CBS News is live streaming coverage of the JFK assassination from 1963. A schedule of events is here. The stream includes commercials as originally aired. If you miss the stream, features from the coverage show highlights.
NPR is using Twitter to stream out events as they happened and as they were covered 50 years ago, with the Today in 1963 feed.
Related articles
BOOM! There will be fireworks at Michigan Stadium for the NHL Winter Classic. Even if the closest you get is parking cars for the game, you should be able to enjoy the show.
Details:
BOOM!
I’ll start with a confession: I don’t think that plagiarism is as big a deal as some people do, especially when you are recycling your own words. (“Self-plagiarism is style.”) The best writers have a set of phrases that they love to use, and it’s not unusual for them to pull something they’ve done before and rework it a bit to suit the new occasion. This is especially true when you’re writing formulaic work that’s short. How many different very short birthday greetings can you send?
That said, educators are usually held to higher standards of writing than their students, and writing is expected to be something that they are good enough at that they don’t need to crib from someone else’s words.
With that as a preface, here’s someone else’s words about someone else using someone else’s words, in this case a former AAPS principal (Sulura Jackson) who is now in Chapel Hill, NC. The reporting is from Indy Week.
What they found is startling: Multiple documents obtained by the INDY that show Jackson—before and after her arrival at Chapel Hill High—lifted entire passages and letters from books, online articles and teaching resource guides. She used those passages without citation in staff memos, letters to students and even recommendation letters for colleagues, frequently passing them off as her words.
Of course, the world of education is full of web sites that are full of reusable forms and letters for communicating with students and teachers, like this Education World page
Communicate with parents by snail mail or e-mail with these editable and/or printable forms and letters.
Or the business world in general, with this set of 662 business letters – catchy titles like “Apology to receiver of NSF check” –
When I received your letter of (date) with my check
attached marked “insufficient funds”, I called my bank
immediately.The gentleman I spoke with, (name) , discovered
that the bank had failed to credit my account with a
substantial deposit I had made several days prior.The bank has assured me that they will be sending you a
formal letter of apology for their error. Attached is my
check in the amount of $ to replace the dishonored
one you have returned.
Communications from authorities are often ritualistic, formulaic, and repetitious. Hopefully, though, they are not careless. Jackson was tripped up by this mistake:
Looking back, the alleged plagiarism might have gone unnoticed were it not for one careless sentence the Chapel Hill High School principal wrote in an October condolence letter to a teacher.
“Everyone at Skyline is saddened to learn of the death of your mother,” the letter said.
It seemed Sulura Jackson, who arrived in Chapel Hill this summer with a sparkling, lengthy résumé, had failed to remove the name of her former school, Skyline High, in Ann Arbor, Mich., from the text.
Teachers who spoke to the INDY on the condition that their names not be used for fear of retribution say the incident prompted them to dig deeper.
If you’re going to use a form letter, for goodness sake read the whole form and fill in all the blanks before sending it !
UPDATE: Again from Indy Week: “More evidence of Chapel Hill High plagiarism?”
Members of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education were already scheduled to meet tonight at the Lincoln Center in Chapel Hill. The board’s agenda says members will discuss a personnel matter in closed session starting at 6 p.m. The public portion of the meeting begins at 7 p.m.
I saw this today at the poster wall near the Fishbowl on the University of Michigan central campus. The #BBUM hashtag has been trending for a couple of days now. It stands for “Being Black at the University of Michigan”, and it’s part of a brilliant campaign organized by the Black Student Union that shows no signs of stopping.
I’ve temporarily restyled this weblog with colorful link text, as many people don’t realize that I’m linking to things.
The CSS is
a:link { color: #c00 } /* unvisited links */
a:visited { color: #0c0 } /* visited links */
a:hover { color: #00c } /* user hovers */
a:active { color: #ccc } /* active links */
I’m sure it could be better or different; indeed, that style didn’t last long before I went to more typical blue for link text and purple for visited links.
Pedestrian safety in Ann Arbor is a downtown issue, as illustrated by this map of 2012 car-pedestrian crashes.
