Rock the Casbah: History, the Ghetto Blaster, and the Great Joe Strummer

Whither the Ghetto Blaster? Was the portable mp3 player the herald of its demise? Did it begin sooner? Perhaps portable CD players, or the advent of digital music itself were the first signs of doom for the ubiquitous fixture of the 80s and early 90s, the BoomBox. How did one machine come to get the hood all bouncing around in the first place? What was the social life and death of this crucial urban technology?

voilá:

Speaking of rocking the casbah, I’ve spent the better part of 2008 and a bit of 2009 obsessing over the awesomeness of this song, which I’ve found for you below. Its Rachid Taha, an Algierian rockstarr covering the Clash’s post colonial punk rock anthem, Rock the Casbah. The very idea of mapping the transnational exchanges here makes me want to hole up and write an anthropology paper. Ha! Gotcha!

All kidding aside, I stumbled upon this interesting blog all about the casbah in Algeria that seeks to reveal pieces of history through maps, buildings, and architecture of historical sites over there.

There are a lot of actually interesting articles, films, and books written about the Algerian casbah and the role that specific cultural spaces and architectures played in propelling the Algerian Revolution toward success. Casbahs, Ghettoes, Favelas, and Hoods still interest me as spaces outside of, or in opposition to the State. Moreover, their role in producing their own ethos, logics, music, motivations, and movements (which usually get appropriated by others for purposes revolutionary & capitalist, liberatory & suspect) cannot be overstated.

Then of course there is the inverse dynamic, where the Clash covered Police and Thieves (ahem, below), a punk band from the heart of (declining) empire playing a song from Jamaica about conditions in the Third World, which had recently become conditions between people all around the world and cops all around the world.

All kidding aside, Joe Strummer and 20th century imperialism are an interesting prism through which to see the connections in the mutual formation of ideas, anthems, sounds, muses, and politics across oceans. Consider this,

In 1975, after being offered £100, Strummer married Pamela Moolman, a South African citizen, so she could obtain British citizenship. He bought his signature Fender Telecaster, later painted black, with the money.

…and so a South African, most likely in an attempt to escape Apartheid in her home country, however indirectly, had a hand as a midwife to the punk rock and musical genius that was to become Joe Strummer. The idea of discrete “origins”, of “English” artforms, of “African” politics, of “Caribbean” movements is of course short sighted. Anyone who digs but a little, (and is unattached to maintaining stable geo-political or cultural categories) will find that all this stuff is far more interconnected than a secondary education would lead you to believe.

This time of year has become a somber moment for me, ever since the passing of Joe Strummer on December 22nd, 2002. I remember walking around the Lower Eastside of Manhattan with my Best Friend in a vain attempt at xmas shopping when he stopped me mid-sentence. “What did that guy on the radio just say? And why have we been hearing nothing but the Clash in every store we’ve walked past???” Concern grew in his voice as he murmured this last question and stopped in his tracks as his brain connected the dots. We dashed into a record store on 2nd Avenue. “…Umm… Joe Strummer…?” was about all we could manage to blurt out in some excuse for a coherent question.

My main memory was of being with Brendan when it seemed, my sensory faculties all blurred for about 15 seconds. And of being with Brendan when we both struggled to reconcile the young death of a hero with the world around us. We had grown up listening to the Clash together. We met at punk shows. We had been on tour together with punk bands. I was living on the West Coast at the time, but was back in New York just for the holidays. If anything, there was something meet about being in his company for the somber news…

Can we share a moment of silence, followed by a moment of rocking out for the Great Joe Strummer…

as a Jamaican and a punk rocker, (and a social scientist), I really appreciated that guy.

Thank You, and Rock the New Year!
Sunshine Superboy

When Life Hands You Blizzards- Canadian Beer Fridge

Sledding aside, don’t let the snow drifts get you down. When life hands you Blizzards… do as the Canadians do!

I hope you enjoyed that cuz the following awful joke was detonated 5 or 6 times a month by my sixth grade teacher, and I want to dedicate it to my (literally) old skool-buddy, the eloquent author of still twitching.

