Michigan Stadium hosted a record crowd of 113,411 this weekend at the Michigan-Michigan State “Big Chill” hockey game. The Wolverines crushed the Spartans 5-0.

Winter is finally here!

The New Yorker has a profile of “Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind Mario.”

The creators of South Park are trying their hands at Broadway musicals.

Wikileaks defenders attacked the wrong site.

The year in fashion.

The most popular Apple apps of the year.

Going to graduate school isn’t necessarily a bad idea, just a complicated one.

The DREAM Act passed the House last week and now moves to the Senate. Michigan students are hoping it passes with few if any changes.

The Obama Administration will continue to push forward the tax-cut compromise President Obama agreed to with Senate Republicans.

The British government’s decision to raise college tuition fees has resulted in widespread violent protests. According to the Guardian, British Prime Minister David Cameron promises that the British government will respond with “the full force of the law.”

Japan is shifting its military focus from Russia to China.

The food truck business may not thrive in Chicago as it did in other cities.

Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation barring moving prisoners from Guantanmo Bay to American soil.

Peter Orszag, formerly President Obama’s White House Budget Director, has joined Citigroup.

Michigan’s Senator Debbie Stabenow got a lot of press attention last week, some of it good, some of it not so good.

Are Blackberries and iPhones changing how we think?

Good luck on finals!

(Photo by Andres Rueda used under a Creative Commons license.)

Yesterday the Michigan Daily had an interesting story about a study the University is conducting with the Ann Arbor Transit Authority on ways to improve transit, especially between North Campus and Central Campus. The first version of the study is out, and there are some interesting proposals: bigger AATA buses, a lightrail train system (possibly automated), or a rapid transit shuttle. I’m particularly interested in the automated lightrail system:

Nau said the light rail transit system would be speedy and spacious, with the ability to shuttle large numbers of people between the campuses in a timely manner. According to the pamphlet, a light rail transit system could accommodate up to 40,000 people daily.

The final option is a form of elevated transit, a totally automated train system that would feature trains running back and forth on a fixed headway.

One of the limitations of buses is that they oftentimes are smaller and slower or less efficient than trains. Another problem is they are driven by people who need things like food and breaks and sleep. But trains solve most of those problems, and an automated rail system could solve all of that. Think about it: an automated train system would work at regular intervals 24 hours a day. The schedule wouldn’t have to vary as much as buses, which have to deal with traffic and other impediments, and students would only have to memorize the train schedule once. Plus someone on Central Campus could head back to North Campus at some ungodly hour —and could factor the intervals between train times into their schedule. It’s pretty convenient.

I’ll admit that I’d be skeptical about actually installing a rail system. The University doesn’t exactly have a perfect record of finishing major projects on time, but the benefit from something like this might be worth the cost. If you need an example, West Virginia University (of all places) has a rail transit system between their campus and Morgantown’s downtown area, and it seems to work well.

On the other hand, things that work well at WVU doesn’t necessarily work well here.

Read the study below yourself:

AATA University Transit Study

(Image by Doug Letterman used under a Creative Commons license.)

Kevin M. Levin, one of my favorite Civil War bloggers, is also a high school Civil War teacher. He regularly asks for his students’ understanding and interpretations of what the Civil War was about and yesterday he noticed an interesting pattern:

As far as I can tell there is no discernible difference between the ways in which northern children are taught to understand the cause of secession and war from what can be found in southern schools.  My students who are born and raised in the counties outside of Charlottesville – which we might suspect as being more traditional in focus – shared that they remember learning that slavery was the central issue driving secession.  I had students who attended grade school in New England and Michigan, who remember learning that slavery was ancillary and that states rights was the central reason. The difference seems to be based on individual teachers rather than anything having to do with a sharp cultural divide between regions. That said, over the past few years I’ve noticed that more and more of my students begin their study of the Civil War on the high school level with an appreciation of the role that slavery played in the events leading up to and following Lincoln’s election.

