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Friday, February 7, 2003
LEONARD PITTS JR.: The sad story of a boy who will be rich
Of course, trouble is a relative term. There's scant reason to weep for an 18 year-old who is expected, after his high school graduation, to sign a multimillion dollar contract to play basketball and a similar deal to endorse athletic shoes.
LOCAL COMMENT: Anti-SUV talk has pitfalls
General Motors once did me a favor, and I've never returned it. They paid for my college education -- four years, full tuition, room and board. All I had to do was get good grades and show up with the other 8 or 10 GM scholars on campus at a once-a-year dinner with Ed Cole, designer of the Corvette and the '57 Chevy. Cole became president of GM two years after I graduated.
MIKE WENDLAND: Automation Alley execs eye trade fair
A delegation of nearly two dozen executives from Oakland County firms will visit Hannover, Germany, next month in hopes of landing business at an international telecommunications and information technology exhibition.
MIKE WENDLAND: From your tech columnist's e-mail . . .
QUESTION: If I purchased a computer program, would I be infringing on copyright laws if I gave it to my brother to put on his computer?
MORT CRIM: Sometimes you can't win
He says even that didn't work. She took it in and traded it for two $25 certificates.
TOM WALSH: Midwest ethic, nostalgia put ad firm on top
Amid two years of carnage in the advertising industry, Campbell-Ewald has bulked up and emerged as a major player on the national ad scene.
Thursday, February 6, 2003
DESIREE COOPER: View of world much clearer from space
All we do is fight over who deserves our compassion and who must live without it. Who gets in, and who doesn't. Whom we'll enslave, and who will live free.
DREW SHARP: Ford knows all too well heartbreak can follow elation
A flash of brilliance doesn't instantly erase decades of ineptitude. So the Ford family won't delude itself into confusing exhilaration with absolution in an impassioned football town. Trust has a short life span with the Lions, and nobody understands that more than vice chairman William Clay Ford Jr.
HEATHER NEWMAN: Small talk looming large in cell phone chat groups
Want to chat about the Wings but can't find anyone nearby? Got some thoughts about developments on 8 Mile, but you're stuck alone in a doctor's waiting room?
LOCAL COMMENT: Fix health care before it bankrupts firms, workers
The rising tide of health insurance costs continues to overwhelm employers, according to a recent national survey of employer-sponsored health plans.
MITCH ALBOM: It's Super Bowl or bust time
He sounded a bit nervous. But then, if you were being handed, at the same time, the biggest paycheck of your career and the second-worst team in pro football, wouldn't you be nervous, too?
TOM WALSH: Auto parts manufacturer uses bonuses to aid rescue
When the owner of auto parts maker Key Plastics LLC warned of imminent bankruptcy three years ago, workers in the Plymouth plant scoffed.
Wednesday, February 5, 2003
BRIAN DICKERSON: Granholm's budget menu: Lean cuisine
During last year's campaign, Jennifer Granholm promised every interest group, industry lobby and trade organization she spoke to that its members would have "a seat at the table" once she was elected.
DREW SHARP: Gasp! Have Lions done right thing?
You will have to forgive any disjointed prose because I'm still a little woozy, still susceptible to blacking out at the mere suggestion that the Lions have done . . . the Lions have done . . . (You can do it, Drew. Just think about baseball) . . . the Lions have done . . . the right thing.
HEATHER NEWMAN: Tech support firms find, fix PC problems quickly
Anyone who's owned a computer for a while knows how tough it can be to get a mystery problem solved. You're not always sure which program or piece of hardware is causing the glitch, and often when you call, the makers of the hardware will blame the makers of the software, and vice versa.
LEONARD PITTS JR.: In TV Nation, it's logical to copy a script
I am talking about 20-year-old Jason Bautista and his 15-year-old half-brother, Matthew Montejo. According to law enforcement officials these two young men, both from Riverside, near Los Angeles, recently got it in their heads to murder their mom, 41-year-old Jane Marie Bautista.
LOCAL COMMENT: Action eases oil dependence
During the State of the Union there was a moment when many of us who have been sounding the alarm about America's dangerous dependence on foreign oil thought the Oval Office had a change of heart as the president proposed a $1.2-billion fuel-cell program to bring this technology to market by 2020. But as we waited to hear what we could do now to break our addiction to foreign oil, the president's silence was deafening. Surely, in the light of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush was going to take on the oil industry and propose incentives to bring existing technology to market that can make the average car achieve 40 m.p.g. without compromising size or performance.
LOCAL COMMENT: Reduce oil dependence now
During the State of the Union there was a moment when many of us who have been sounding the alarm about America's dangerous dependence on foreign oil thought the Oval Office had a change of heart as the president proposed a $1.2-billion fuel-cell program to bring this technology to market by 2020. But as we waited to hear what we could do now to break our addiction to foreign oil, the president's silence was deafening. Surely, in the light of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush was going to take on the oil industry and propose incentives to bring existing technology to market that can make the average car achieve 40 m.p.g. without compromising size or performance.
MITCH ALBOM: Lions make smart hire
Put on the coffee. Pull open the shades. The Detroit Lions, awakening from a decades-long slumber, are today, officially, entering the 21st Century.
MORT CRIM: Everyone is important
Several years ago when I was anchoring TV news, a young woman approached me in a shopping mall. She knew the face but couldn't place the name. Finally she asked, "Hey, aren't you somebody?"
