Detroit Life

For a season where no one expected much out of the Tigers, their hot start to the year has been a welcome surprise. They haven’t lost a series yet — knock wood — and have found themselves in lucky positions against an injury-weakened Yankees lineup. But luck can only go so far, and they’ve had to work hard to get their wins. Fans have been impressed by the strong starting rotation, and the smoking bat of Christin Stewart, among others.

They are 7-3 over their last 10 games, and are hoping to maintain a claim on the top of the division for as long as they can.

But the Cleveland Indians, who the Tigers will face this week in a three-game series, aren’t interested in being anywhere but first place, and after a slow start they are ready to knock the Tigers down off the throne of first place.

Let’s take a look at the last week and see how the AL Central is shaking out, and what lays ahead.

Detroit Tigers (7-3)

The Tigers should have had a much harder start to the week last week, facing the Yankees in the Bronx for three games. But with several injuries plaguing the team, the Tigers took advantage of a weakened lineup and managed to take two of three games before heading back to Detroit. In the home opener series against the Royals, the offense came alive with several high-scoring games, and the Tigers swept the floundering Kansas City club and started their home stint on a high note.

This week they’ll face two AL Central rivals — with the next best records in the division — so the series wins aren’t going to come easy, and we’ll see a real test of what the 2019 Tigers have to offer.

Up Next: vs. Indians (3 games); @ Twins (3 games)

Cleveland Indians (6-3)

In spite of some losses their first week of the season, the Indians had two strong series last week and are hoping to ride that momentum right into the Motor City. The Indians split a two-game series against the White Sox, then swept the Jays for a four-game series to round out the week.

The Tigers won’t go quietly though. After a series sweep of their own, they’ll also be hoping to keep the win-train rolling. After three games against the Tigers, the Indians will head to Kansas City to try their luck against a sluggish Royals club.

Up Next: @ Tigers (3 games); @ Royals (3 games)

Minnesota Twins (5-3)

The Twins had a mixed bag of luck last week. They started things off with a short two-game series against the Royals, which they were able to sweep, but then they headed to Philadelphia where the Phillies took two-of-three games, one a harsh 10-4 victory. They’re coming off that series loss and looking ahead to even more interleague action.

They’ll start the week in New York, facing off against the Mets for a two-game series, before they head back home to Minneapolis for a potentially very snowy series against the Tigers.

Up Next: @ Mets (2 games); vs. Tigers (3 games)

White Sox (3-6)

The White Sox have had, potentially, the opposite luck to the Tigers this past week, where the teams they were facing had a lot to prove and did so with vigor. In their short two-game series against the Indians, they got swept, and while one game in their four-game series against the Mariners was postponed to a later date, the Seattle club came into Chicago and managed to take two-of-three from the Sox in three high-scoring games.

The White Sox already started their week against the Rays, and have already lost a game. They’ll see the AL East leaders for two more games before heading off to New York to see the Yankees in a three-game series.

Up Next: vs Royals (2 more games); @ Yankees (3 games)

Kansas City Royals (2-7)

Oh Royals. Poor Royals. Last week they were swept not once — in a two-game series against the Twins — but TWICE — in a three-game series against the Tigers. This week they’ll be hoping to just win a game or two, but they aren’t off to a promising start.

They’ve already lost game one of a three-game series against the Mariners, and then the Cleveland Indians will come to Kansas City. Neither team is going to offer easy wins for the Royals.

Up Next: vs. Mariners (2 more games); vs. Indians (3 games)

The new HomeBase facility will serve as a community gathering spot as well as a headquarters for the Live6 Alliance and the Detroit Collaborative Design Center and an office space for city employees. The community center is part of a larger redevelopment effort in the Livernois-McNichols area that also includes the renovation of 115 vacant homes and landscaping 192 vacant lots into green infrastructure like gardens, orchards or meadows.

HomeBase's inaugural celebration, which will be taking place on April 25, will be open to the public from 3 to 7 p.m. The community center is located at 7426 W. McNichols Rd. Light refreshments will be served. If your'e interested in attending, please RSVP here.
 

