Detroit's Dequindre Cut is a linear park in an abandoned sunken railroad bed that picks up where Dequindre Road leaves off and runs to the Warehouse District and the Detroit River. It runs right past my grade school, Friends School in Detroit. The railroad tracks were abandoned even back in my FSD days.

About half of the cut has been reclaimed as parkland, and it's a beautiful space. On a warm Saturday afternoon in May, it was heavily trafficked by walkers, joggers, bikers and people pushing baby strollers. Toward the north end of the park, there were layers of beautiful graffiti art, really gorgeous stuff.

The south end of the park had been painted over, and then the paint job defiled by poorly done crap art and tags. Looks awful. They should have left the good stuff untouched; the north end of the park has a graffiti wonderland quality.

At Orleans Street, the park ends. It's easy to dive under the high fence and into the strikingly desolate urban wilderness of the original cut. Right on the other side of the fence was a cheerfully drunk guy enjoying his quart of beer under the overpass. After exchanging pleasantries, we struck out for a walk on the wild side of the cut.

The railroad ties were still present, if overgrown with weeds. We found several homeless camps: spots inside a building or on a loading dock where someone had carved a lving space and outfitted themselves with some furniture. And a lot of very skillful and elaborate graffiti, some of it dated this year.

There were no cars roaring by on the overpasses, I think most of them are closed off to traffic due to disrepair.

If we covered our ears to block out the distant city noise, it was easy to believe that we, the drunk guy and a feral cat we saw were the last survivors of the apocalypse.

As the cut became shallower, and the tracks rose toward street level, we turned around and headed back, passing our quart-of-beer guy on his way home... whatever or wherever that may be.

A truly monstrous week of storms here in southeastern Michigan, and my property came out relatively unscathed. Especially considering I am pofficially in the Allen Creek floodplain, with the bottled creek running right through my yard.

People in Warren had 3 feet of water in their basements, several roads are closed due to washouts around Washtenaw and Western Wayne counties. And the high embankment on Plymouth Road by Broadway and Traver Creek Park collapsed onto the road during Wednesday's storm. It was around 9pm, and it's a wonder nobody was hurt.

The railroad tracks were left hanging, suspended in air like one of those rope and plank bridges in a jungle paradise!

[Scroll down for AnnArbor.com's eye-goggling Flickr slideshow of the aftermath of the collapse.]

Mulholland Street's Old Faithful (The sewer cover that blows in heavy storms) bubbled and perked, but did not blow off this time. My basement had an inch of water in the usual spots, but nothing terrible. My friend on the east side had more water in his basement, and he's not even in a flood plain.

Many homes in Ann Arbor had sewage back up into their basement through the drains, and this never happens to me.

I'm sometimes afraid my home is unsaleable, should I decide to sell. But the reality is that many homes in Ann Arbor have stormwater and basement flooding issues, and in comparing notes after this landmark storm, I'm pretty lucky.

Here's the magnolia in my yard in full bloom. Don't mess with Big Pink!

You America-hating pinko, you!

Create your own customized attack on yourself by Fox News' insightful, intelligent, fact-checking and always rational Glenn Beck. Go to cnnbc.com and let it connect to your Facebook page. It'll pull information, and then Glenn Beck will hilariously set about proving that you, personally, are responsible for the dismantling of democracy in the Western Hemisphere. And weep about it copiously. Afterwards, it'll give you the option of posting it to FB, and/or emialing to selected friends, and/or generating code to embed it in your blog. Due to Facebook's terms of service, if you want to embed it, you'll have to take a minute and hand-feed it some of your information, since FB won't let any app run away with info from your page.

Very clever little FB app, financed by the commie socialists at moveon.org.

Hi Google,

Here's why you should bring your high speed fiber optic network to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Ann Arbor is cool...

We have a lively and growing tech economy, and a first-rate university right in town. "Ivy of the Midwest", it's called.

Ann Arbor has a wonderful geek community with a postive attitude of engagement and evangelism toward our less geeky neighbors, and our community readily adapts to new things. 

For example...

--We are (almost) home to Wireless Ypsi (Ypsilanti is our amazing, awesome, and arty neighboring sister city), and our dead-tree newspaper has gone totally online, with surprising success.

--After much squawking on both sides, the City of Ann Arbor passed a law allowing urban chickens.

--And we are soooo ready to move beyond the high-priced, shoddily serviced stranglehold of Comcast and AT&T into brave new worlds of accessible connectivity!

And then there's the recession...

