Posts Tagged ‘Michigan’
Where everybody knows your name…
Some have fame thrust upon them…
Some just happen upon it along the way…
Artist and scientist Stephen Von Worley has mashed up Google Maps and the Open Street Map Project to create a search tool that will let one find all of the streets in the U.S. that share one’s name (first name, for now… as a bonus, one also gets places and things).
One can visit Steve’s Data Pointed to find one’s namesakes…
As we rethink our routes, we might recall that it was on this date in 1965 that the FBI exonerated “Louie Louie,” declaring that the lyrics of the 1963 recording by The Kingsmen– widely rumored to be “dirty”— were in fact simply indecipherable. After analyzing the disc at its intended 45 rpm and also at 33 1/3 and 78, and interviewing a member of the band, the FBI Laboratory declared the lyrics to be officially “unintelligible at any speed.”
In fact the song’s creator, Richard Berry, had released “Louie Louie” to mild regional success– and no lyrical controversy– a decade earlier. But the FBI’s verdict notwithstanding, a cloud hovered over the tune: in 2005, the superintendent of the Benton Harbor, Michigan school system refused to let the marching band at one of the schools play the song in a parade; she later relented.
from the FBI’s “Louie Louie” file (source)
Crack, down…
From Flint, Michigan, the police world’s pinnacle of punning. (thanks, Glitter)
As we hitch up our trousers (and consider the rights we do and don’t have), we might recall that it was on this date in 1215 that King John affixed his seal to the Magna Carta… After years of watching rights-abridging legislation streak through Congress like greased pigs, it’s somehow comforting to recall this early example of unintended consequences: the “Great Charter” was meant as a fundamentally reactionary treaty between the king and his barons, guaranteeing nobles’ feudal rights and assuring that the King would respect the Church and national law. But over succeeding centuries, at the expense of royal and noble hegemony, it became a cornerstone of English democracy– and indeed, democracy as we know it in the West.
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