The Titan Innovation Fund was introduced to spark innovation at UDM. It supports new, creative ideas that improve the University and student experiences by ensuring that they receive the resources and support needed to survive: https://t.co/tbLwUxkbEbpic.twitter.com/LfqM7Sup1p
We want our young people to learn how to make a living in challenges of their time. The EA Café is a student-run coffee cart operated by the Entrepreneurship Association on the McNichols Campus. Launched in 2023 as a hands-on class project, it has quickly become a popular spot offering coffee, flavored lattes, and other beverages to students, faculty, and staff. The café functions as a real-world learning laboratory. EA students manage every aspect — purchasing supplies, preparing drinks, customer service, marketing, and finances. The movable cart is typically set up in high-traffic locations such as the Engineering Building and campus events. Beyond providing convenient study fuel, the EA Café represents UDM’s strong commitment to experiential learning and student entrepreneurship.
Detroit (meaning “strait”, a narrow passage of water toward Lac Érié ) was founded in 1701 by French explorer and military officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. This was the first permanent European settlement in what is now Wayne County Southeast Michigan and one of the earliest above tidewater in North America. Before the French arrived, the area was inhabited by Native American tribes (Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and others). Relations between these tribes and the newcomers from Europe were a mix of alliances, trade, intermarriage, and violence.*
Detroit remained under French control until 1760 (when the British took it during the French and Indian War). Many French families stayed even after that. Detroit still has strong French roots — street names, family surnames, and neighborhoods like Grosse Pointe and Ecorse trace back to those early French settlers. European immigrants to Southeast Michigan — drawn by economic opportunities enabled by the American founding documents (personal responsibility, religious tolerance, limited government, fiscal conservatism) — came in waves for the better part of 150 years.
Canadians across the river (City of Windsor, and much of Southwest Ontario) trace their English origins to Yorkshire, Cumberland, Devon & Cornwall, Highland Scots and all of Ireland. Many Dutch, driven out of New York City, traveled past Detroit and settled in Kent County Western Michigan.
* Deliberately overlooked by Revisionists in the legacy US public school system: ancestral violence among the Native American tribes themselves. Cadillac invited multiple tribes in the Southeast Michigan and Ohio region to settle near Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit for protection against Iroquois invaders from Western New York.
Families Cannot Stand the Gorilla Grip the Democratic Party (Rashida Talib & Shri Thanedar & Debbie Dingell) Has on Southeast Michigan So They Have Fled To The Suburbs
St. Catherine of Siena Academy | Oakland County Michigan
Michigan Technological University helps sustain Finnish culture in the Upper Peninsula despite Finlandia University’s 2023 closure. Located just across the Portage Waterway from Hancock’s former Finlandia campus, Michigan Tech has long been intertwined with the region’s deep Finnish heritage from 19th- and early 20th-century copper mining immigrants.
Michigan Tech accepted teach-out agreements, allowing Finlandia students to complete degrees while maintaining credits and similar tuition costs. It also gained custodianship of Finlandia’s academic records and transcripts.
The university embeds Finnish influences through its location in a historically Finnish-American community. Its archives and library resources document Finnish immigration, labor history, and ethnic identity in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Campus life reflects local traditions, including sauna culture—a hallmark of Finnish identity—that Michigan Tech students and the broader community embrace.
While the Finlandia Foundation National now stewards key assets like the Finnish American Heritage Center, archives, Folk School, and events, Michigan Tech’s proximity, student integration, research, and community role ensure ongoing educational and cultural continuity for Finnish-American traditions in Michigan.
In an era of pronounced Democratic dominance in U.S. academia—where faculty political affiliations skew heavily left—John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” occupies a revealing position. Republicans continue to champion the 1896 march unreservedly as vibrant proof of American exceptionalism, military heritage, and cultural confidence, hearing in its brass and piccolo the triumphant spirit of national unity.
Democrats, shaped by academic environments that often frame traditional patriotism as bordering on nationalism or cultural hegemony, tend toward a more qualified appreciation. Many academics contextualize the piece historically as a product of Gilded Age optimism or imperial-era bravado, emphasizing its role in constructing identity rather than celebrating it outright. While still performed at public events, the march may be taught with deconstructive lenses—highlighting how such symbols can marginalize dissenting voices or overlook America’s complexities—reflecting broader campus skepticism toward uncritical flag-waving.
University of Michigan leadership shows a strong Democratic tilt, consistent with broader patterns in U.S. higher education, and reflected in donations toward anything that moves like a Democrat in the ~95% range. International students easily pick up on this bias.
Yet the music’s infectious energy resists full domestication. Even within left-leaning institutions, its enduring popularity at commencements and civic rites reveals a persistent, cross-partisan pull. Sousa’s masterpiece thus highlights academia’s influence: Democrats may intellectualize its patriotism, yet the piece quietly affirms a shared American heartbeat that theory struggles to silence. Amidst the widely diagnosed “Trump Derangement Syndrome” this Sousa magnum opus holds forth on a small sport of cultural common ground.
The 1943 American bombing of the hydrogen plant at Rjukan Norway — so that the Germans could not make a heavy water hydrogen bomb — resembles the 2026 American bombing of Operation Epic Fury. Inspired by Norwegian family immigration to the shores of Lake Michigan we collect stories of those families fleeing the economic hardship of their homeland before the discovery of North Sea oil.
In the late 1960s, the discovery of massive North Sea oil reserves transformed Norway from a modest fishing, shipping, and hydroelectric economy into one of the world’s richest nations. Oil revenues funded an expansive welfare state and created the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. This “outsized good fortune” should temper any sense of moral or cultural superiority some Norwegians express toward America. Striking oil is no guarantee of success — see Venezuela or Nigeria. Norway also benefited from American technology, open markets, and capital.
