Southfield City Council Meeting March 26, 2012

City Council Meeting held in Southfield, Michigan on March 26, 2012

Topics Include

• Lasher Road Reconstruction
• The Resurfacing of 8-Mile Road
• A GIS Map web portal for Southfield (Destination Southfield)
• Concerns regarding DTE Energy

An agenda and related documents can be found at here.

Church and State

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

First Amendment of the United States Constitution

Note: I started working on this a while ago stuck it in a drawer and came back to it so the timeliness of it is a bit off.

Alright so on ABC's This Week a few weeks ago Rick Santorum took a controversial stance on the concept of church and state. I figure I would discuss what that concept generally is.


First off the concept of separation of church and state isn't actually formalized. That phrase is nowhere in the United States Constitution. However the constitution does have evidence of it. I'll get to that in a bit. Really it's one of the many vague legal and political concepts we as Americans have just come to adopt and accept. There are others as well such as Judicial Review, legal precedence, the executive cabinet, and the two party system. The point I'm trying to make is that just because it's a vague concept that does not make it unimportant or ignorable.

Let's go.

For those not in the know we more or less ripped off most of our "American Values" from John Locke.



Locke was a 17th Century enlightenment philosopher who like I said came up with a number of the concepts that were integrated into the United States Constitution as well as the Declaration of independence and American legal and political theory in general.


If you want the true founding father he's it.


I had to do it.

Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.

John Locke
Second Treatise on Government

Like I said Jefferson and Madison pretty much blatantly ripped him off. Why is this important? Well one of those legal and political theories he came up with that was ripped off was the separation of church and state.

Nobody, therefore, in fine, neither single persons nor churches, nay, nor even commonwealths, have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other upon pretense of religion. Those that are of another opinion would do well to consider with themselves how pernicious a seed of discord and war, how powerful a provocation to endless hatreds, rapines, and slaughters they thereby furnish unto mankind. No peace and security, no, not so much as common friendship, can ever be established or preserved amongst men so long as this opinion prevails, that dominion is founded in grace and that religion is to be propagated by force of arms.

John Locke
A Letter Concerning Toleration

He believed pretty much that if you don't you end up with this.



Now in terms of the constitution supporting separation of church and state, people point to the establishment clause of the first amendment,

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." There are a couple of ways to read this. The most obvious is that the United States can't have and official religion, like the English and the Anglican Church. But over the years we've also taken it to mean that the government cannot and should not do anything to validate or privilege one religion over others. The government should be as religion neutral as possible.

The concept was further expanded upon by Thomas Jefferson in an 1802 letter.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" thus building a wall of eternal separation between Church & State. Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from prescribing even those occasional performances of devotion, practiced indeed by the Executive of another nation as the legal head of its church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect,

Thomas Jefferson
Letter to the Danbury Baptists

Furthermore in there is also the Treaty of Tripoli ratified in 1797 under the Adams administration.

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Treaty of Tripoli

I could go on all day with presidential quotes and you might see a few more before this is through but for now let's talk about the courts.

Now the problem with virtually all legal, political or any theoretical idea really is practicality. How is it implemented law implement it. That's what I love about the constitution by the way. It took all these high political ideas floating around and implemented them.

And that by the way is the role of the courts. Figure out how a bunch of words on paper affect people. So let's talk about how they've interpreted separation of church and state.

The first big case was Reynolds v. United States in 1871.

Lets talk about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints also known as those wacky Mormons for a bit.

All About Mormons
Get More: SOUTH
PARKmore...

While it shies away from it now, back in the day the Mormon church was big into polygamy. The rest of the country however wasn't, which lead to the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act. Now due to the country having larger issues at the time it wasn't really enforced.



As a result the Mormons mostly ignored it. After a certain obvious tumultuous period in American history, polygamy became a social issue again. And the government wanted to actually start enforcing it. So a this test case was brought to the supreme court. Guess what? You can't legally marry more than one person.