Story Links

The camp is designed for special needs players 12 and older to learn and develop basketball skills, working with the Titan basketball coaches, players and alumni. All abilities are welcome to the camp and parents/guardians are welcome and encouraged to stay for the duration of the event.

Registration for the camp opens at 8:30 a.m. with the camp running from 9 a.m. to noon. The deadline to sign up is Tuesday, June 18, just two days before the camp. Interested families and participants may also inquire about camp sponsorships to help offset the costs.

For further information, please contact the Director of Athletic Administration John Hitchings via email at [email protected] or by phone at 313-993-1700 (ext. 7331).

Interested families and participants may sign up by visiting the Titan Department of Athletics at Calihan Hall or by mailing to attached flyer linked above to:

Detroit Mercy Athletics
ATTN: Titan Club Basketball Camp
4001 W. McNichols Rd., Detroit, MI 48221

https://detroittitans.com/galleries/?gallery=842" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Check out photos from 2018's Basketball Camp for Special Needs Players, held at Calihan Hall last June.
 

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. - Michigan lawmakers are standing beside Iraqi families, calling on federal authorities to prioritize the safety of Iraqi nationals who face deportation following a court ruling. 

RELATED: Michigan congressman, 19 bipartisan lawmakers urge DHS and ICE to halt mass deportation of Iraqis

Deportations could start as early as Tuesday. Families and lawmakers came together Saturday to demand the government reconsider the process that will rip families apart.

Stephen Shakurra is one of thousands of detainees who have lived in limbo since 2017, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and removed people from their communities and forced them to return to Iraq.

If deported, Shakurra would be seperated from his son. 

"I've resided here 39 of my 41 years of living," Shakurra said. "I left Iraq when I was 2 years old. I have no knowledge of Iraq whatsoever."

The crowds gathered in Sterling Heights in an effort to save Shakurra and others like him from deportation to a country where leaders would persecite them due to their Christian beliefs.

Michigan leaders are working to make sure each case is treated individually, rather than bundling together. 

"This is about fairness and it is about humanity," Rep. Andy Levin said. "It would be unconscionable for ICE to move forward with mass detention and deportation of Iraqis -- many of whom are Chaldean Christians who would face religious persecution in Iraq."

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders says he won't make the same mistake as the Clinton campaign did in 2016, and assume the battleground states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania will swing Democratic in 2020. 

President Donald Trump won all five states in 2016.

Sanders made campaign stops in Wisconsin and Indiana on Friday, followed by stops in Coopersville, Michigan and Warren, Michigan on Saturday.

Sanders told a crowd of hundreds at Macomb Community College Saturday evening that he plans not just to beat Trump in 2010 - but beat what he called "Trumpism" itself - the growing political power of corporations and the ultra-wealthy in the U.S.

He called the president a liar for pledging to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and health insurance for everyone while on the campaign trail, then proposing to cut the benefits once he was elected. 

Sanders says if elected, he'd push for Medicare for all, expanded Social Security, and free public college tuition.

He'd do that with revenue from raising taxes on corporations like Amazon, which paid no federal income tax in 2017, as well as on extremely wealthy individuals, like Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Sanders says it's not right that Bezos, Buffett, and Gates own more wealth than the bottom half of U.S. citizens.

"Yeah, we are going to ask the millionaires and billionaires of this country to start paying their fair share of taxes," he said.

Sanders also said it's time to rein in military spending, stop unnecessary wars, and address climate change with ambitious policies to eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

Sanders will next visit two other battleground states that Trump won in 2016 - Ohio and Pennsylvania.  

To all my faithful readers (both of you), I apologize for such a long period between posts. It has been a crazy summer. Not only is my job seasonal (lumber/building materials), my boss passed away in the middle of July. Even more important, he was also my father-in-law, my wife's father. Needless to say, there have been more pressing things to attend to.

That being said, I am not posting a cover today. A special treat - an on-air interview from NPR of Rachel and Mary.