Levin goes on to say that it’s partially the media’s fault that this is surprising by suggesting that (especially these days) Northerners believe the war was about slavery and Southerners believe the war was about states’ rights. If Levin’s informal poll is any indication, though, this is largely a myth.

But I digress. The important issue here is that misperceptions about the war are not regional; they’re because of education. It’s a difficult problem and one I’m not sure how to fix.

(Image by US Mission Canada used under a Creative Commons license.)

Lord here we go.

The gist: Liam Neeson, who is the voice of Aslan, in the Chronicles of Narnia films, said that, for him, the lion does not just symbolize Jesus (which is what C.S. Lewis, the author, intended) but other religious prophets as well:

“Aslan symbolises a Christlike figure, but he also symbolises for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries.

“That’s who Aslan stands for as well as a mentor figure for kids – that’s what he means for me.”

There are a number of reasons why people shouldn’t be upset about this. For one, note that Neeson says that for him Aslan also symbolizes Mohammed, Buddha, and other spiritual figures. Syntax aside, given how divided people are today along religious lines shouldn’t we be encouraging things like this? I can only see benefit in portraying Aslan as a religious figure who could appeal to people of all kinds of religions. It would provide much needed common ground in an area where there is very little opportunity to relate to other people of different religions.

(Image by Alex{G} used under a Creative Commons license.)

Editor’s Note: Introducing Liftoff, a new regular blog feature. Like our weekly Endpoint posts, Liftoff is a roundup of interesting links and headlines that we think will be important to pay attention to in the upcoming week. We hope you read and enjoy. Feel free to send us feedback or links in the comments.

• Nikki Haley, the incoming female governor of South Carolina, says that politicians who were elected thanks to the Tea Party but don’t show themselves to be true conservatives deserve to be voted out of office.
• As of 11:20 p.m. on December 5, Senate Democrats and Republicans may still be able to come to a deal on the Bush tax cuts.
• Josh Micah Marshall thinks filibuster reform is a good idea…and unlikely.
• Facebook is revamping its profile pages to emphasize photos, favorite friends, and jobs. Maybe that will help Osama Bin Laden get more friends on Facebook.
• The Wolverines are going to the Gator Bowl.
• The University is taking new steps to combat eating disorders.
• To reduce unemployment Kentucky’s governor wants to build a Noah’s Ark theme park.
• How Turkey treats its gay soldiers.
• The U.S. is leaving Iraq and it’s hurting the Iraqi economy.
• The author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs has a theory on why the zombie genre is so popular.
• The Michigan Review reports that the University’s faculty has been donating mostly to Democrats.

(Photo by boeingdreamscape used under a Creative Commons license)

Ever since Wikileaks.org released its latest document dump, dubbed Cablegate, of purportedly over 250,000 classified clandestine documents, I’ve been trying to form a solid opinion on Wikileaks. It’s hard for me to fully get behind the idea, as Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange likes to say, that Wikileaks is interested only in revealing wrongdoing in extremely powerful institutions like the United States government. The more docudumps these guys do the more obvious it becomes that Wikileaks’s first priority is readership and shock, so much so that they recklessly ignore the consequences leaking 250,000 documents diplomatic documents could have on international relations or the lives of informants in the Middle East. In both cases secrecy is vital to functioning at all. But “Cablegate” doesn’t acknowledge that the way a serious investigative journalist might. As far as I know there was little to know consultation between Wikileaks and the U.S. government about the possible negative consequences that publicizing these documents could have. The newspapers that first received the documents from Wikileaks did do that, but if Wikileaks were serious about serving the public interest through releasing secretive documents, it probably should have done more vetting beforehand.