The court basically decided you can't use the "that law is against my religion" as a legal defense. And boy howdy would the universe be wacky if you could.

Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband, would it be beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into practice?

Chief Justice Morrison Waite
Court Opinion on Reynolds V. United States

Legally this guy would be within his rights.



The law has to be blind to religion or else any num nuts could claim that he was doing stuff because god told him so.

The next biggy is Everson v. Board of Education. Let's talk about states' rights. When the constitution of the United States it mostly dealt with the federal government. That is to say it outlined how the Federal government would operate. States adopted their own constitions. Most of them are blatantly modeled off the U.S. constitution, but there are differences, especially when it comes to the first 10 amendments that pretty much cap what the government can do. Yeah there are a lot of "shall make no laws"s in the bill of rights.

Eventually as a result of the, "obviously tumultuous period in American History," congress decided to nip that shit in the bud, and adopted the 14th amendment.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

U.S. Constitution

14th Amendment Section 1

Most legal scholars take it basically to mean that if a state law couldn't pass legal muster under the Bill of Rights, states can't do it. The establishment clause is part of the bill of rights and thus applies to state law.

One of the roles of state government is to oversee education. In Everson v. Board of Education the U.S. Supreme court ruled that state governments could offer funding to religious schools if those schools don't get preferential treatment. That is to say if there is a program that funds schools in general it can also fund religious schools. A law and funding granted to the general populous can affect religious institutions.

Separation of Church and State is an important concept that deserves to be discussed and interpreted in the American Political Sphere

(Yeah I know that was tacked on but it's been a few weeks.)

Southfield City Council Meeting March 19, 2012

City Council Meeting held in Southfield, Michigan on March 19, 2012

Topics Include

• A tax abatement and establishment of an industrial development district on the 7th floor of the IBM Building for Computerized Facility Integration LLC
• Amendment to the Southfield Master Plan to include a Non-Motorized Pathway and Transportation Supplement
• A Wind and Solar Energy Zoning Ordinance

Note: Due to technical difficulties there are two periods where the audio is cut one lasting for about 15 minutes after the first hour and the second for roughly 5 minutes before the end of the meeting.


An agenda and related documents can be found here.

Southfield Public School District Board Meeting March 13, 2012

Southfield Public School District Board Meeting held March 13, 2012

Topics Include

• American Legacy Magazine/ MRA Experiential Tours African American History Tour
• Use of Technology to help teach moderately cognitively impaired students
• A Reading Initiative
• A new web hosting service for the district website
• Repaving Projects

An agenda and related documents can be found here.

Demon Song

Southfield City Council Meeting February 21, 2012

City Council Meeting Held in Southfield, Michigan on February 21, 2012

Topics Include

• A Tax Abatement Request from Computerized Facility Integration, LLC
• Poverty Tax Exemption Program Revisions
• Pool and Sports Arena Refurbishing
• Update to FEMA SAFER Grant Issues
• An upcoming Denso abatement hearing
• Allegations of Police Time Card Fraud

An agenda and related documents can be found here.

I Love Animation

So the other day I'm sitting around watching an episode of Young Justice and my mom berates me for watching cartoons. This is mostly going to be a history, but let me say that especially when it comes to action animation allows for shots you just couldn't get in live action.




And yes, 5 years later The Matrix would rip off this scene.



So I am now going to defend myself in a quasi academic way. First off let me say I was incredibly lucky growing up. Some of the best animated stuff came out in the 90's. And I'm not saying that to be snarky.

The Dark Age of Animation


Animation especially good animation is incredibly labor intensive. Your average live action episode takes about a month to produce. Animation, try 9. See the way animation works is by presenting a bunch a images faster than the eye can process the difference.




Normally that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 per second. 20 minutes times 60 seconds times 30 frames, that's 36,000 frames. Now I know a lot of folks are going say, well what about computers. In 2-d animation they help in inking and editing, but a lot of the penciling is still done by hand, on paper or sometimes digital tablets, but still by hand.