Although the Michigan economy is reeling, Ann Arbor is reeling less due to its tech base and the University. We are the tech hub for our state, possibly even the whole Midwest. We have tech cred!

We are located within in a generally crumbling economy, since Michigan and its traditional manufacturing base have been very hard hit by the depression-- whoops-- recession.

So we could really use a break!

A truly thriving Ann Arbor tech economy could be a big first step toward bringing our whole state out of recession.

Many of our most innovative people are up against some challenges...

This being Michigan, a significant portion of our tech startups are spearheaded by folks who are jobless and have to go the entrepreneurial route.

Consider, the highest speed and most reliable service in town is Comcast, whose rates are $65/month after the introductory rate expires. I know many people who work from coffee shops because they can no longer afford home internet. I can tell you from experience that collaborative coding with a far-flung partner is difficult to pull off in a coffee shop.

I think your experiment would yield more dramatic and meaningful results in our community, as opposed to, say, Austin. I think in a well-funded community, the difference your network would make would be less readily apparent. And you also have offices here with people who can give you a first-hand eye-witness report on how the community responds.

In short, Ann Arbor's tech community is smart, resourceful, engaged with the rest of the community, and also a bit up against the wall. Your high speed initiative could really make a difference here.

Case in point...

I would insert lots of links and pictures and make a video to prove my point, but I have to go... gotta work on a project with my partner in Louisiana, and upload stuff to Dropbox on the AT&T connection I share with a neighbor, which slows down every... evening... right... about... now. Hey, is somebody watching Hulu? Stop it.

Sigh.

OK, Google. Thanks, bye!

Sitting downtown this morning with the pugs, I met this guy. He motored up in his wheelchair and handed me a big laminated card that said his name and that he wanted to talk with me, but he was not able to speak, and would I chat with him? The card had the alphabet and numbers and various short words and phrases like Yes and No. I tapped Yes.

Drunk Drivers

He tapped out that he was in a car accident in 1983; he was hit by a drunk. In Texas. In a coma for 7 months. I asked him if he remembered anything from the coma. Did he dream? Was he ever aware of people around him? He tapped out I-S-A-W-J-E-S-U-S. I broke into a big smile that said, of course. We grinned at each other. He said he asked Jesus if it was time to go, and Jesus said no. I asked if he had a choice, as many people who have near death experiences report they have the choice whether to return to life or move on to death. He tapped, No. No choice! We laughed. He can vocalize, but not form words. I told him about my friends' daughter, who is in the hospital in South Carolina, put there by a drunk. How we don't know what she'll be left with when she wakes up.

Semper Fi

He said he had lived in many places in addition to Michigan: Okinawa, Japan, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, California, Louisiana. I told him about my brother in New Orleans, and that my dad fought on Okinawa and was one of the first soldiers sent to mainland Japan after the surrender. Then he told me the wheelchair had been given to him by-- and he tapped a logo on the card that I had not noticed before: United States Marines. From his age, I guessed that he had served in Vietnam. He tapped, Yes! And, the marines gave him the spiffy chair because they thought he was shot 3 times. I looked at him. He tapped, I was only shot twice! We laughed. He tapped, Hill 48.

Well, even I've heard of Hill 48. But I didn't know anything about it, other than it was legendary for its carnage and heavy losses. He said that of 152 men in his company, only 5 made it back to camp. He said he saw Charlie in the trees. They were picking you off with sniper fire? Yes. You shot one? He tapped, 2. He said, when he finally got back to camp, he noticed two holes in his shirt. That's when he knew he'd been shot. He said his Captain wrote a letter to the surgeon at Okinawa, and that's how 2 shots got changed to three, and although his tour of duty was another four months, he was discharged. They figured he'd given enough, what with 3 bullets and surviving Hill 48. He said of the men who replaced the lost men of his company, all were killed within a few months. I didn't think to ask about the Captain.

September 1967

The battle of Hill 48 took place in September 1967 in an area known as Leatherneck Square, a few miles south of the Demilitarized Zone. The DMZ was the border between North and South Vietnam. Four understrength companies of the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines (3/26), India, Kilo, Mike and Lima, 700 in all, fought 3,000 soldiers of the 324B Division, 812th Regiment of the NVA. 350 Marines would be killed or wounded, a 40% casualty rate. Also involved were the Headquarters and Service Company of the 3/26, and Alpha and Bravo Companies of the 3rd Antitank Battalion.

