Calendar

Trinity College / Toronto

Aperiodic walk-through of code and standards revisions that are incorporated by reference in state and local regulations, into education facility design guidelines and construction contracts.  Use the login credentials at the top right of our home page.

https://standardsmichigan.com/design-guidelines-construction-specifications/

“He who does not speak foreign languages
knows nothing about his own.“

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The Tower of Babel” 1563 / Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Here’s a rough breakdown of the top languages on the web:

English: 55.4% – Russian: 6.6% – Japanese: 5.4% – Spanish: 5.2% – Chinese: 4.6%

One of the most contentious aspects of best practice discovery and promulgation in any domain, and no less so in educational settlements, is an agreed-upon vocabulary and shared understanding.  As we explain elsewhere in this history, when a counter-party disagrees with you, he simply switches out the vocabulary — i.e. changes definitions or adds or subtracts from the traditional meanings of things.  So we approach this topic several times a year to confirm our bearing on the meaning of things.

Attention Is All You Need | Ashish Vaswani, et. al

We begin 2025 by breaking down this topic into four sections

Language 100: Survey of vocabulary in the standards catalogs relevant to building and managing education settlement real assets; including legal terms.

Language 200: Electrotechnology standard catalogs; including computer programming languages.

Language 300: The English as the language of science and innovation; the birthplace of computing and programming, the internet’s native tongue, standardization & open source development; etc.

Language 400: Reserved

Just learned that a group of flamingos is called a flamboyance and suddenly the world seems a little brighter. pic.twitter.com/REdU2lpF26

— Dr. Catharine Young (@DrCatharineY) November 16, 2025

We observe National Poetry Month in the United States and Canada every year with an inquiry into changes in the (meaning of) definitions at the foundation of best practice literature; frequently the subject of sporty debate among experts writing codes and standards for the built environment of education communities.

In the United Kingdom, National Poetry Month is celebrated in October, and it is known as “National Poetry Day” which has been observed since 1994. It is an initiative of the Forward Arts Foundation, which aims to encourage people to read, write and perform poetry.

Other countries also have their own poetry celebrations, such as World Poetry Day, which is observed annually on March 21 by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to promote the reading, writing, and teaching of poetry worldwide.

In past years we used a Tamil mnemonic because Tamil is the oldest surviving language and remains the spoken language of 80-odd million people of South Asia.  Alas, use of Tamil confounds our Wordpress content management system so in 2024 we began coding this topic in American English

https://youtube.com/shorts/iEhbwbUTukE?si=bUQHwT14GbxNL_5b

https://standardsmichigan.com/%e0%ae%ae%e0%af%8a%e0%ae%b4%e0%ae%bf-2/

Latin Phrases You Should Know. pic.twitter.com/Erq61gVW29

— Learn Latin (@latinedisce) May 5, 2024

Once median household income is adjusted for cost of living, Utah emerges as the wealthiest state in the nation and Mississippi yet again ranks last. Source: https://t.co/AN3JZqtNnF pic.twitter.com/kv8U3LZlvh

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) January 3, 2025

https://standardsmichigan.com/hegemon-ohio-county-dublin/

https://standardsmichigan.com/hegemon-fairfield-county/

https://standardsmichigan.com/hegemon-rueil-malmaison/

“Composition in red, yellow, blue and black” (1921) | Piet Mondrian

Status check on open source consensus titles evolving around distributed ledger technologies for financing, planning, design, operation & maintenance of the #WiseCampus.  print(“Wise Campus”).

The rapid growth of AI training and inference drives hyperbolic demand for data center capacity, creating a classic boom-bust dilemma on large university campuses.

Overbuild: Universities rushing to construct hyperscale or AI-focused data centers risk massive stranded capital if AI progress slows, federal funding dries up, or cheaper cloud alternatives dominate. These facilities require enormous power (often 100–500+ MW), water cooling, and land—resources that could lock campuses into 20–30-year commitments while diverting funds from core academic missions. Critics fear a repeat of the 1990s fiber-optic glut, leaving half-empty “ghost” buildings.

Underbuild: Failing to invest sufficiently risks losing top AI faculty and students to better-equipped peers (Stanford, MIT, CMU), forfeiting federal grants (e.g., NSF, CHIPS Act), and diminishing national competitiveness. In a winner-take-all AI race, campuses without GPU clusters and high-performance networking quickly fall behind in recruiting and research output.

Universities are thus caught between fear of wasteful mega-projects and fear of irrelevance.

https://standardsmichigan.com/rellis-data-and-research-center/

“Washington money” 2012 Robert Silvers

Today we pick through a few tax-free bond offerings that finance education community construction with a eye toward reducing construction cost and life-cycle maintenance through building codes and standards.   Use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.

https://standardsmichigan.com/tax-free-bonds/

Once median household income is adjusted for cost of living, Utah emerges as the wealthiest state in the nation and Mississippi yet again ranks last. Source: https://t.co/AN3JZqtNnF pic.twitter.com/kv8U3LZlvh

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) January 3, 2025

Plenums (Above Suspended Ceilings)

https://standardsmichigan.com/beaujolais-nouveau/

Université de Bourgogne | Bourgogne-Franche-Comté

Reflection on the degree to which large research universities are Non-Government Organizations (Quangos, in the United Kingdom) or Hedge Funds with a side operation in education.

“Mack the Knife” (original German title: “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer”) seems like a jaunty swing tune, especially in Louis Armstrong’s or Bobby Darin’s famous versions, but its lyrics are actually about a charming, elegant, and utterly ruthless gangster/criminal named Macheath (“Mack the Knife”) from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s 1928 play The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper).

This popular jazz standard disguises the cynical statement about how money, greed, corruption, robbery, and murder are intertwined — and how the biggest crooks wear suits and are celebrated instead of punished. 

Overview of codes and standards relevant to the food service enterprises in K-12 schools, college and university student housing, athletic venues and university-affiliated healthcare systems.

https://standardsmichigan.com/food-standards-monthly/

ANSI Accredited Standards Development Organization based in St. Joseph County Michigan

Publications & Standards

Students! It’s not too soon to start working on your submissions for the AIM student oral/poster presentation competition! The deadline is Jan. 18. https://t.co/qULe6eUq1P pic.twitter.com/1I2k24fxFd

— ASABE.org (@ASABEorg) November 18, 2025

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The 2026 AIM Sponsorship Guide is here! Partner with ASABE to showcase your company at the world’s premier gathering of agricultural and biological engineers. From technical communities to student competitions and event hosting, we’ll help you. https://t.co/u3auHpVNJB pic.twitter.com/611gVxsS9T

— ASABE.org (@ASABEorg) November 13, 2025

Harvard Schedule

The Game is Back at Harvard Stadium!