This was around July 12 in Columbus, Ohio. The wife & I left Detroit on the 13th to catch the show in Pittsburgh. Every time we've seen them, the haven't hit the stage until at least midnight. So we thought we were good to go when we arrived at Mr. Smalls Theater at 11:00. Wrong! They were already into their encores. I don't think the crowd was very interested in the scene, however. The wife & I were able to walk right up to the stage below Rachel. We came in during "Cry On" and they then went into "The Hurt's All Gone", after which the boob next to us requested some Irma Thomas! Rachel had to explain to him that the last two songs were Irma Thomas!!

Although we were disappointed in missing most of the show, we did get a chance to talk to Rachel after the show. She was kind enough to share some interesting tidbits with us.

We were scheduled to see them again the next night in Cleveland but we got that call that my wife's father was fading. Fortunately we were able to get back in time to be with him at his time of passing.

Sorry, don't mean to be so depressing. Take a listen and you'll be rejuvenated by Rachel & Mary's spirit. You'll also understand the title of this post.

I'll be back with more posts soon. I promise.
Thanks for all the encouraging e-mails

Download it now:
White Women Have No Business Singing - The Five Irmas - NPR - 2007 - Part 1
White Women Have No Business Singing - The Five Irmas - NPR - 2007 - Part 2

Support NPR.org

Source: http://detroitcobracovers.blogspot.com/2007/11/song-white-women-have-no-business.html

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It was considered impossible. It was said to be like taking a picture of a grapefruit on the moon but with a radio telescope.

That’s how 29-year-old computer scientist Katie Bouman explained an international effort to capture an image of a black hole. She finally made history Wednesday morning after she and a team working on an Event Horizon Telescope project were able to accomplish that very goal.

“Pressing 'go' on a computer program I had written and immediately seeing a ring come into focus for the first time was amazing and exhilarating. We had prepared for years, but even so it was too easy!” she said to Newsweek. “It was an unforgettable moment.”

Bouman earned an electrical engineering degree at the University of Michigan in 2011.

Thanks to our EE alum Katie Bouman, we have our first ever look at the supermassive #BlackHole in #galaxyM87 #BlackHole #Space #Engineering @UMengineering @UMich #goblue #WomenInSpace #WomenInScience https://t.co/7DCBumRziQ via @heavysan

— EECS @ Michigan (@EECSatMI) April 10, 2019

The black hole image is an illuminating orange halo, described to be "outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon."

In a press release, researchers at the Event Horizon Telescope project explained they were able to create the image by using a network of several radio telescopes to make "a virtual telescope dish as large as the Earth itself."

It was a collaborative effort across four teams that worked independently as part of a “blind” process to ensure the image’s final validity, NPR reported. Bouman "led the creation of a new algorithm to produce the first-ever image of a black hole," MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab said Wednesday.

As she explained in a 2016 TED Talk, she isn’t an astronomer, but she contributed to the development of the algorithm. This program pieces together the black hole’s images through other pictures taken from space’s “noisy data.”

"Big projects like the Event Horizon Telescope are successful due to all the interdisciplinary expertise that different people bring to the table,” Bouman said in her 2016 TED Talk. “We're a melting pot of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians, and engineers, and this is what will make it soon possible to achieve something once thought impossible.”

Left: MIT computer scientist Katie Bouman w/stacks of hard drives of black hole image data.

Right: MIT computer scientist Margaret Hamilton w/the code she wrote that helped put a man on the moon.

(image credit @floragraham)#EHTblackhole #BlackHoleDay #BlackHole pic.twitter.com/Iv5PIc8IYd

— MIT CSAIL (@MIT_CSAIL) April 10, 2019

Bouman is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She will be joining the California Institute of Technology in June as an assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences. She received her PhD from MIT in 2017.

Bouman left her TED Talk audience with some now relevant advice.

“I’d like to encourage all of you to go out and help push the boundaries of science,” she said. “Even if it may at first seem as mysterious to you as a black hole.”