Hill 48 had been taken with little resistance on the afternoon of September 6 as part of Operation Swift by India Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, who moved on to meet heavy resistance on Hill 43. The next day, elements of the 3/26 moved through the area as part of Operation Kingfisher, digging entrenchments. On September 7th, As India, Kilo and Mike Companies moved down off Hill 48, they were hit by heavy artillery fire and scrambled back up into the trenches they had just dug. Waves of NVA infantry followed, sometimes hundreds advancing in formation like the American Civil War, while rocket, artillery and mortar fire pounded the perimeters of the Americans' positions. Military analysts believe the NVA had been amassing troops for an attack on the Marine outpost at nearby Con Thien, but were spooked when they saw the 3/26 descending Hill 48, and attacked.

Casualties were heavy and the NVA broke through in places and there was hand-to-hand combat. Lima Company joined them on September 8th. The assaults continued in waves through September 10. The marines were equipped with first generation M-16s that jammed. A lot of guys would have lived if their guns had worked. An Ontos M50 antitank vehicle took an RPG and went up in a towering geyser of flame. Airstrikes were called in, which allowed the marines to hold off the NVA. Finally, on the 10th, the assault was seriously crippled by Navy F-4 Phantom jets and finished off by the arrival of an AC-47 gunship. These big, deadly birds were nicknamed Puff the Magic Dragon and could fire off 6,000 rounds per minute. Yep, that's 100 rounds per second.

Some great online accounts fo the battle of Hill 48 can be found here and here.

There is a mention of the battle on page 140 of Sempfer Fi: Vietnam by Edward F. Murphy.

Also, find a copies of Ambush Valley : I Corps, Vietnam 1967--the story of a Marine infantry battalion's battle for survival by Eric Hammel and Con Thien: The Hill of Angels by James P. Coan.

I found all 3 books through the Michigan Inter-Library system and they're on their way!

And listen to "The Battle of Hill 48" written and sung by Walter Hammond, who was a grunt with Kilo Company. You can buy the song on iTunes.

If I ever run into my new friend again, I'll ask him what company he was with, and whether he fought in this battle or in some other engagement on Hill 48.

My Twitterstream this morning has contained several fascinating conversations. We're all pretty sharp for a Saturday morning. I started one stream by complaining about Twitter autoposts to Facebook. Then, @jesseluna started another by calling Twitter a social media accelerant.

Here's the rough summary of all the action:

1. Autoposts from Twitter to Facebook are annoying. If you are a frequent tweeter, you'll dominate your friend's Facebook streams so your friends have to scroll and page past YOU to see updates from other friends. Plus, autoposters tend not to be around much (or else they'd realize what they're doing and stop, right?), and therefore don't participate in conversations. So they become noisy, chain-rattling ghosts.

2. Well, OK... you can autopost to FB if you tweet infrequently. This thought courtesy of @peterhoneyman. I would say 4x/day max. But if there's a lot of overlap between your communities, @logista points out that your friends are probably tired of hearing the same thing in two places.

3. Which gets me to thinking, there's a frequency factor. And there's an etiquette to frequency. Twitter is constant, while Facebook is something people may check only once a day. If most of your friends are only posting one or two things per day, you're out of sync with them if you post a lot more. It's like dominating the conversation.

4. There's also the captive audience factor. Your Twitter stream probably has a lot of people you don't really know. You can be as tweety as you want, talk about whatever you want. Twitter is like a noisy party, with beer. You are supposed to chatter. If people don't like you, they can walk away.

5. Facebook usually has people you know in real life: friends, relatives, colleagues, past and present. Facebook is more like a dinner party. Everybody wants to get a chance to listen to everyone else, and you sometimes listen together. Dominating is rude. And your cousin can't very well block you. That's why Facebook added the hide-from-stream option.

6. Several people have observed that Facebook contains your past, Twitter contains your future. What that means is:  your Facebook friends are already invested in you, while your Twitter friends are wondering why they should care.

7. Given the above, don't your Facebook friends deserve special thought and attention, and a custom message? I'd propose taking the time to talk to the two audiences differently. Better yet, don't think of your FB friends as an audience. They're your homies. Say hey. Respond to their posts. Be nice to their friends.

8. Read point 6 again, it's important. It's key to what subject matter overlaps and what doesn't. Your extended family and old school buddies are probably not interested in a stream of tweets and links related to your perseverant interests. They get enough of your geekery at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Some of your twitter friends, however, may be following you for just that reason. And, your Twitter follows really don't care that you're leaving for vacation tomorrow. Kinda boring. But your Facebook crowd does and would enjoy the opportunity to wish you Bon Voyage.