Q: What did one snowflake say to the other?
A: Stick with me and you’ll catch the drift!

Yeah, its pretty bad. But boy-oh-boy, we’re not in Brazil anymore Totozinho!

I just pushed off from South America night before last, after being stranded on the tarmac inside our plane for a few hours during torrential el niño “summer” rainstorms. It did rain every day I was in São Paulo, and no I am not complaining, cuz it was not 17ºF.

I get back to New York (and now finally home in Philadelphia), and its totally el niño-fest de novo. A bonefide Noreaster! The only word (I know of) that everyone from Maine to Maryland is all too giddy to belch, cuz its successfully made the crossover from a wicked Boston Southie vernacular to ubiquitous parlance. Are there any other Southie words that have made it to the big leagues??

anyways, so its been awhile (1997/98) since there was an “el Niño” media blitz, (and seriously I still can’t hear the words without thinking of Monica Lewinsky?!), so in case you forgot what “a child” has to do with weather going cray-cray intensivo… check it out below (pssst- it was named by the Peruvians for the “christ-child”. who knew??)

a sense of where non-canaidan North Americans are most affected by el niño

jingle wee wee wee all the way home,
Sunshine Superflurry

In Copenhagen, Negros Lead Walk-Out, Insist Global Leadership Keep It Real

Yo, somtimes Climate Talks, and Africa Walks.

…Thats cuz this conference of the parties being held in Copenhagen this week and last, is no joke. But for some reason rich countries want to act a fool, insisting that they won’t negotiate on climate drafts that would allow for global temperature increases of up to two degrees, and may not even adhere to the old skool Kyoto Protocol to boot! Thank god you white people have negros like us to share this planet with, reminding everyone that keepin’ it real is integral to the continued existance of humankind and so many beasts and bugs that we’re sharing this mossy astroid with.

Booyakasha:
Copenhagen climate talks suspended in Africa-led protest

COPENHAGEN: The main sessions of UN climate talks in Copenhagen were suspended on Monday in a protest led by African nations and the developing countries accusing rich countries of trying to wreck the existing UN Kyoto Protocol.

“This is a walk-out over process and form, not a walkout over substance, and that’s regrettable,” Australian Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said of the action.

The countries were angry that the conference was weakening in support for the Kyoto Protocol, the core emissions-curbing treaty, they said.

“They have walked out, I am advised, of the working groups,” one Western minister told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The minister added: “This is salvageable. It depends if people want to be constructive.”

The move was unleashed by African countries, which had the support of the G77 group (which represents 130 developing countries from around the Global South), they said.

They refused to continue negotiations unless talks on a second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol were given priority over broader discussions on a “long-term vision” for cooperative action on climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol ties the rich countries — but not developing countries — that have ratified it to binding emissions curbs.

It does not include the United States, which says the Protocol is unfair as the binding targets do not apply to developing giants that are already huge emitters of greenhouse gases.

“Africa has pulled the emergency cord to avoid a train crash at the end of the week,” said Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, referring to a summit on Friday due to be attended by about 120 heads of state or government.

“Poor countries want to see an outcome which guarantees sharp emissions reductions yet rich countries are trying to delay discussions on the only mechanism we have to deliver this — the Kyoto Protocol.”

The minister added that the G77, for the same reason, was also blocking an agreement, made yesterday, to have core problems at the climate talks addressed informally at ministerial level in five pools, each chaired jointly by a developing and developed country.

Yeah, its not like they didn’t let a buncha fools know that there were for real! This video from Nairobi TV was circulated through youtube like three or four days ago:

Meanwhile, the daily necessities of the out-of-town well-to-do (or well-to-dilly-dally-for-the-sake-of-profit-and-capital) is pushing Denmark past it limits.

Ms Jorgensen (who manages Copenhagen’s biggest limosine company) reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen. “The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don’t have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it’s very Danish.”

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change “Truth Squad.” The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

Yo, aren’t rich people a hoot?!

