The Great War
Published on 18 Jun 2018
June 19, 2018
Flying Aircraft Carriers – Reversed Bullets I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
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Detroit’s Michigan Central Station purchased by Ford
In Trains News Wire, Kevin P. Keefe rounds up the news from last week about the purchase of Detroit’s imposing former Michigan Central Station:
The abandoned Michigan Central Train Station, as seen from Roosevelt Park in Detroit.
Photo by Albert Duce, via Wikimedia Commons
The news this week that the Ford Motor Co. has purchased Detroit’s crumbling but historic Michigan Central Station indicates a happy ending for one of America’s most notoriously neglected big-city train stations.
Ford purchased the building from the Manuel Moroun family, billionaire owners of a trucking and logistics empire, which includes the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit with Windsor, Canada. A purchase price for the station has not been disclosed.
A Ford spokesman said the company would announce detailed plans for the site at a June 19 press conference and open house. It is presumed the project will include renovation of the passenger terminal and its 18-story office building. At a press conference Monday, Matthew Moroun, heir to the Moroun fortune, said Ford’s “blue oval will adorn the building.”
[…]
In Michigan Central Station, Ford is acquiring one of railroading’s great architectural monuments. Two firms designed the 1913 station: St. Paul, Minn.-based Reed & Stem, of New York’s Grand Central Terminal fame; and New York-based Warren & Wetmore, known for such hotels as the Biltmore and Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan.
When the station opened, the Michigan Central was already a subsidiary of the New York Central, but a proud and independent one. With its 19th century roots in Boston’s financial aristocracy, the Michigan Central wanted to build monuments of its own. In a sprawling two-part series in the August and September 1978 issues of Trains Magazine, authors Garnet R. Cousins and Paul Maximuke called it “the proud symbol of a mighty railroad.”
The station was also unusual by virtue of its connection to the Detroit River Tunnel Co., which carried the Michigan Central main line beneath the Detroit River just a mile east of the station, linking the railroad with its Canada Southern affiliate. The tunnel opened in October 1910. The long grade necessary for the tunnel necessitated Michigan Central Station’s location more than a mile west of downtown Detroit at the corner of Vernor Highway and Michigan Avenue.
In its heyday, Michigan Central Station was as vital as any in the Midwest. In 1929, the station saw more than 90 arrivals and departures each day. Ultimately the depot could boast a number of famous NYC trains, including the Mercury, Wolverine, and, at the top, the daily Twilight Limited, originally an all-Pullman parlor-car train to Chicago. The station thrived through the postwar streamliner era.
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The History of Non-Euclidian Geometry – A Most Terrible Possibility – Extra History – #4
Extra Credits
Published on 16 Jun 2018In the early 19th century, people started to wonder if the Fifth Postulate couldn’t be proven at all — meaning that it could be right, but it could also be wrong. Bolyai, Lobachevsky, and Riemann started exploring hyperbolic geometry and other strange realms…
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Time to throw Mutti Merkel under the bus?
Sabine Beppler-Spahl thinks Angela Merkel’s time is running out:
Angela Merkel’s days may be numbered. ‘She will never recover from this crisis’, said an article in a German newspaper last week, about the rift within her government over immigration.
This latest crisis began after the interior minister, Horst Seehofer, announced that he wanted to introduce tougher rules for asylum seekers, including turning away those who have already been registered in another EU country. Merkel responded by saying that Europe needed a common solution to the refugee crisis, and that she would discuss it with French president Emmanuel Macron during his upcoming visit, and at the EU summit later this month. She blocked Seehofer from unveiling his immigration ‘master plan’, and he has insisted that a solution should be found by today. He has also threatened to sidestep Merkel and impose his plan regardless, leading to speculation about a government breakdown, and a confidence vote, little more than 100 days since the new ruling coalition, led by Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), was formed.
[…]
Merkel’s decision to put the brakes on Seehofer’s ‘master plan’ reflects her evasive and anti-democratic style. No voter has yet been able to read this plan, let alone discuss it. Her concern about publishing it reflects the contempt in which she holds democratic debate. Meanwhile, her carefully prepared statements on the issue (mostly in the form of TV interviews with choice journalists or her own weekly podcast) rarely tell us very much at all. Despite opening Germany’s doors to refugees in 2015, she has never made a proper public case for the benefits of immigration. Her inability, or unwillingness, to explain her politics to the electorate has contributed to the narrow and technical way in which immigration is being discussed in Germany these days, with a focus on numbers and deportation practices.