9. Amazingly, both audiences have a high tolerance for what you're cooking and what your pets are up to, expecially if you post pics. After all, most of us like to eat, and like animals. And some of us even like to eat animals.

10. Which brings me to Jesse P. Luna's dubbing Twitter a Social Media Accelerant. @MamaBee4  chimed in, likening it to rocket fuel. I really like the idea, and think of twitter as a particle acelerator. I'm wondering if Twitter is the new broadcast medium, where everybody has a channel.

But that's another post.

The Twitter/Facebook difference sheds some light on why the recent Facebook revamp sucked. I really liked a lot of what they reduced or eliminated... the random friend-of-a-friend noise, stuff your friends were saying to each other, the sense of conversational clusters you could listen in on, or jump right in. Like a party, where everybody knows the hostess.

Now it's more like a Twitter stream of updates, and frankly, what my Facebookians put in their updates is not interesting as one-column stream. These updates are not stand-alones. The value is in the replies, the overheard chatter, and in sometimes engaging with several people at once.

I really, really miss the old Facebook, and I don't need another Twitter.

Marco sent me a link to this TED talk by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web.

He talks about how hard it was before the web for people to envision the power and possibility of a network of linked documents. He says linked data is the next step.

Blew my mind. Got me thinking about what might happen. This is going to be another revolution. Currently, we're in the midst of the digital revolution. Next, the data revolution.

With the web, we're already becoming a self-surveying society. And creating self-documenting phenomena. This, in addition to data that would be actively fed into the datagrid by individuals and enterprise. Data aggregation, analysis, interpretation, visualization will be huge.

Somebody will, Google-like, corner search and return of the data pipes, with tools and controls so anyone can then play with the data, build things with the data, test things against the data. It'll be a scarily detailed mirror image of */everything/* that can then be vivisectioned or experimented upon.

Also, gaming will use the datagird to program an accurate and constantly updating mirror image of the world, and  the player turns the avatar and its attributes loose in it, making decision for it, or using data, lets it make its own decisions. Or, Godlike, manipulates events to see what the avatar will do.

Also this amount and depth of data might help us understand and better predict chaotic phenomena such as weather,  the stock market, even human and social behavior. You could also use this richness of data to do really detailed and accurate virtual testing of damned near anything. Mounir figured out how to save months of noise and vibration prototype testing using Excel instead. He built this amazing virtual prototyping thing in Excel. People will build similar amazing things in a juiced-up online Excel, with access to all this data, and there will be incredibly accessible ways of visualizing and communicating the results. Somebody will build a stock market predictor, for example. Or outcomes for at-risk kids.

Talk about Mad Max, check out these artists settling in the wilds of Hamtramck, using castoff resources at hand, and fighting off scrappers.

ABC News

NPR

Powerhouse Project website

My friend Mary and her husband and I went down there yesterday to see for ourselves, meet the people. I'll blog about it and post pics on either the tunieblog or JeannetteGutierrez.com

I fell in love with 12548 Moran; the asking price is about $2500, back taxes are $3,000. Plus closing costs. Alas, I don't have this!

Just wanted to capture this thought: There are a lot of people who think what the artists are doing is great, but they wouldn't have the courage themselves to homestead in Hamtown. And artists who have the courage, but lack the relatively modest funds to buy. And I'm thinking about the Bengali neighbors, waving and shouting greetings to us from the windows, coming out to ask if we were interested in buying the house. They desperately want artists for neighbors instead of vacant homes.

What about a website that matched up artists, homes and benfactors? The artists could set what they could afford towards the purchase costs, and we'd ask people to donate the remainder. After purchase, the buyer's on his own, and there's a lot of work to do. But there's already a fledgling grassroots support system in place, and guidance from the first pioneers.

It'd be a pretty small investment, really. I could have afforded to buy a whole home when I was working at the agency, and could easily have ponied up half to help get an artist installed. Some homes are going for as little as $100 plus back taxes and closing costs.

"Applying” for “jobs” is a making less and less sense to me. Salaries in Michigan are so low, they are easily matched by multiple small income streams, enabled by the internet. And with existing companies having trouble heaving their bloated profit model onto the internet, they are likely to contract further. Where’s you’re “job” going to go then? There’s no security in a job anymore, and little compensation. I see a future where companies have a hard time hiring: there’s no reason for employees not to work for themselves. There’s a leveling out going on.