On the other hand, with some exceptions, most of the documents in Cablegate have been pretty benign if not somewhat comforting. American diplomats and spies, it turns out, have been doing their job and doing it well. There have been a few juicy nuggets, such as both Jordan and Saudi Arabia urging the United States to attack Iran (that may have been the most important nugget of the files sifted through so far). Which begs the question, what’s the point? Why release all this information and cause such a ruckus if there isn’t new or scandalous information to actually pay attention to? Furthermore, how sure are we that there’s nothing in here that won’t do any kind of momentous harm? How could the entire staff of Wikileaks (which isn’t exactly the size of a world-class newspaper) sift through more documents than I could possibly read in four years?

I’ll admit there’s been some gain from Cablegate. Historians and other  scholars now have access to State Department documents they otherwise would not be able to touch for years to come, for instance. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Wikileaks has just made the world a better place. Since the public hasn’t really gained anything from Cablegate while peaceful diplomacy may have suffered (some of the cables in the diplomacy community might give diplomats pause or disrupt sensitive ongoing negotiations) it’s unclear whether Cablegate or Wikileaks in general have been a net positive for the public or a net negative. From one perspective, what Wikileaks does, as Josh Marshall insightfully noted, is less investigatory journalism and more “attack on the US government itself than an effort to inform American citizens about what their government is doing on their behalf.”

So at best what Wikileaks has done to the practice of increasing transparency is complicate it, and at worst it has eroded it by ignoring the fact that releasing sensitive documents could do some harm.

Katharine Q. Seelye of The New York Times has a good piece up about some of the ways some southerners are planning to celebrate the 150-year anniversary of the Civil War. Predictably some of these people refuse to admit that the war was about slavery and consider anyone who says otherwise to be raving northerners bent on making these people out as racists:

There are a number of things wrong here. For one thing I don’t think you are categorically racist if you deny that the Civil War was about something other than slavery. Ignorant, yes. Foolish, yes. But it’s entirely possible to not be racist and also believe (incorrectly) that the Civil War was a war for independence or a war over taxation or whatever the de jure misinterpretation of the war is. So there’s something to what Givens is saying here when he claims people accuse him of being racist on shaky logic.

However, some of these deniers are racist. That’s what complicates the matter. A neo-Confederate, of course, will argue that the Civil War was about anything other than slavery. Or maybe they will agree that the war was about slavery and simply dislike the outcome. Both are logical views to take from a racist’s perspective.

But as the liberal sociologist that Seelye quotes near the end of the piece notes, the North did not go to war to abolish slavery. Only through fighting the war did it become clearer that the root of the disagreement was over slavery. The takeaway from this is that one needs to recognize how complicated the Civil War is to fully understand it.

The problem with the plans to celebrate the Civil War and the counter-celebrations is that both sides don’t necessarily respect the complexity of the Civil War. I deeply believe the 150th anniversary of the Civil War should be celebrated. It was one of the most formative chapters in our nation’s history. But to celebrate it without recognizing the intricacy of it or that it really was about slavery (whether northerners and southerners realized that at the beginning) is to not remember the war with the depth and respect it deserves.

UPDATE: Ta-Nehisi Coates’s post on this is, as usual, worth reading.

(Photo by tncountryfan used under a Creative Commons license.)

Chicago Breaking Sports noted today that Rich Rod’s current embodiment of God, Michigan Athletic Director Dave Brandon, who decides whether RichRod will keep his job or not, has not hinted at any decision as of yet:

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon says he’s not letting speculation about Rich Rodriguez’s future change his timetable to evaluate the football coach.

Brandon reiterated Monday morning that he doesn’t do performance reviews of coaches until their seasons are over.

That might make for another uncomfortable month for Rodriguez.

He helped the Wolverines qualify for a bowl — possibly the Insight Bowl on Dec. 28 — for the first time in his three seasons in charge of college football’s winningest program.

The situation swirling around Rodriguez’s status might turn into a circus at the team’s banquet Thursday night because Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh plans to be there to be honored along with his 1985 teammates.