Here is a map you may have already seen, portraying how the Global South, in terms of human lives alone, bears the brunt of Global Climate Change. Boosh:

Black Leaders: thanks for your bravery! Poor Countries: thanks for your solidarity!
Lets keep global temperature from going up up and away…

Sunshine Superboy

you can follow up to the minute goings on and tomfoolery from the UN Climate Summit here.

UnbeWEAVEable! Bulletproof Extentions and Tumble-Weaves

“Someone Lost Something”

tumbleweave:
A large clump of synthetic hair extension most readily sighted rolling in a street, usually propelled by wind or traffic. Tumbleweave is most commonly found in urban areas (ie, “da hood”).

and now that we’ve got that all squared away, I simply must share this incredible story of death-defiance (please check out the Fox news title in the background when it cuts back from the interview. fox totally went there!)

up up and away,
Sunshine Superboy

Bucky, Tattoos, and New Cartographic Directions

My man-crush, Mr.Buckminster Fuller:

The projection used for the world map in question, also known as the “Dymaxion Map,” was created by Buckminster Fuller, distinguished mathematician, inventor and 20th century visionary. The map began as a sketch, “The One-Town World” in 1927. “By 1954, after working on the map for several decades,” Fuller finally had a “satisfactory deck plan of the six and one half sextillion tons Spaceship Earth.”

The Dymaxion Map is the only flat map of the entire surface of the earth that reveals our planet as it really is an island in one ocean without any visible distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the land areas, and without splitting any continents.

Traditional world maps reinforce the elements that separate humanity and fail to highlight the patterns and relationships emerging from the ever evolving and accelerating process of globalization. Instead of serving as “a precise means for seeing the world from the dynamic, cosmic and comprehensive viewpoint,” the maps we use still cause humanity to “appear inherently disassociated, remote, self-interestedly preoccupied with the political concept of its got to be you or me; there is not enough for both.”

Dude’s work on an innovative projection for representations of the Earth’s landmasses was the inspiration for one of my tattoos. Captain Fuller’s map:

however…

A new technique for unpeeling the Earth’s skin and displaying it on a flat surface provides a fresh perspective on geography, making it possible to create maps that string out the continents for easy comparison, or lump together the world’s oceans into one huge mass of water surrounded by coastlines.

“Myriahedral projection” was developed by Jack van Wijk, a computer scientist at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

“The basic idea is surprisingly simple,” says van Wijk. His algorithms divide the globe’s surface into small polygons that are unfolded into a flat map, just as a cube can be unfolded into six squares.

Cartographers have tried this trick before; van Wijk’s innovation is to up the number of polygons from just a few to thousands. He has coined the word “myriahedral” to describe it, a combination of “myriad” with “polyhedron”, the name for polygonal 3D shapes.

Warping reality

The mathematical impossibility of flattening the surface of a sphere has long troubled mapmakers. “Consider peeling an orange and trying to flatten it out,” says van Wijk. “The surface has to distort or crack.”

Some solutions distort the size of the continents while roughly preserving their shape – the familiar Mercator projection, for instance, makes Europe and North America disproportionately large compared with Africa. Others, like the Peters projection, keep landmasses at the correct relative sizes, at the expense of warping their shapes.

An ideal map would combine the best properties of both, but that is only possible by inserting gaps into the Earth’s surface, resulting in a map with confusing interruptions. Van Wijk’s method makes it possible to direct those cuts in a way that minimises such confusion.

Maps of significance

When generating a map he assigns a “weighting” to each edge on the polyhedron to signal its importance, influencing the placement of the cuts or folds. All the maps are equally accurate, but tweaking the weightings gives dramatically different results.

Assigning more significance to landmass gives a map of all the continents in a line, similar to Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion map. Making oceans more important than land produces one giant sea surrounded by the world’s coastlines.

“Now and then you make an unexpected discovery,” says van Wijk. A map that separates land from sea as far as possible, leaving the continents marooned away from a sinuous watery mass, was one such serendipitous result of playing with the algorithm’s parameters.