YOUNG VOICES: Soldier returns -- with new brothers
A stack of well-worn photos sat next to a dusty, tattered rucksack when we arrived at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina. That's when it finally sank in that my brother, Drew, spent six months fighting in Afghanistan. Though we'd exchanged letters while he was gone, the fact that he was fighting in another country never really sank in until I saw the evidence in his barracks room. Even hugging him for the first time in seven months hadn't made it ring true. But the giant sack filled with army gear, and the photographs that looked as though they had been handled many times, left no more room for illusion.
Tuesday, February 4, 2003
COMMENT: The case against Iraq is clear
President George W. Bush warned in this State of the Union address that "the gravest danger facing America and the world is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons." Exhibit A is Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
COMMENT: What Parks did was no simple act
Today marks the 90th birthday of Rosa Parks, the mother of the civil-rights movement. It wasn't booming oratory or a fiery personality that earned Parks that title. She simply, and defiantly, refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white rider in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955. By so doing, she agreed to become the focus of one of the first major legal challenges to segregation laws.
DESIREE COOPER: Agony of AIDS is tarnishing Africa's beauty
A year ago, nearly 100 of the world's top photojournalists -- a fifth of them African or African American -- fannedacross Africa to capture the spirit of the world's second-largest continent. The pictures, all taken on the same day, tell of a vibrant, hopeful people and a beautiful, sometimes punishing, landscape:
MIKE WENDLAND: Boating goes from high seas to high-tech
From digitally designed composite hulls that cut the weight of the vessel and improve fuel economy, to special wave-making devices that kick up bigger wakes for skiers to jump, today's watercraft are loaded with enough electronic gear to make a sailor sound like a geek in a computer store.
MIKE WENDLAND: New multigadget device is a dubious survival aid
Gadget fans who can't leave home without a Swiss army knife will no doubt find great solace in a gizmo from Jeep Electronics that takes the Boy Scouts' "Be prepared" motto to a new extreme.
SUSAN AGER: Tragedy muted until we know the players
As grief goes, it's aloof, like the surprised sadness you'd feel if you learned a half-brother you never knew had died 10 states away.
SUSAN TOMPOR: Bush savings plan holds tax-benefit implications for all
What couple is ready to save up to $54,000 in a year? Or, if you're single, up to $27,000?
TOM WALSH: A Detroit centennial: Area chamber celebrates
Our roads were in such deplorable shape that our business leaders mounted a crusade to improve them.
Monday, February 3, 2003
BRIAN DICKERSON: Readers pass judgment on court matters
Recent columns in which I defended a judge's decision not to jail a 16-year-old drag racer convicted of manslaughter, poked fun at President George W. Bush's prescription for "lousy" juries and marveled at the privacy afforded by modern undergraduate housing brought these responses:
CHRIS CHRISTOFF: State's economy won't be hot until state's winter is
We who endure another Arctic knifing in winter may wonder, why the heck would anyone live here if they didn't have to?
DREW SHARP: OHSAA also wrongdoer in James ruling
The hypocrites and their time-warped interpretation of propriety and ethics are happy. They've won. They've put that cocky LeBron James back in his rightful place. They couldn't nail him because his mother had the audacity to legitimately get a loan from a bank as opposed to a nefarious back-channel street broker.
LOCAL COMMENT: Hit sprawl with solutions
Gov. Jennifer Granholm campaigned on a promise to rein in Michigan's sprawling patterns of development. Now, just weeks after her inauguration, Granholm has gained her first significant achievement: a new civic consensus that sprawl is indeed a serious problem in Michigan and merits immediate state action.
MIKE WENDLAND: Good, bad, useful: The tragedy on Web
Like neighbors around a backyard fence, Americans gathered online over the weekend to learn new information and share their feelings over the shuttle disaster.
MORT CRIM: Share your ability to read with others
The young woman stopped by the table where I was autographing copies of "Second Thoughts." "I won't buy your book because I don't read," she said. And I wondered if her sad smile really meant, "I can't read."
SUSAN TOMPOR: IRS doing little to stop tax refund loan rip-offs
Anyone who has ever hopped a complimentary bus to the casino knows that, baby, the ride ain't free.
Sunday, February 2, 2003
DAVE BARRY: Search for sunken piano sounds fishy
While you're enjoying your comfortable, low-risk lifestyle, with your childproof aspirin bottles and your reduced-fat Cheez-Its, some brave divers are preparing to plunge into the dark, frigid waters of New England in a quest for a legendary object -- an object that, if found, could have a profound effect upon all humanity.
HEATH J MERIWETHER ON DIVIDED GROUND: Striking the right balance
For a newspaper publisher, there's almost nothing worse than hearing from readers who are canceling their subscription because they perceive the paper as biased and unfair.
RON DZWONKOWSKI: Air Efficiency
If -- or should that be when? -- the United States goes to war in Iraq, the nation's airlines are likely to be big losers, and they are already hurting. Nothing makes the skies seem less friendly than war, particularly a war that everyone expects to generate a backlash of attempted terrorism. And commercial aviation is still a long way from well, because of the impact of 9/11.
SUSAN AGER: Parents turn sorrow into others' hope
When Herbert Ouida put his 18-year-old son on a plane for the University of Michigan, he couldn't help but marvel and smile.
Saturday, February 1, 2003
DREW SHARP: Think long and hard about this decision, Mooch
That's what Steve Mariucci is asking himself this weekend in the serenity of San Francisco's rolling hills, contemplating whether he and his family should commit to one of the biggest challenges facing any NFL coach. It's not a question of money. The Lions are offering plenty. It's not a question of confidence. Mariucci has plenty.
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