After the fall of the Hollywood system and the decrease of shorts in theatres, animation had to move to TV. And schedules and budgets got tighter. As a result shortcuts such as limiting animation and reusing animation were taken and quality did go down.

People noticed and eventually the animation ghetto was born. The idea that cartoons are so bad that only kids could enjoy them.

Okay this post was supposed to be about TV and I'll get there but you need background so let's go to the movies.



A lot of animators hated the cartoons are for kids idea and tried to eschew it, but well folks you know who weird the definition of mature can get. Don't get me wrong, though. I love Ralph Bakshi.



Now Disney is a weird case. For a while they were the only animation movie studio in town. They were still making critically acclaimed stuff in the Dark Age, but a lot of the animators hated it.



Because animation is so labor intensive Disney had become an animation factory. And a lot of artists, wink wink, nudge nudge Don Bluth, had a problem with that.


Oh Don Bluth one of the greatest animators ever. You gave me both Iron Giant and Titan A.E. All hail Lord Bluth. Miles that was like 20 years later.






Right what was my point? A lot of the animators felt frustrated. There was a lot of a sense that Disney wasn't as good as it used to be, and that they were at the end of an age. It didn't help that the king had died. This all came to a head with the Secret of Nimh. Yeah, eventually Bluth left Disney and forged and a rivalry with them.



Disney had been offered the rights to the book but turned it down and a lot of the animators, Bluth included, really wanted to work on it. The word on the street is that Disney thought the story was too dark for kids. In total 11 animators left to work on it.

In the industry it was no secret that Disney and Don Bluth were competing. Eventually in 1986 Bluth's An American Tail out grossed Disney's The Great Mouse Detective. That caused Disney to rethink how it was doing things, leading to.





The Renaissance Age of Animation

The Renaissance age is so dubbed because it's mostly remembered for the Disney Renaissance, a period of time when Disney was making cash hand over fist. Now when most people think of the Disney Renaissance they think Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King etc. , but in my mind there are two movies that are even more responsible that get too little credit.



Narratively speaking Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of the weirdest movies in the Disney lexicon. In all honesty it's one of the least kid friendly movies Disney ever made.


It works as a send up to everything Hollywood in the 1940's and 50's. Both golden age cartoons, and old school noirs.



Look I obviously love the movie, but that's only part of it's charm. It really was innovative and along with the The Rescuers Down Under paved the way for digital inking. All this led to richer crisper coloring. And it seemed that Disney wasn't as afraid of going dark.



Just like everyone else kids like a little bit of pathos. Sometimes a good story has to punch you in the gut.

The TV Arena



Disney was making so much cash they decided to throw their hat into the TV arena. For a time it seemed like all the time and effort good animation takes can pay off financially.



Now a lot of Disney's TV fair were adaptations of their movies.



The WB eventually had the same idea and it lead to what is considered by many to be the best animated television show ever. The writing was exquisite, the music was great, animation great.



If you haven't, watch it. Watch it now! Stop reading this and go! It holds up and again many consider this to be the best adaptation of Batman. People think we nerds like Mark Hamill because of Star Wars, and we do, but to us he is not Luke Skywalker. He is the Joker. It's never been a competition between Jack and Heath it's always been Mark and Heath.



Anyway, in a lot of ways Batman The Animated Series set the bar. Saturday morning cartoons could be dark again they could be well written. They could be good.


Now I can go into what both Batman and Gargoyles got right but the Nostalgia Critic already did it for both. But I will say compare how animation improved over the years





Now mostly I've about Disney, but I can't overstate the importance of Toonami either.




A lot of kids were getting their first taste of Anime.





Again a lot of those shows weren't afraid to punch you in the gut.



(Rainmaker just make a season 5 already. Stop toying with us.)

My point I guess is that Cartoon Network in general was doing some really interesting and impressive stuff.



Then Toonami was canceled, and for a while I thought things had fallen.



And don't get me wrong they got bad.