Projection means prize

“His approach was fresh and innovative,” says Kenneth Field, editor of the British Cartographic Society’s The Cartographic Journal, which recently gave van Wijk the Henry Johns award, which recognises the best mapmaking research paper each year. “He managed to achieve a projection that reduces angular deformation to an absolute minimum and preserves area – not an easy trick,” adds Field, “it was a unanimous decision to give him the prize.”

Van Wijk attributes his success to being somewhat of an outsider. Cartographers typically seek single formulae that can be used to transform the entire globe, he says, while computer scientists look for algorithms that work in small steps and can be more adaptable.

I’m gonna update this post with a picture of this nonsense I have on my right arm for the rest of my life (ps, its rules!). I’m working with limited technology (on the road in Brazil), but I will deliver on this promise. Aight!

Up Up and Away,
Sunshine Superboy

A Virus Walks Into A Bar… and other Science jokes :P

BIG NEWS! (fast news?)

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern near Geneva are celebrating a major milestone after the machine broke energy records overnight to become the most powerful particle accelerator in the world.

At 12.44am this morning, the LHC accelerated beams of subatomic particles to higher energies than any achieved before in a collider.

The machine, which occupies a 27km circular tunnel that straddles the French-Swiss border, was restarted 10 days ago after being shut down for more than a year while engineers repaired damage caused by a helium leak when it was first switched on in September last year.

“The machine is working like a dream,” Lyn Evans, project manager of the LHC, told the Guardian. “It’s brilliant. By the end of the week we should be really moving.”

Inside the particle accelerator, two counter-rotating beams of hydrogen nuclei are whipped up to more than 99.99% the speed of light. At four points around the machine the beams are crossed, steering the particles into high-energy smash-ups. The collisions recreate in microcosm the conditions that existed moments after the big bang.

According to Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2, the energy released by the collisions can create matter in the form of particles that appear in the collider’s detectors.

Scientists hope that when they sift through the subatomic debris they will find particles that are new to physics, such as the Higgs boson, which gives mass to elementary particles, and possibly particles of dark matter, an elusive substance that clusters around galaxies and accounts for most of the mass in the universe.

At 9.48pm last night, engineers at Cern accelerated one beam of particles to 1.05 trillion electronvolts. Three hours later, both beams were hurtling around the machine, each with an energy of 1.18 trillion electronvolts. The energies are greater than any achieved at what is now the second most powerful collider in the world, the Tevatron at Fermilab on the outskirts of Chicago.

“For me, it’s not so much the energy record that matters, it’s that we’ve got through the start of the acceleration process where things are changing rapidly,” Evans said. As the beams are accelerated, eddy currents build up in the enormous superconducting magnets inside the machine and produce erratic magnetic fields that affect how the beams behave.

In the next few days, Cern managers will decide whether to start colliding particles at even greater energy, or run for a short time at lower energies. Scientists will use the first collisions to calibrate their detectors, ensuring they pick up any particles that might be produced under the known laws of physics.

“We’re about to move into a new energy regime, and when we do that, we can start to see new things,” Evans said.

“We are still coming to terms with just how smoothly the LHC commissioning is going. It is fantastic,” said Rolf Heuer, Cern’s director general. “We are continuing to take it step by step, and there is still a lot to do before we start physics in 2010. I’m keeping my champagne on ice until then.”

Over the next week, engineers will increase the beam intensity to a level that is expected, before Christmas, to reveal new physics at work. The first extended series of high-energy collisions is expected to start in January or February next year, when each beam will be accelerated to 3.5 trillion electronvolts.

“I was here 20 years ago when we switched on Cern’s last major particle accelerator, LEP,” said Steve Myers, Cern’s director of accelerators and technology, referring to the Large Electron Positron collider, which smashed electrons into their antimatter counterparts, positrons.

“I thought that was a great machine to operate, but this is something else. What took us days or weeks with LEP we’re doing in hours with the LHC. So far, it all augurs well for a great research programme.”

yeah, bo-ring. how about some corny science jokes?!

So an infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar.
The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says “I hate you guys” and pours two beers.

