroit Institute of Arts for the sin of maintaining an apartment in Detroit while his wife resided in a home in Huntington Woods.

That firing led a messy and well-publicized lawsuit that did the city no good. The former director of the art museum said another candidate for a museum appointment wouldn't consider Detroit if it imposed a residency requirement."

Gaylord Herald Times - Will Granholm Pull a Blanchard?: "But there's another challenge reminiscent of the 1990 Blanchard upset loss. One word: D-E-T-R-O-I-T.

According to the EPIC-MRA poll done for the Detroit News and MIRS newsletter, some of those voters might not bother to vote for her which is a defacto vote for DeVos.

That's in part what happened to Blanchard who had difficulties with then Mayor Coleman Young."

Major League Baseball : News : Major League Baseball News: "LOS ANGELES -- With fitting solemnity, the Dodgers honored their own No. 42 Saturday night on another coast and at a different ballpark, 59 years to the day Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play in a Major League Baseball game, thus changing the course of history."

Water bill plan for poor pushed: "The current plan will use up to $2.5 million in late fees from Detroit residents to create a fund, which would be supplemented by donations from the city's residential and commercial customers. Residents with family incomes up to 175% of the federal poverty level would be eligible to apply for grants from the fund."