We seem to be having connectivity problems again. It’s late, and I really don’t have what it takes to sit here and negotiate with it again. Open thread, if you can get through, OK?

Two links: The worst graffiti in Detroit. I like boobs!

Death of an adjunct. Keep this in mind when you’re paying tuition.

Let’s try for better luck tomorrow.

The breaks on the local “Morning Edition” used to contain a segment where the host would interview a staffer about what was hopping on Twitter that morning. (It still may, for all I know, but I only listened to “Morning Edition” on my trips to Lansing, and I rarely go these days.) I don’t know if it had something to do with the staffer’s youthful voice or what, but this segment always chapped my ass. It had something to do with the nomenclature, maybe?

“People are talking about Flag Day a lot today,” she’d report, and my teeth would clench. “People?” Could we be just a little more specific? On the other hand, “tweeters” would be even worse, and finally, I’d think: Who fucking cares what’s trending on Twitter? The whole thing reminded me of the endless meetings throughout my newspaper career, about how we might attract younger readers. The answer was always the same: Pop music coverage! Even little Fort Wayne had a pop-music writer (for a while, anyway). It didn’t work.

I thought of that the other day when I was navigating the Free Press website, where a full-on push to video is well underway, and you can no longer get the weather forecast unless you’re willing to watch a video. This was a piece on the reaction to the new Miss America, who is of Indian descent, and whose victory was apparently objected to be some of these people. The segment, which I can’t find a day later, featured a reporter in front of a strangely minimalist backdrop, again quoting people who tweeted mean things about the new Miss A. But some people were supportive, she added, true to journalistic form. And so two minutes of my life went trickling down the drain.

This has been one of those weeks for news, when Twitter became a place to go for news, only most of it was wrong.

I’m so old — how old are you? — I’m so old that I remember one of my college classmates reporting on the standard at the Associated Press, where he was working an intern-ish first job, far away in Montana: When in doubt, leave it out. If you weren’t absolutely sure of a fact, you didn’t put it in a story.

What a concept. I’ve been told that viewers today will forgive early errors on a breaking-news story, as long as they’re promptly corrected, but speaking just as one news consumer? I’m not having it anymore. I stayed away from the coverage of the Naval Yard shooting until late in the day, hoping the facts would assert themselves within a few hours. Yesterday, I went to bed believing the gunman had wielded an AR-15 rifle and had been generally discharged from the Navy. Wrong. I guess in the future, I’ll have to wait two days.

Early in the comments yesterday, a few of you were talking about particular news events, which by general consensus are reported differently by traditional media outlets. Suicides, for one — newspapers don’t report them unless they happen in spectacular ways. If a jumper from the top deck of a parking garage lands in the middle of rush-hour traffic, for example. If the suicide is famous. A few other circumstances. But generally, we know that suicides reported in the media can encourage potential suicides into taking the step. So we don’t.

Bomb threats, for another. Bomb threats beget bomb threats, and nearly all of them are empty, so? Don’t report them.

I’m starting to think racist-tweet stories — and most stories — should go into this category, too. I know I mentioned a racist-tweet story yesterday, but I’m thinking racist tweets aren’t news. I’m thinking racist tweets — all tweets — are just a reflection of the vast and imperfect human family, and hence? Not news.

We really need to figure out how we’re going to cover these stories in the future. Breaking news is exciting, until it isn’t. Like eating potato chips. But news isn’t potato chips.

So. Let’s cut this short and get to some good bloggage:

A great interview with Linda Rondstadt in the San Francisco Chronicle. As you’ve probably heard, she can no longer sing. But she can talk, and she has a lot to say:

She stays in touch, mostly by phone, with a wide range of friends from her musical career. They include the singers Jackson Browne and Aaron Neville, songwriter Jimmy Webb and her longtime recording engineer, George Massenburg. “There’s a certain kind of intimacy that happens when you spend so much time polishing a phrase or a harmony part with someone,” she reflected, “that never goes away. I feel a special kind of kinship that’s different from my other friends, even if it doesn’t necessarily move into your daily life. They may be living somewhere else and you hardly ever see them. But you can just pick up right where you left off. It’s almost like love. No, it is love.”