A Large Hadron Collider walks into a bar. The bartender says “Hey, we don’t serve large hadron colliders in here.”
The Large Hadron Collider says, “That’s OK. I’m broke, anyway.”

Heisenberg gets stopped on the motorway by the police.
Cop: Do you know how fast you were going sir?
Heisenberg: No, but I know exactly where I am.

A photon checks into a hotel. The bell hop asks him ” Can I help you with your luggage?” To which the photon replies, “I don’t have any. I’m traveling light.”

A neutron goes into a bar and orders a beer. As the neutron is reaching for its wallet, the bartender looks at it and says, “Oh, for you–no charge.

a bar of gold walks into a bar, the bartender turns and yells “A, u” …

you may lose friends if you say these out loud. but between you and me, its been a riot.

Sunshine Superboy

Holy Fellatio, Batman! Fruit Bats Use Oral Sex to Prolong Intercourse

So a friend of a friend of a friend wrote this article about bats having oral sex… . Its for real.

Many humans whine about not getting oral sex often enough, but for most animals, it’s completely non-existent. In fact, we know of only animal apart from humans to regularly engage in fellatio – the short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx).

[some tunes to set the mood...]

The bat’s sexual antics have only just been recorded by Min Tan of China’s Guangdong Entomological Institute (who are either branching out, or are confused about entomology). Tan captured 60 wild bats from a nearby park, housed them in pairs of the opposite sex and voyeuristically filmed their liaisons using a night-time camera. Twenty of the bats got busy, and their exploits were all caught on video.

Male bats create tents by biting leaves until they fall into shape. These provide shelter and double as harems, each housing several females who the male mates with. Fruit bat sex goes like this: the female approaches and sniffs the male, and both partners start to lick one another. The male makes approaches with his thumbs (like the Fonz) and mounts the female (like the Fonz). Sex itself is the typical rhythmic thrusting that we’re used to, and afterwards, the male licks his own penis for several seconds.

But Tan also found that female bat will often bend down to lick the shaft of her mate’s penis during sex itself. This behaviour happened on 70% of the videos, making it the only known example of regular fellatio in a non-human animal. It also prolonged the sexual encounter – males never withdrew their penises when they were being licked and, on average, the behaviour bought the couple an extra 100 seconds of sex over and above the usual 2 minutes. The licking itself only lasted for 20 seconds on average, so each second of it buys six extra seconds of penetration.

NSFW – short-nosed fruit bats having sex. I will have you know that the music choice came with the video and has nothing to do with me.

Oral sex is rare in other animals. Bonobos do it (but really, what don’t they do?) but it’s more of a form of play among young males, and there’s one anecdotal instance of an orang-utan doing the same. Some animals, such as ring-tailed lemurs, lick each other’s genitals to judge whether they’re ready for mating, but there’s no evidence that they do so as an actual part of sex. As for other bats, it’s entirely possible that they too engage in oral sex. However, given their inaccessible roosts and nocturnal habits, we’re largely in their dark about their sex lives.

Nonetheless, Tan suggests a few possible reasons for the short-nosed fruit bat’s penchant for fellatio, aside from the anthropocentric conclusion of ‘pleasure-giving’. Bat penises contain erectile tissue much like our own. It gets stiffer if it’s stimulated, so females could use oral sex to prolong their encounters with males, by maintain their erections or lubricating it for easier entry.

While many of us might nod sagely at the need for longer sex, Tan suggests that for the bats, it could mean easier transport of sperm to the oviduct, or more secretions from the female that are conducive to fertilisation. It could also be a way of hogging a mate, keeping him away from rival females.

Alternatively, the antiseptic properties of saliva might help to strip the male’s penis of bacteria or fungi, and prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The fact that males lick their own penises after sex supports this idea.

And finally, oral sex might help females to pick up chemical traces on her mate that might suggest if he’s a suitable mate. Obviously, they’d already be having sex, but female mammals often exert choice over their sexual partners after the fact, rejecting sperm from inferior males, or encouraging congress with superior ones to displace it. All of these explanations are just hypotheses for the moment, but they could all be tested in the future.

