“Summers was an impressive candidate from the outset. … But Summers’s temperament was troubling to some members of the corporation. The word from Washington was that he could be peremptory, condescending, impatient with lesser mortals. He had, as Robert Rubin, Summers’s mentor and predecessor as treasury secretary, delicately put it, ”a rough-edges issue.” Rubin says that he spoke to members of the committee on four or five occasions. He assured them that Summers had matured a great deal in his years with Treasury. Still, the committee was torn until the final weeks — even days — between Summers and Lee Bollinger, then president of the University of Michigan, a candidate who seemed more polished and politic than Summers. (Bollinger is now president of Columbia.) In the end, the wish for boldness won out over apprehensions of abrasiveness.”"

> From this ridiculously long profile in the N.Y. Times of Harvard’s President Lawrence Summers

“John Kerr, owner of Wazoo Records of 33612 State St., said he has been told the two-way traffic would increase business because cars would travel slower and notice businesses more often.

“I’m real curious to see if it has the desired effect,” Kerr said. “It will be a lot easier to give directions and a lot easier for people who are not familiar with Ann Arbor.”

Although causing some minor confusion with delivery trucks and pedestrians, the first day since the streets in the State Street Area were made two-way went relatively smoothly. See AANews: “Street switch goes without a glitch”

… “The University of Illinois has canceled 1,000 classes on hundreds of subjects this year. Up to 1,000 students at the University of North Carolina will be shut out of beginning Spanish. The University of Colorado has eliminated academic programs in journalism, business and engineering. The University of California has put off opening an entire campus.

The University of Missouri has reduced the number of class time slots across the board, cut its teacher training program in half, eliminated a nursing degree and trimmed international studies. The University of Michigan will nearly double the size of some classes, shorten library hours and offer fewer freshman seminars. At the California State University, up to 30,000 students will be turned away come spring.” …

> From NYTimes: “As state colleges trim classes, students struggle to finish” Although, as usual it’s a mixed bag - the library just announced they will be upgrading the photocopiers in every U-M Library.

The Ann Arbor Police are excited about their new Tasers, devices that shoots two small darts up to 20 feet, penetrating the skin by “no more than one-fourth of an inch” that then zap people with enough electricity to make them collapse and curl into a ball involuntarily. In the Ann Arbor News article, Chief Oates and Co. insist over and over that they are “humane” and have no side effects, since “once it’s over, the pain is gone, and you can immediately return to normal function.” I suppose I’ll take their word for it, but one website I found bragged that their Tasers could incapacitate people for up to 15 minutes. I also still doubt it’s a good thing to experience what one officer described as “Waves of electricity [that] just take over your body.” One Taser I found on the web bragged it was “specifically designed to stop even the most elite, aggressive, focused combatants.” Some British police departments, in addition to over 70 in the U.S., are now using the Taser. (BBC: Taser Gun used in second arrest)

Stun gun devices like Tasers are either banned or restricted in the U.S. states of Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, and the countries of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, and Amnesty International wants more research on Taser’s effects before more police buy them.

May 2003:
“American imperial adventures are usually rehearsed at Bilderberg meetings. Europe’s elite were opposed to an American invasion of Iraq since the 2002 Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Virginia. Rumsfeld himself had promised them it wouldn’t happen. Last week, everybody struck back at Rumsfeld, asking about the infamous “weapons of mass destruction”. Most of Europe’s elite do not believe American promises that Iraq’s oil will “benefit the Iraqi people”. They know that revenues from Iraqi oil will be used to rebuild what America has bombed. And the debate is still raging on what kind of contracts which rewarded Bechtel and Halliburton will “benefit” Western Europe.

Europe’s elite, according to those close to Bilderberg, are suspicious that the US does not need or even want a stable, legitimate central government in Iraq. When that happens, there will be no reason for the US to remain in the country. Europe’s elite see the US establishing “facts on the ground”: establishing a long-term military presence and getting the oil flowing again under American control. This could go on for years, as long as the Americans can guarantee enough essential services to prevent the Iraqi people from engaging in a war of national liberation.

> This from an Asia Times article “The Masters of the Universe” about a secretive organization named the Bilderberg Club, which “does not invite - or accept - Asians, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans or Africans. [to meetings]“

Things are heating up … at marching band practice, for the privilege of performing at U-M football games.
> Freep: “Making the cut at training camp”

Let’s see … Borders’ Books is reporting large profits, but are still blocking efforts by employees to unionize their stores in Ann Arbor and Minneapolis MN, a man was attacked on his porch in the student ghetto, Republican state legislators want to amend the state constitution so 2/3 of the state legislature can veto any class offered by a public university, John Ashcroft is insisting the Patriot Act was needed, even though it hasn’t been used to catch any actual terrorists, and Ted Nugent is denying he used racial slurs. Yet another fine day in Michigan, U.S.A.!

“About 50 people demonstrated outside the building, chanting: “Ashcroft go home. Down with the Patriot Act.” Tim Beck, of Detroit, said he believes Ashcroft and President Bush are taking advantage of people’s fears to promote invasive legislation.

“It seems it’s an excuse to trash the Constitution and take away our civil liberties,” he said of the attacks. The act “just doesn’t feel right on a gut level. It has too many scary historical parallels.”,