The United States further provided critical security: liberating Norway in WWII and leading NATO during the Cold War, allowing Norway to focus on welfare rather than heavy defense. No student debt! Arrogance ignores contingency. Norway’s success rests on oil rents, a small homogeneous population, high trust, and luck — not inherent superiority. America’s innovations and security role helped create the global order that enabled such fortunes in Norway specifically and Western Europe generally. Recall the American role in the destruction of the German heavy water refinement plants in November 1943 (The Heroes of Telemark) which bears an uncanny resemblance to the present USA Operation Epic Fury in Iran.
Gratitude and humility suit these discussions better than condescension.
The command issued by the character Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the television series “Star Trek: The Next Generation” finds its way into the archive of photographs of Nobel Laureates consorting with politicians at the University of Michigan and elsewhere.
Attendees of the Theoretical Physics Colloquium at the University of Michigan in 1929.
…”There’s not good math explaining forget the physics of it. Math explaining the behavior of complex systems yeah and that to me is both exciting and paralyzing like we’re at very early days of understanding you know how complicated and fascinating things emerge from simple rules…” — Peter Woit [1:16:00]
Since 1936 the Brown Jug has been the ancestral trough of generations of University of Michigan students and faculty — notably. Donald Glaser (inventor of the bubble chamber) and Samuel C. C. Ting (Nobel Laureate) whose offices at Randall Laboratory were a 2-minute walk around the corner from The Brown Jug. As the lore goes, the inspiration happened whilst watching beer bubbles one ordinary TGIF Friday.
Overdoor, France, ca. 1825; | Smithsonian Design Museum
Education communities have significant food safety responsibilities. Risk gets pushed around global food service counterparties; a drama in itself and one that requires coverage in a separate blog post.*
Since 2013 we have been following the development of food safety standards; among them ANSI/NSF 2: Food Equipment one of a constellation of NSF food safety titles whose provisions cover bakery, cafeteria, kitchen, and pantry units and other food handling and processing equipment such as tables and components, counters, hoods, shelves, and sinks. The purpose of this Standard is to establish minimum food protection and sanitation requirements for the materials, design, fabrication, construction, and performance of food handling and processing equipment.
It is a relatively stable standard; developed to support conformance revenue for products. A new landing page seems to have emerged in recent months:
Manufacturers are required to meet the NEC and CEC electrical codes to have their food equipment sold and used in the United States and Canada. Watch our video for more details. pic.twitter.com/d0vUf4zUl2
Not trivial agendas with concepts that cut across several disciplines involving product manufacture, installation, operation and maintenance. We find a very strong influence of organizations such as Aramark and Sodexo. More on that in a separate post.
This committee – along with several other joint committees –meets frequently online. If you wish to participate, and receive access to documents that explain the scope and scale of NSF food safety standards, please contact Allan Rose, (734) 827-3817, arose@nsf.org. NSF International welcomes guests/observers to nearly all of its standards-setting technical committees. We expect another online meeting hosted by this committee any day now.
Keep in mind that all NSF International titles are on the standing agenda of our Nourriture (Food) colloquia; open to everyone. See our CALENDAR for the next meeting.
Today, February 23, 2026, marks the start of Cornish Pasty Week in the UK — an annual celebration of the iconic Cornish pasty, Cornwall’s most famous traditional food.
This year’s event runs from February 23 to March 1, 2026, organized by the Cornish Pasty Association. It highlights the protected status of the genuine Cornish pasty (which must be made in Cornwall to traditional recipes: beef, potato, swede/rutabaga, onion, and seasoning in shortcrust pastry, hand-crimped) and encourages pasty makers, bakeries, and sellers across Cornwall (and beyond) to promote it.
Key highlights happening right now:
It’s kicking off with promotions, special offers, and events at local bakeries and shops.
The week builds excitement toward the Global Pasty Championships on Saturday, February 28, at the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. This competition brings together bakers for a chance at a “global title,” featuring pasty-making, music, and Cornish pride — it’s positioned as a big finale to the week, just before St Piran’s Day (Cornwall’s patron saint day on March 5).
Pasties are being celebrated as a cultural staple, with mentions of fundraising (the event has raised over £35,000 in past years for school cooking programs in Cornwall).
Social media and news outlets are buzzing about it — BBC Cornwall shared a fun post calling it “any excuse for an oggy” (a common nickname for a pasty), and butchers/bakeries are posting their versions and specials.
It’s a lighthearted, food-focused week emphasizing tradition, community, and enjoying (or baking) these hearty handheld pies. If you’re in the UK, especially Cornwall, look out for local deals or events — or just grab a proper one to join in! No major controversies or breaking scandals today; it’s all positive vibes around this beloved British classic.
HP Critical Facilities Services | Bethesda, Maryland
Mark Beirne
DLB Associates | Chicago, Illinois
Abstract. The key feature of this article is the application of quantitative method for evaluating risk and conveying the results into a power system design that is scaled according to hazards present in any given emergency management district. These methods employ classical lumped parameter modeling of power chain architectures and can be applied to any type of critical facility, whether it is a stand-alone structure, or a portion of stand-alone structure, such as a police station or government center. This article will provide a risk assessment roadmap for one of the most common critical facilities that should be designated as COPS per NEC 708-a 911 call center. The existing methods of reliability engineering will be used in the risk assessment.
* Robert Schuerger is the lead author on this paper
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T