What, if anything, is the Ann Arbor DDA and the City of Ann Arbor doing to make the downtown streetscape safer for pedestrians? Most of the rhetoric in recent City Council meetings has been about pedestrian safety in neighborhoods, but that’s visibly not the only issue at hand.
Data from Michigan Traffic Crash Facts. “Current Query: Crashes for the year 2012 in Ann Arbor (Washtenaw County) filtered by Crash: Pedestrian (Pedestrian involved)”.
High winds took down trees and knocked out power to thousands in Washtenaw County the night of 17 November 2013, and the next morning a number of schools and government offices closed because of lack of power.
From various sources including email and twitter; this is surely incomplete.
Ann Arbor Public Schools: Tappan and King are closed today due to power outages at both schools. Tonight’s Listen and Learn at Tappan will be rescheduled. Bryant Elementary now closed in Ann Arbor due to power outage-caused heating failure. Students that arrived at school sent back home.
Ann Arbor District Library: “The power is out at Malletts Creek Branch, it is currently closed. All other @aadl locations will open at 10 AM. Stay tuned for updates!”
Ypsilanti Township offices are closed.
14-B District Court is closed.
Eastern Michigan University: Rec/IM: Due to technical problems, the Jones Pool will be closed until further notice. We apologize for the inconvenience. (via @EMU_Swoop)
Chelsea Police say power is still out and is expected to be out for “the next several hours,” as of 8:15 a.m. Chelsea schools have also been closed. (Heritage News) Chelsea Center for the Arts will be closed today, Monday, November 18, 2013 due to a citywide power outage.
Live blog of tornado and severe weather outbreak on Sunday, 17 November 2013. Worst affected were several towns in central and southern Illinois and in central Indiana.
12:15pm Monday. USA Today reports the death toll as 6 in Illinois, and 2 in Michigan. I don’t have details on the Michigan deaths. The report includes 1 minute 30 of tornado videos.
11:45am Monday. DTE Energy has a storm damage in Michigan photo set on Facebook. 270,000 DTE customers are without power. Map: DTE Outage Map.
11:15am Monday. The Chicago Tribune has a good photo gallery of storm damage across the state of Illinois.
1120p. AP has a state by state brief overview.
1100p. Power outage totals in Michigan. Latest from DTE Energy is 200K without power in SE Michigan as of 10:15 pm, per Detroit Free Press. 180K Consumers Energy subscribers in Michigan without power at 10:00 pm, per Fox 17 News.
1045p. Details from Washington, IL, about 20 miles east of Peoria, IL.
1035p. Updated Today’s Storm Reports.
1030p. DTE Outage Map for Southeastern Michigan (excerpt from total). Lots of damage.
1025p. Tornado videos from 11/17/2013
1015p. Running down the list of summaries for the afternoon. Wikipedia has a page, which is as good a start as an overview as anything, listing 7 confirmed deaths and 32 separate incidents with a maximum intensity of EF4.
620p. Heading to Ignite Ann Arbor 8 in Ann Arbor, so I’m closing up this live blog for now. The storm was less intense in the Ann Arbor area than elsewhere, so other news sources will be better for current news.
615p. Photos coming out of the Kokomo, Indiana area show significant damage to a fire station there.
“@1800BoardUp: Severe damage to Kokomo Fire Dept. Station 6. Everyone out safe. #INwx pic.twitter.com/brkWNSKw5e”
— Lisa (@aerolisa1) November 17, 2013
600p. 150+ without power west of Briarwood Mall, Ann Arbor, per DTE Outage Map. Whole Foods Cranbrook Mall is closed because of power outage. (@WFMCranbrookAA).
545p. Multiple reports via twitter of power surges and dips in the Chelsea / Dexter / Ann Arbor / Ypsilanti area, nothing yet on the DTE Outage Map.
525p. Live blog from NPR’s “The Two Way” says the Weather Service has issued 109 tornado warnings today, depicted here.
515p. Severe Thunderstorm warning til 615p for Washtenaw County, MI: Washtenaw EOC via scanner #miwx.