I love people who are that unguarded.

Remember when Jeff said something about the Insane Clown Posse, something about how they call themselves family, and just like real family, they can do horrible things to one another? They were right. Gawker has the actual complaint. It’s awful. What white trash these creatures be.

It’s Wednesday! Halfway through the week. Enjoy it.

Another day, another mass shooting. What is there to say about this one?

NPR gave it about five or six minutes, which might have been the limit of known facts, or a strategy to distinguish itself from cable news. Can’t say. As soon as I heard the news, I sighed and decided to wait until the Home Final was delivered, so to speak. And now that it’s on the doorstep, here’s what I have learned:

Well, there’s racism. Among other things.

Sigh. Let’s skip to the bloggage; I’m very tired.

I see Betsy McCaughey is peddling the same old snake oil.

A good one from Neil Steinberg. The homeless have very 19th-century medical lives:

In her 12 years with the Night Ministry, the last line of assistance for Chicago’s impoverished, Schreiber has seen much that medical professionals rarely see: trenchfoot, frostbite, gangrene, untreated fractures, gashes that victims sutured themselves with clear tape. “These people are so marginalized, they hesitate to seek health care,” she said. “These people just suffer.”

Baby Holly’s great line in Sunday’s “Breaking Bad?” IMPROVISED. Gives me hope for our bullet-strewn future, but right now, I’m going to bed.

The Free Press did its readers a real service over the weekend. Though we might wish they’d cashiered Albom, they actually did something better, publishing a comprehensive, no-stone-unturned, no-urban-legend-unaddressed report on why, precisely, Detroit went bankrupt. It’s a fascinating document, but thousands of words long. If you’re a resident, it’s essential reading. If you’re a municipal finance nerd — a surprising number of them are out there — ditto. If you just appreciate finding answers that aren’t easy, can’t be summarized in a tweet or a few minutes on some cable-news yak show, you might also benefit from it. If there are three essential paragraphs, it’s these:

When all the numbers are crunched, one fact is crystal clear: Yes, a disaster was looming for Detroit. But there were ample opportunities when decisive action by city leaders might have fended off bankruptcy.

If Mayors Jerome Cavanagh and Roman Gribbs had cut the workforce in the 1960s and early 1970s as the population and property values dropped. If Mayor Dennis Archer hadn’t added more than 1,100 employees in the 1990s when the city was flush but still losing population. If Kilpatrick had shown more fiscal discipline and not launched a borrowing spree to cover operating expenses that continued into Mayor Dave Bing’s tenure. Over five decades, there were many ‘if only’ moments.

“Detroit got into a trap of doing a lot of borrowing for cash flow purposes and then trying to figure out how to push costs (out) as much as possible,” said Bettie Buss, a former city budget staffer who spent years analyzing city finances for the nonpartisan Citizens Research Council of Michigan. “That was the whole culture — how do we get what we want and not pay for it until tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?”

Compare it, if you read, to these two smug pinheads — one Manhattan Institute, one Wall Street Journal editorial board — discussing former mayor Coleman Young (who singlehandedly CRUSHED DETROIT) somewhere in the WSJ video studio, where evidently the standards for on-camera performance fall well short of, say, Fox News.

Finally, in one of the surest demonstrations of the value of most internet comment sections (not this one!), the very first one that appeared on this one, after I waded through thousands of words of exhaustively researched reporting? “Unions = Corruption = Democrats = Detroit. Stop O-bomb-a!”

Zing.