We now return to our scheduled programming.

<3,
Sunshine Superboy

Reference: Tan, M., Jones, G., Zhu, G., Ye, J., Hong, T., Zhou, S., Zhang, S., & Zhang, L. (2009). Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time PLoS ONE, 4 (10) DOI:

African Reform of U2/ Muppets Re-interpret Rhapsody

I love this:

An expert commission of African leaders today announced their plan for comprehensive reform of music band U2. Saying that U2’s rock had lost touch with its African roots, the commission called for urgent measures to halt U2’s slide towards impending crisis.

“Our youth today are imperiled by low quality music,” said Commission chairman Nelson Mandela. “We will be lending African musicians to U2 to try to refurbish their sound to satisfy the urgent and growing needs for diversionary entertainment at a time of crisis in the global music and financial sectors.”

Concerns about U2 have been growing in Africa for a while. One Western aid blogger testified to the Commission that his teenage kids found U2’s music “cheesy.” The Mandela Commission proposed that U2 follow a series of steps to recover its Edge:

1) Hire African consultants to analyze U2’s “poverty of music trap”

2) Prepare a Band-owned and Commission-approved Comprehensive U2 Reform Strategy Design (CURSD)

3) Undertake a rehabilitation tour of African capitals to field-test and ground-truth proposed reforms

4) Subject all songs to randomized experiments in which the effect on wellbeing of control and treatment groups is rigorously assessed.

Mandela expressed optimism that the Commission’s report and proposed reforms had come in time to stave off terminal crisis in U2, and restore its effectiveness in the 80s arena rock field.

FYI, its cross-posted from Aid Watch

The Aid Watch blog is a project of New York University’s Development Research Institute (DRI). This blog is principally written by William Easterly, Professor of Economics at NYU. It is co-written by Laura Freschi and by occasional guest bloggers. Our work is based on the idea that more aid will reach the poor the more people are watching aid.

And thats all I have to say about that. Except that everyone is freaking out about the Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody, so I’m gonna go ahead and share it with y’all.

love & rawkouts,
Sunshine Superboy

Voyage-á-Trois: Black US President Goes to China, China’s trade with Africa, in US Dollars

Ever wonder what international politics could sound like if it were written up like a celebrity blog?

Voyage á Trois!

There’s a lot of talk about how some black guy went to China this week, but the conversation seems really muddled from my stand point.

From within the US: Human Rights, Protectionism, Green House Gases and- ooooh is that the Great Wall? Like THEEEE Great Wall???

From non-US news sources: Dude! Obama totally tried to get China in on some bi-lateral cahoots, proposing ‘co-World-Superpowers’ like “imagine how awesome it would be if all yr peops and all my peops formed a pact of global domination”, and China was all like “nah, I don’t think so”. Ooooh, diss!

I think the BBC called it Hu’s refusal for a “G-2″ status. Hu Jintao (the Prez) and Wen Jiabao (the Chinese Primier), checked the megalomania of Obama and his north Americans by stating (paraphrasing, of course), that ‘yo, if you wanna do global work and stuff, we need to have global, multi-lateral talks, and include other homies. Srsly, thats busted that you even asked and tried to be all secretive about it. I’m totally telling…”

Global Community: ooh, diss

North Americans: Great Wall- Great Wall!

un-hyphenated-Africans: Shazam! At least we do hella buisiness with China.

Black Maps: toats! I wonder if anyone has made a map of China’s trade with African nations?

Shazam:

word. but China’s real jonesing addict, remains ever truly, the US:

The US has built up a massive trade deficit with China. The US argues that this is partly because China has kept its currency artificially weak, which makes its products cheaper overseas.

Sunshine Superboy

China! where the fun never ends!

Baseball Season’s Over, I’m Heading to the Mitten (Michigan)

A funky little map of the only midwestern state I’ve had the privilege to call home…

Great Lakes, Great Fun, (Great conference here in Ann Arbor!),
Sunshine Superboy