510p update. Report of “NEW: At least 330k power outages across MO, IL, IN, MI, & KY” via @WCL_Shawn and #miwx. AP reports 2 dead in New Minden, IL, in the southern part of the state. WXYZ: Severe storm warning for Livingston Co. until 5:45pm via #7FirstAlert.
500p update. WLNS is streaming live coverage of Lansing, MI weather. WLIW has a live blog of damage across the state of Indiana.
450p update. The Washtenaw County SKYWARN net is active. No traffic to report yet. Now monitoring Washtenaw County public safety.
430p update. Tornado on the ground in Knox County, Indiana, with reports of home damage per Broadcastify.
415p update
…SIGNIFICANT WEATHER ADVISORY…
AT 357 PM EST…NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED
STRONG THUNDERSTORMS ALONG A LINE EXTENDING FROM 50 MILES WEST OF
FOWLERVILLE TO 49 MILES WEST OF MANCHESTER…MOVING EAST AT 65 MPH.
WINDS UP TO 60 MPH…HEAVY DOWNPOURS…ARE POSSIBLE WITH THESE
STORMS.THUNDERSTORMS WILL BE NEAR…
MANCHESTER AND GREGORY AT 440 PM EST…
FOWLERVILLE AND CHELSEA AT 445 PM EST…
OAK GROVE AND PINCKNEY AT 450 PM EST…
WHITMORE LAKE AND SALINE AT 455 PM EST…
HARTLAND AND ANN ARBOR AT 500 PM EST…
GUSTY WINDS MAY CAUSE BRANCHES TO BE BLOWN DOWN…AND LOOSE
OBJECTS TO BLOW AROUND. SEEK SHELTER IN A STURDY STRUCTURE UNTIL
THESE STORMS HAVE PASSED.
3:55 p.m. Updated Wundermap for 3:55 p.m. I’ll be watching Indiana weather next since it seems to be coming our way.
3:10 p.m. Tornado warnings in SE Newaygo County, Michigan, N of Grand Rapids. New Public Severe Weather map from NWS puts highest risk in Indiana.
2:54 p.m. EST Special weather statement –
…SIGNIFICANT WEATHER ADVISORY…
AT 243 PM EST…NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED STRONG THUNDERSTORMS ALONG A LINE EXTENDING FROM 6 MILES SOUTHWEST OF CHELSEA TO 7 MILES SOUTHEAST OF MANCHESTER…MOVING NORTHEAST AT 65 MPH. WINDS UP TO 50 MPH…ARE POSSIBLE WITH THESE STORMS.
THUNDERSTORMS WILL BE NEAR…
* CHELSEA BY 250 PM EST…
* MILAN AND SALINE BY 255 PM EST…
* WILLIS AND YPSILANTI BY 300 PM EST…
* DIXBORO BY 305 PM EST…
* SALEM BY 310 PM EST…GUSTY WINDS MAY CAUSE SMALL BRANCHES TO BE BLOWN DOWN…AND LOOSE
OBJECTS TO BLOW AROUND. SEEK SHELTER IN A STURDY STRUCTURE UNTIL
THESE STORMS HAVE PASSED.
2:51 p.m. Switching focus from Illinois to western Michigan. Severe thunderstorms off of Lake Michigan are hitting the western part of the state. Reports of 62 mile gust at Muskegon, trees down there. Update with latest Wundermap.
2:45 p.m. Some channels from Broadcastify that have severe weather and public service information, looking now at the Broadcastify top channels.
2:30 p.m. EST Wundermap snapshot.
2:15 p.m. EST Updated NWS Mesoscale Discussion 2018
SUMMARY…WIDESPREAD DAMAGING WINDS AND SEVERAL TORNADOES…SOME OF WHICH SHOULD BE SIGNIFICANT…WILL EVOLVE FROM IL INTO IND AND LOWER MI THROUGH MID-AFTERNOON.