But then Generator Rex, Ben 10 Alien Force/Ultimate Alien, Young Justice, and ThunderCats came. Heck if they wanted to they could rebuild Toonami with those shows as a core.







Note: I was wrong. Don Bluth didn't do Iron Giant. That would be Brad Bird.

Along the Road (Forever Forward)

The road is long and cold and dark
It is not my place to know where it leads or when it ends
But it is my duty to travel along it

It twists and forks and circles
Yet my feet continue to walk along it
And though I am without map or lantern
My duty is clear
Forward Forever Forward
Until it abruptly and suddenly stops

Unemployment of Young People In the U.S.and Europe

Today I was reading a New York Times Article about young people being out of work ... in Europe. It's a good article. I just wanted to compare the stats so here they are.



And here are comparative numbers for the U.S.

Southfield Public School District Board Meeting February 14, 2012

Southfield Public School Board Meeting Held February 14, 2012


Topics Include

• Black History Month
• Issues with the Latchkey Program
• Winners of an 8th Grade Essay Contest

An agenda and related documents can be found here.

Southfield City Council Special Meeting February 13, 2012

Topics Include

• The planning of a prescribed burn for the Valley Woods restoration project
• The Detroit Inside/Out exhibit coming to Southfield
• A potential moratorium on pawnshops and alternative financial institutions such as payday loan shops

An agenda and related documents can be found here.

Southfield Regular City Council Meeting February 13, 2012

Regular City Council Meeting Held in Southfield, Michigan on February 13, 2012

Topics Include

• Approval of New Thermal Imaging Camera's for the Fire Department
• The upcoming Denso abatement hearing
• A special use request for Kronk Gym
• Allegations that police police officers have been receiving favors such as free towing
• A 180 day moratorium on pawnshops and alternative financial institutions such as but not limited to payday loan shops.

You can find an agenda and related documents here.

An Experiment

Do not make me hate you internet.

Why U of M Should Hire or Should Have Hired Lindsay Blackwell

Yeah. Right now I'm having my own crisis of confidence on my job/money issues. I'm surfing the web and come across the story of Lindsay Blackwell. Some time in October she created a fairly well designed website in hopes of landing a social media position at the University of Michigan. Now I had heard about this story before, but what stuck me was the tone of some of the comments, in these stories.

A lot of them going into reasons why she shouldn't be hired. In an attempt to vent some of my own anger at the current job market. I'm going to discuss why she should. Now don't get me wrong this isn't really about Lindsay Blackwell. This is about what I consider backwards marketing strategy.

1. Relationships with the media.
Here is the thing. This stunt of her's has already put her on the media watchlist, which means that she could bring all sorts of positive attention to University of Michigan. She probably already has the cards of a lot of newspaper and television reporters in her Rolodex. That is an incredible asset for a position like that. It's developing and maintaining those types of relationships is arguably one of the hardest aspects of any PR department.

2. Technical Acumen
Though the building of the website she has already proven that she knows or knows someone who knows how to build interesting digital products. Part of what makes me a "sad panda" is looking at companies and institutions who's digital communications could easily be improved who think that they're doing a good job. Here is the deal people. The internet is one of the greatest tools around when it comes to getting people interested in and talking about your brand. And I don't just mean in a gimmicky way. I mean providing basic information about the products and services you provide. Having an interesting and informative website can go a long way in customer satisfaction. And make no mistake every alumnus, professor, student, and sports fan is a customer. University of Michigan should want all of them to like U of M enough to be willing to pump their time,money, and effort into making the University an overall great institution.

And this should be obvious. A lot of the comments were along the lines of "She doesn't know how to keep her mouth shut." Keeping your mouth shut in this day and age is pardon the french backasswards. People in the age of the internet are used to having information at their fingertips. Branding is more important than ever. And talk like that frustrates me because I know companies do think like that and it is going to bite them in 5 years when nobody has a clue what their brand is or why they should like it.