So. How was your weekend? Mine was pretty good. We had two 17-year-old houseguests, the son of one of my Fort Wayne friends and one of his friends. They came to town to play in a tournament of Magic, the Gathering, which is a card game so nerdy one of the boys said he’s heard tournament organizers ask players to please consider their personal hygiene before sitting down at the table. (I sliced a pungent onion for the crock pot Sunday morning, Kate made a face and he said he’d been smelling so much B.O. recently he didn’t even notice.) It was great to have teenage boys around, if for no other reason than they always clean their plates. Always. And these two made their beds, too.

Took a 20-mile bike ride. Watched “Scanners” with the boys. Made pulled pork (the onion). It was a good one.

So, bloggage?

I liked Joyce Maynard’s take on J.D. Salinger, enough that if Prospero feels like going into a towering snit about her not being fit to wipe his boots or whatever, he — or anyone else who raises this point — is welcome to kiss my nether regions. A 53-year-old who woos an 18-year-old “woman” is a creep, pure and simple.

The Ralph Lauren spring 2014 collection, via T-Lo. Blackwhiteblackwhiteblackwhite then WHOA, COLOR.

I hope a grand week awaits us all.

Haven’t done one of these for a while. It seems the only caption that applies is: The glory of everything.

It appears our connectivity has been restored, but my personal connectivity is reduced — I’m heading to Windsor for a show tonight, and so am headed out the door for that rare treat, a weeknight out with the hipsters. At least as hip as Canadians can be.

Seeing this band. Like the Black Keys, but girls. A friend of mine here in Detroit produces their rekkids. Here’s their new single.

So have some linkage: If you were thinking there’s no one in the world as annoying as Anthony Weiner, well son, you are wrong. It’s a veritable carnival of douchebags when Weiner faces…Lawrence O’Donnell.

The hearing featuring the worst Grosse Pointe husband ever produced this killer lead:

Detroit — Robert Bashara wooed an Oregon woman he hoped would join him and his girlfriend in a polygamous relationship by mailing her a T-shirt he’d worn for several days, a leather collar — and a gift certificate to the Olive Garden restaurant, according to court testimony Thursday.

What do you think constituted the sadism? The Olive Garden gift card?

Guess what I passed on my bike ride today? The Google street view car. I waved. How long before that stuff uploads?

Have a great weekend, all.

I do apologize for the performance issues we’ve had of late. It appears to be a server problem, and for once, it’s a problem out of J.C.’s capable hands. And we’re not entirely sure what’s going on. But someone is working on it. Eventually, it will be fixed. This seems fairly easy to say.

If we haven’t been giving it top priority, it’s because J.C. has been working on another project for me. I’m not supposed to make a big deal of it, but it’s in the world, so we’ll just make a lower-case deal out of it. No boldface, nothing like that:

J.C. redesigned Bridge. And that’s all we’ll say about that.

Given that our connectivity goes in and out, I’m hesitant to put much into this until the kinks are worked out. But let’s get it going and see what happens.

So. Around the beginning of 2012, we had a homicide in Grosse Pointe — a well-known and well-liked local woman was found strangled in her Mercedes, parked in an alley in Detroit. I remember well, working at home and getting the tip about the body. I called a student who was contributing to GrossePointeToday.com and asked if he could roll out on it. This is a student who has been contributing to his local paper since he was 14, and not exactly wet behind the ears. As he was heading out the door, he said, “Hmm, sounds like her husband killed her.”

And yeah, when you think about it, it’s a little strange to think that anyone bent on a carjacking would leave the car behind, after strangling the occupant.

Long story short, after a few ridiculous days of OMG DETROIT CRIME hereabouts, it turned out the woman’s husband was indeed a “person of interest,” and then a guy was arrested, who said the husband had hired him to do the deed, and even longer story even shorter, this week the husband is behind bars and a preliminary hearing is going on.

The story unfolding is of a lousy marriage, affairs, sexual kinks, financial shenanigans and all the rest of it, and in the middle of it all, I tripped over this paragraph:

Bob and Jane Bashara’s marriage was rocky and ending it had been brought up once their children were out of school, according to Monday’s testimony.

