Geographic confusion at the Ann Arbor city council

The Ann Arbor city council is apparently unaware that our most excellent college town lies in Michigan rather than Arizona.

More seriously, while I join in the opposition to Arizona's new anti-immigrant laws, the only effect of a resolution by the Ann Arbor city council on this point is to make that body look silly on a national stage. In the midst of a budget crisis, they really do have better things to do. If they want to oppose Arizona's new law, they should do so on their own time as private citizens.

Assorted links

I've decided to go back to doing occasional "assorted links" posts to clear out the backlog of things that I found interesting and/or amusing but do not feel the need to comment about more extensively.

1. Dave Barry on the death of newspapers.

2. Ed Glaeser on Jeff Miron's new book on libertarianism. Jeff's blog is on the list on the right; it performs the useful service of making me feel very moderate. Jeff used to be Michigan.

3. Chain restaurant selection flowchart.

4. Impressive leadership in Georgia's athletic department. But why are the really important bits buried at the end of the story?

5. Will Wilkinson on becoming a Canadian citizen.

Hat tip on #4: Charlie Brown

Despondex

From the Onion News Network, an update on a cure for chirpiness.

Movie: Please Give

We saw Please Give on Wednesday night at the Michigan Theater.

It is quirky, funny, tough, and very, very New York. Indeed, it may secretly be part of a marketing campaign to keep nice people from moving there. One could think of it as a bit of a meditation on optimism versus pessimism or, not quite the same, as worrying or not worrying and just being happy.

I think we liked it better than the New York Times did.

I am also, again, puzzled by the "R" rating.

Recommended.

Yuan or Renminbi?

The BBC sorts out the name of the Chinese currency, which is something I had wondered about ever since I went to Beijing for a conference a few years ago.

Via Marginal Revolution

Email is forever

Dave Weigel, formerly of Reason and now formerly of the Washington Post, learns about the permanence of email.

I have to say, though, that other than breaking the taboo and revealing that journalists actually have political opinions, I am not really sure what he did that was bad enough for the Post to let him go.

ESPN and the World Cup

An interesting piece from the WSJ about ESPN's extensive (and expensive) coverage of the World Cup.

Getting people who actually know about soccer / football to cover the matches is a good idea; I think I would have been inclined to have some more familiar faces and voices as well to make the enterprise seem a bit less foreign to US viewers.

I liked this bit:

If NBC managed to get a prime-time audience for curling at the winter Olympics, the cable network can surely generate buzz for the world's most popular sport.

My sense from the selected sample around me is that US interest in soccer is growing steadily over time. Now if only I could get my slingbox to work ...