2:00 p.m. EST Reports from the Illinois statewide scanner include news that cell service coverage is down in some areas. Some sources for power outage maps:
1:45 p.m. EST Other live blogs/channels of weather:
Image from Twitter, @ChrisKhoury182 and credit to @AnthonyKhoury20 , from Washington, Tazewell County, Illinois, near Peoria.
Prayers to #WashingtonIL pic.twitter.com/QygeOckO3B
— Chris Khoury (@ChrisKhoury182) November 17, 2013
1:30 p.m. EST: Weather map showing location of outbreak:
1:15 p.m. EST: Monitoring the following:
I went with S and J to the University of Michigan Computer and Video Game Archive (CVGA) on the UM North Campus in the basement of the Duderstadt Center. They were celebrating their fifth anniversary with cupcakes and a Mario tournament. The boys had a chance to play games, and I had a chance to talk to David S. Carter (aka superman@umich.edu) about the collection. Here are some notes.
There are about 5000 games in the collection, and about half of them are donated. An annual collection budget of about $13,000 buys new games and the occasional old console from eBay. The archive has a near complete collection of US consoles, and Dave said they are looking to expand their international coverage. One of their latest acquisitions was a DVD system that plays only one title. The archive would like to improve its collection of handheld games.
The biggest challenge of the next five years is with digital rights management (DRM). The DRM systems envisioned would lock a game to a particular piece of console hardware, making it impossible to have used games and very hard for a library to add a title to a collection. For network-delivered games like Steam it’s equally hard for the library to spend $10 on a license, when licenses negotiated by libraries for things like electronic versions of journals are usually for much more.
Dave said the archive was pretty much where they want to be after 5 years. He knew they were on the right track when they got space in the library even before they had a budget. The challenge of next five years is less collection building and more about building connections across campus and around the world to other research collections. He compared the collection to early film and video collections, now standard at all research libraries, but once considered a novelty.
Other comparable collections are at the University of Texas at Austin and at Stanford. Public libraries so not tend to have research collections, preferring to either use video games strictly for events or to have a circulating collection where you check out current games like any other video or music media.
I asked Dave about the Internet Archive’s online gaming collection, and especially about the role of emulation in preserving games. He told me that emulation does not preserve original game play, especially the ergonomics of controllers. Playing on original game hardware with original video hardware gives you an accurate rendition of original game play experience. (Besides, you can’t play Duck Hunt without an old fashioned TV because the game depends on sensing the scan lines on the TV.) Some old games are very hard to enjoy on original hardware and the limitations of the controls, not the game itself, are what trips up your enjoyment.
The National Weather Service in Detroit forecasts a moderate risk of severe weather for the Ann Arbor and Detroit area as well as for the rest of southern Michigan for Sunday afternoon, November 17, 2013. The risk is of high winds with a chance of tornadoes. Winds will be from the south at about 25 mph with gusts of up to 70 mph.
UPDATED 12:45 p.m. EST: Tornado watch (Particularly Dangerous Sitation) WW 562
UPDATED 11:15 a.m. EST: Mesoscale discussion map for MD 2011.
SUMMARY…SIGNIFICANT TORNADO/WIND HAZARDS WILL INCREASE RAPIDLY MIDDAY INTO AFTERNOON WITH A DOWNSTREAM TORNADO WATCH ISSUANCE EXPECTED E OF WW 561.
UPDATED: Map with tornado, severe wind, rainfall, and hail threats for the area, from an NWS Grand Rapids briefing on Sunday.
UPDATED: Map as of Saturday evening for Sunday.
The weather briefing for November 16 (PDF) includes this slide showing the weather map for the area with predictions of severity for Sunday. The worst of the storm is expected to be between 2:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.
What do you tune in during severe weather? Twitter’s #miwx hashtag is useful, as is the amateur radio SKYWARN service which in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County uses the N8DUY repeater on 145.15. If you don’t have a ham radio, you can tune in to that repeater via Broadcastify.
Of course, no storm would be complete without a watch for power outages. My big list of power outage maps can be helpful; you will want to be watchful for DTE Energy,Consumers Energy, and Indiana Michigan Power outage maps in southern Michigan.
Edward Vielmetti's Wordpress weblog 