Because by all means, when your husband is into S&M (and you’re not), can’t get it up, is taking money from your 401K without your knowledge, has a mistress and a failing business, the time to get divorced is after the kids have graduated from high school.

Ultimately, tragically, the husband figured out who had the most to lose from a divorce, and opted to be a widower instead.

That might sound cruel, and I don’t want to blame this poor woman for her fate in any way. Over the years, I’ve blown hot and cold on divorce, and I know a lot of people blow very, very cold on it. Despite its easy availability, despite all the justifications we make, it’s still a tough step to take. I hear stories like this and think, sometimes you gotta take it. She was a great friend to many people, with a big life. She should still be living it, and not her stupid-ass husband in his prison clothes in court every day.

So, do I have bloggage? Let’s try:

Kerry Bentivolio, the accidental congressman, has something new to look into — “chemtrails.”

Out of all the 9/11 coverage, it seems worthwhile to dig up this Hank Stuever essay on something that had nothing to do with Islam, terror or Why They Hate Us.

And my connection is faltering again. Best publish this while I can. Is Mercury retrograde?

Kate had to read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” for her summer project in one of her AP English courses, so I’ve been paying more attention to him lately, too. I read this strange essay in the most recent New Yorker, which started out with those sort of great, Gladwellian anecdotes that drag you in. He’s talking about individual, extraordinarily gifted athletes and what makes them so — freakish genetics, mostly. One guy makes more red blood cells than any three of us put together; another guy has just the right legs, plus lives at the right altitude, for excellence in long-distance running.

And then, all of a sudden, we’re on to Floyd Landis, the cycling cheater, and I had to rub my eyes and reread a couple paragraphs, because Gladwell seemed to be making the case that performance-enhancing drugs aren’t so bad, are they? Because what do they really do? Give people who aren’t born with these remarkable genetic gifts a shot:

The other great doping pariah is Lance Armstrong. He apparently removed large quantities of his own blood and then re-infused himself before competition, in order to boost the number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells in his system. Armstrong wanted to be like Eero Mäntyranta. He wanted to match, through his own efforts, what some very lucky people already do naturally and legally. Before we condemn him, though, shouldn’t we have to come up with a good reason that one man is allowed to have lots of red blood cells and another man is not?

No. No, we don’t need to come up with that reason. Because the very nature of the human race is that some people have lots of red blood cells naturally, and others don’t. Some have long legs, others short. Ian Thorpe was a great swimmer, in part, because he had huge feet — veritable flippers. The Chinese are great gymnasts and divers, in part, because they’re smaller people than, say, Germans. This is what makes the Olympics interesting. Of course, the real reason they’re great is that they train and train and train; the genetic gifts just provide the edge (sometimes). And every so often a real outlier turns up — a swimmer with itty-bitty feet, say, or a gymnast that fills a B cup. And that’s what makes sports thrilling.

Not so hard, right? I should probably read “Outliers” and find out what other crap she’s been exposed to.

No, I probably shouldn’t. Distinguishing crap from non-crap is an essential skill.

Someone at SBNation agrees with me.

So! Today it is forecast to be an astonishing 96 degrees. Friday’s high? Sixty-one. Last chance, tomatoes. Git ‘er done.

Not much bloggage today, but Charles Pierce drove me to this Politico profile of David Barton, “evangelical historian,” which sort of sounds the origin title of a long-running series: David Barton, Evangelical Historian. The peg: Many thought he was through when, last year, he was accused of such scholarly chicanery that his own publisher disavowed his latest book, “Thomas Jefferson, True Christian!” (Something like that, anyway.)

But no:

But to his critics’ astonishment, Barton has bounced back. He has retained his popular following and his political appeal — in large part, analysts say, because he brings an air of sober-minded scholarship to the culture wars, framing the modern-day agenda of the religious right as a return to the Founding Fathers’ vision for America.