Taking an issue to the ‘European level’ has become Merkel’s default solution to everything. ‘This is a European challenge that also needs a European solution’, she said in her latest podcast. Of course, a joint European solution would be preferable, but not if this means bypassing national electorates. Her original plan of imposing migrant quotas on other EU member states has failed completely. Excluding the public from the debate, and discussing politics behind closed doors, is simply not cutting it with voters. Whatever one thinks of Seehofer’s ‘master plan’, he is right that immigration needs to be discussed and decided upon at the democratic, national level.
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Women Working: What’s the Pill Got to Do With It?
Marginal Revolution University
Published on 29 Nov 2016At the turn of the century, it was rare for a woman to get a college degree or join, and stay in, the workforce. One trailblazer was Katherine McCormick. She was the second woman ever to graduate from MIT, a suffragist, advocate for women’s education, and later philanthropist. McCormick was also a staunch supporter of birth control, going so far as to smuggle contraceptives into the United States at a time when they were illegal or highly regulated.
In the 1950s, the birth control pill was extremely controversial. Funding for its development had been pulled. McCormick stepped in and, over time, contributed nearly $23 million (in today’s dollars) of her own money to research efforts. Her financial involvement was instrumental in achieving FDA approval and widespread acceptance of “the pill.”
But what does the the pill have to do with female education or women working? For the very first time, women were in control over if and when they would have children.
Since the mid-1960s, shortly after the pill was approved as a contraceptive in the United States, female education and labor force participation rates have skyrocketed. With the ability to control when they will have children, women are able to better plan for their academic and professional future. We may take it for granted today, but half a century ago, the pill changed the game for working women.
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QotD: Homophobia and racism in the USA and in Europe
Outside the very privileged top of society, feminism doesn’t get the traction it gets in the US ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD. Not even in England. In fact every other country in the world is far more “ist” than the US, because being “ist” (racist, sexist and homophobic[ist for completism]) is the way things are done. I find it mildly amusing whenever gay friends think that the US is worse than Europe “because of all the religious stuff.” Uh. No. The US is more tolerant than Europe because we’re richer and more vast and we can ignore that which annoys us more easily. In Europe they live in each other’s pockets on what is for us tight resources. They have no “give” and cohesion and conformity is enforced, which means if you stick out, you get it. Not publicly and certainly not if you’re a tourist, but if you live there among the people you’ll find you don’t need to hunt for microaggressions.
And before people from Europe say it isn’t so — you don’t know. Anymore than Americans do who’ve never lived there as locals. You don’t know how much LESS of the racism and sexism and homophobia there is in the US than in your area. Hint, what you see in our movies and read in our papers is the greatest bullshit around. Those PRACTICALLY don’t exist in the US, for any functional purpose. I mean, sure, people might think women are inferior, or might hate gays, but unlike the internet sites colonized by the alt.right (and how many of those are Russian agent accounts no one knows) people expressing such feelings (actual hostility not imaginary micro-aggressions) are likely to be laughed at or mocked. Not so in Europe.
And then there’s the more tan areas of Europe, and what we’ll term the first world minus a quarter.
I’m not ragging on my birthplace. It has some admirable qualities. But if you think that it is more tolerant or laid back than the US you haven’t lived there. Sexism is internalized at such a level people don’t see it. They give lip service to women having jobs, etc, but those women still have to be “good housewives” no matter what their job is. Men still get the choice seats in cars (be fair, they are so tiny most men have to sit up front to fit, but it has become internalized, too), men still take pride of place without a thoughts. No, not everywhere, not in every family. BUT at a cultural level, it exists at a point that feminists here would have a heart attack. Again no time to look for micro aggressions, you’re too busy working through the macro ones.
But here is the thing that these people forget: They’re not AGGRESSIONS. They’re just culture. When a man as a matter of course takes the best seat, he’s not making a comment on YOU. Hell, he’s not making a comment at all. He’s just doing something so deeply ingrained that he didn’t think about it. If you think that’s enough to make it so that you can’t succeed or that you need to run around saying you live in a patriarchal or male-supremacist society, let me tell you, cupcake, you wouldn’t have succeeded anyway.
Sarah Hoyt, “A Very Diverse Cake”, According to Hoyt, 2016-08-31.
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