3. She makes a good face
Here is another thing. Most of the best brands, they have a person or character represents them. From this stunt it's clear she's a person, not just amorphous lump on the other end of a telephone. People love people. I can not tell you how much people love interacting with a personification of a product or service. There are all sorts of reasons for it and I'm not sure I can explain it myself. But it's not new. Social media is just a new medium for it. Why do you think we have Disney World?



Marketing genius I tell you. Kids love having Tony, the Tiger at their parties. Michigan State loves Sparty. And Steve Jobs, will remain a demigod in the eyes of the cult of apple, even after his death.

Especially with larger companies, people hate it just being an institution. And when it is gets harder for them accept why decisions are being made. It's always the company raised prices, not President Bill had to raise prices to keep the company afloat.

4. You can get her while she's young
Here is the rub. I get that company turn over is high right now. But that really does hurt branding. If you get her when she's young she'll be more loyal and you won't have to worry about someone else who was becoming the face jumping ship in 2 years, twitter style. All of the above takes time to develop and she's got a great start but, if they get can her, and they get her to stick around she can continue to develop relationships with the press, and relationships with clientele in interesting and innovative ways that will genuinely benefit the brand of the University of Michigan.

Movie Review: Superman/Batman Apocalypse

The plot is basically an origin story for Supergirl. Superman and Batman find her and try to acclimate her to both her powers and earth's culture. Eventually Darkseid decides he wants to recruit her into the Female Furies and kidnaps her and that folks is our plot.



Originally I was going to do a point by point comparison between this movie and the Superman: The Animated Series episodes "Little Girl Lost" and "Legacy", but in re-watching the episodes I realize that both the writing and animation here are better. A lot of what happens makes more narrative sense here than what happened in those episodes making this movie a lot more satisfying.

That said this movie does feel a lot like a tv show, more so than most of the other new DC animated stuff. There are a lot of conflicts that are hinted at but don't really get resolved. Part of my dissatisfaction comes from the fact that the main plot is so simple. Go to Apokolips, find Kara Zor-El, and bring her back. It really does feel like the pilot to a Supergirl TV show. When you compare it to fair like Batman: Under the Red Hood it just doesn't seem as epic.




It doesn't seem as much worth a movie, but more along the lines of an arc in Young Justice.

So I guess I will make some comparisons. First off this is a Supergirl, but not the Timmverse's Supergirl. While I liked her as a character she always felt like Superman's kid cousin. She got much needed character development in Justice League Unlimited, but up until that point she was just a plucky girl. Likable, but still somewhat 2-dimentional.



Here she's got a lot more going on in her head. She's not a character in Superman's story. Superman is a character in her's. Also it makes an interesting sort of elesworlds story. In the Timmverse she shows up before the development of the Justice League so it's almost completely up to Kent how the Supergirl issue will be handled and he handles it as you would expect in both stories, as an overprotective parent. But here Batman and Wonderwoman make it clear that it's not just what's best for Kara that matters. They have to do what's best for the people of earth and letting loose an untrained teenager who can punch a 10 foot crater into the street if she loses her temper might not be it. In short they tell him no you can't keep the puppy, no matter how big her eyes are.

The result is a subtly different Supergirl from that of the Timmverse, one who views herself as more of an equal to Kent. The major arcs of the Timmverse Supergirl revolved around her keeping the big blue boyscout as a role model, but growing into her own superhero. There is a similar arc here but by the second act she is already her own person, which is the first step.

Now once we get to Apokolips is where the animation really starts to shine, with very well choreographed fight scenes. Apokolips isn't just scary because of the fire and brimstone, but, because there is real chance, well real enough, that our heroes aren't coming back from this one.

The last 10 minutes are really satisfying. By the end of the movie it's clear that if she really wanted to she could eventually become the successor to Superman in just about every way, not just trying to live up to him but at least being his number two, his lancer when Batman's not around. And maybe eventually becoming the go to super. You know she'll do the name of super proud, but again it leaves you wanting more. It really was like it was a first episode.

Note: I didn't read the comics.