And:

In 2010, Barton helped shape new social studies standards in Texas that emphasize America’s Christian roots and question the validity of separating church and state. (He also pushed to have textbooks describe America’s values as “republican” rather than “democratic.” As he explained at the time, “We don’t pledge allegiance to the flag and the democracy for which it stands.”) He says he has advised on mainstream history textbooks used in other states as well, though he declines to give details.

Oh, I’m sure.

It’s growing late, and I have a big day tomorrow. A big, hot day. Let’s see how it goes.

When did we start saying “so, this happened” to describe, um, stuff that happened? Don’t know? Well, what does it matter? Anyway, this happened:

That was the Pooch Prance, at the Ford house, formally known as Edsel and Eleanor’s Crib on Lake St. Clair. Has there ever been grass so green, sky and water so blue, a day so fair? Don’t think so. We raised a tidy sum for the shelter pups, and Wendy met her fan club, all the ladies who took care of her before she came to us in June. We made two laps of the estate, watched the raffle and watched the people, who were more interesting than the dogs, frankly. (At one point there was an announcement that whoever left three dogs in a silver Toyota should take them out, and there was an audible gasp throughout the tent. Wrong place to pull that move, whoever did that.)

Thanks to all of you who donated to the cause. We met several dogs who had been adopted through the Michigan Anti-Cruelty Society; they do make a difference, and now so do you.

Also, this happened:

Those are members of the local Hare Krishna temple, venerating the deities. Six times a day they do this. Yes, it was the day of our annual ride to say hello and Hare Krishna to our near-neighbors. This year, we took a tour of the old Fisher mansion, where the temple is located. Quite a place, with its spectacular craftsmanship — Pewabic tile, painted leather walls, carved everything, gold leaf everything else, parquet and inlay and yadda-to-the-yadda — now augmented with paintings of Krishna and flowers and stuff. The place has hardly been lovingly cared for over the years, but the floors have nary a creak, they’re so solid.

Detroit never stops surprising you.

Bloggage:

Mitch Albom, two takes. Local, and Deadspin.

How Syria built its chemical-weapon stockpile under the world’s noses…

…with a little help via the untracked seas.

Let’s have a good week, all.

So, I figured what, roughly, we will need to cover Kate’s schooling, should she make it into the prestigious college 55 miles to the west. All in? About $25,000 a year. For a public university.

Meanwhile, though, happy news! The University of Michigan accepted an enormous gift this week – $200 million from a distinguished, and very rich, alum. The bad news: It all goes to the B-school and athletics. Which moved Laura Berman to write this column raising a few questions:

But for all the fabulousness these gifts portend, they are also exclusive, directed solely toward future moguls and managers, football players and star athletes. The $100 million athletic donation will benefit a few hundred athletes on a campus of more than 42,000 students.

No future doctors, engineers, biologists, teachers or social workers will likely be touched by Ross’ beneficence. Honors College students — the best and brightest of the liberal arts undergrads — reside at West Quad, a 1937 dormitory lacking an elevator. Professors are tucked into warren-like offices in historic buildings that have scarcely been dusted for decades.

U-M athletics and the business school are heavily endowed, but destined to be more so, even as the public funding that built most of the campus shrinks. The passions of the wealthy begin to drive university priorities and to turn students’ heads. Who will opt for the dingy school of education when the ritzy Ross-Carlton campus beckons?

You should read the comments on that story. (No you shouldn’t.) Overwhelmingly opposed. I thought it was pretty thoughtful, myself.

Of course, you don’t have to send your kid to a big football academy. But half my high school class went to Ohio State. (I went to a marching-band academy, myself.)

Meanwhile, yeah, the tuition is too damn high. Check out that pool at Purdue!

This week has taken it out of me — and it was only four days long. I think I might be anemic.

But time to rest up for the Pooch Prance. Have a great weekend, all.