Being rather ignorant about football in general and college football in particular I’ve been paying close attention to the comments people posted on our Rich Rod issue. One idea sticks out: is Rich Rod really Michigan? As in does he understand Michigan? Does he know Michigan? Does he understand the school and the football team in a way that brings it to its full potential? This seems like a rather silly question to me. Does any coach understand Michigan? Would we be asking this question if Michigan had been undefeated this year? I doubt it.

But back to the central question: Should Brandon keep Rich Rod or hand him a pinkslip? I don’t know and am not really qualified to answer even if I thought I did know, but I think it’s worth noting that a mentor of mine and big West Virginia fan (and alumn) recently told me that it would be ludicrous to dump Rich Rod. He’s put the team back on track to greatness. I think that’s the real question we should be asking: Does Rich Rod have the team moving in the right direction?

(Photo by RichKD used under a Creative Commons license).

I don’t usually do this but I’ve got to disagree with Matthew Yglesias’s suspicion that it’s inefficient to exempt nonprofits from taxes because those nonprofits take up valuable space. Yglesias notes that in Mount Clemens, near Detroit, things have gotten so bad that the mayor has sent out letters to local nonprofits asking for donations to the city to fill a gaping budget deficit. Yglesias sees a downside to the tax exempt status of nonprofits:

The income tax-deductibility of charitable contributions is, I think, more of a mixed bag than people generally realize but I think it does have a valuable role to play. But I wonder about the impact of these broader exemptions from taxation. Over and above the sort of revenue issues [Mount Clemens Mayor Barb] Dempsey is pointing to, when certain kinds of institutions are exempted from property taxes it can end up promoting very inefficient uses of land. Conveniently located space is a precious commodity, and there are widespread benefits to making sure that it’s generally occupied by high-intensity uses.

That may be true but the value of the presence of nonprofits needs to be mentioned too. Since nonprofits are usually money losing but many still highly beneficial ventures, they deserve as many breaks as possible. It’s hard to argue that, for example, a nonprofit that provides extracurricular activities for intercity students needs should be taxed the same way a local fast food restaurant nearby is taxed. Even if the nonprofit is taking up as much space as the  restaurant, the community value of the nonprofit and really, the money being saved by keeping kids occupied with constructive activities, is much greater than the value of a greasy burger.

(Image by Librarian Avenger used under a Creative Commons license.)

The Slate article by Emily Bazelon linked to above has a good take on this:

“Did Bristol and Palin forget for a moment that everything they wrote would be public? That as Sarah Palin’s daughters, their every move will be scrutinized? The whole exchange smacks of the kind of impulsive lack of self control that’s the burden of adolescence, a time when the brain is still developing in exactly these areas. In the age of Facebook, that burden has grown more onerous—a fleeting bad decision might not be fleeting after all. Maybe it’s natural enough to throw some low blows in the name of defending your family. The problem, of course, is that if you’re famous and you’re duking it out online, everyone else will be watching. And you may end up offering a far more revealing glimpse of yourself then Sarah Palin’s Alaska will ever allow.”

Gawker notes that GOProud, a very conservative group of gay Republicans, defended the Palin children’s use of the word “faggot”:

“GOProud.org just told TMZ, “The slur used here is one you could hear on the streets of West Hollywood or Chelsea every day of the week. Apparently, it’s only a homophobic slur when it comes from the daughter of a conservative female leader.” [...]

The group adds, “Make no mistake; this is all about destroying Sarah Palin by any means necessary.”

What now? Now, I may not be the hippest 20-something. I defer to Urban Dictionary a little too often but I’m positive that “faggot” is always offensive. Nobody, not even gay people, uses it in a non-offensive way. It’s not a word acceptable only if you’re of a certain ethnic or racial group. It’s always derogatory. So this strikes me as a perfect example of the partisan influence. As Gawker asks, would GOProud be saying this if Sasha or Malia Obama had dropped the f-bomb?