While we enjoy a spring afternoon, Mt. Everest expedition teams are sleeping somewhere near or on the mountain. Depending on the approach they staked their tents in Tibet or Nepal.

Keep on top of the latest Everest expedition news: MountEverest.net

Elevations
Ann Arbor: 256 m (840 ft) What's the highest point in Ann Arbor?
Nepal-side base camp: 5,380 m (17,700 ft)
Tibet-side base camp: 5,180 m (16,990 ft)
Mt. Everest peak: 8,844.43 m ± 0.21 m (29,017.16 ± 0.69 ft)

Everest books:
1996 climb
2006 climb

Everest DVDs:
1996 climb
Everest: beyond the limit

I know virtually nothing about college basketball, but apparently MSU has a fighting chance of becoming the national college basketball champ. Suddenly, I’m a fair-weather MSU fan. Looks like I’ll have to wait my turn for When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball, by Seth Davis, which recounts the season leading to the March 1979 NCAA finals, in which MSU’s Magic Johnson squared off against ISU's Larry Bird. Sounds like a good history of the NCAA basketball tournament.

With the Ann Arbor News closing in July, many people are talking about the future of journalism here and across the country. Already the new venture, Ann Arbor.com, has set up community meetings in April, asking readers to help shape their upcoming product, which will include daily reporting on the web and a bi-weekly print edition. In this environment, we all may want to check out books such as What Would Google Do? with cutting-edge ideas on information technology management, journalism, and creativity in business.

Pheonix Lander Strut

This photo shows something that beads up like water on the supporting leg of the Phoenix Mars Lander. The University of Michigan Astronomy and Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences professor Dr. Nilton Renno is a co-investigator on the Phoenix Mission. Dr. Renno et al. submitted "Physical and Thermodynamical Evidence for Liquid Water on Mars" to the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Read more about the bat space program.

Other related materials:
Mars : a warmer, wetter planet
Roving Mars DVD
Aqua. (Teen Graphic Novel) Vol. 1

A Michigan “speeding ticket campaign” is a hoax, maybe even an urban legend. Check your e-mail for this: "Beware all you lead foots!!! Spring is Coming! . . . and so is Operation Yellow Jacket. Look out for MI-DOT trucks parked along the road or suddenly appearing behind you pacing you - it could be a Trooper driving the truck. Called 'Operation Yellow Jacket', each Michigan State Police District has a truck cleaned up and ready to go! These trucks have specially modified engines that can virtually catapult the truck from snow-plow speed to intercept speed in seconds. And when the engine boost kicks in, the warning lights automatically change from flashing yellow to the dreaded red and blue! . . . “

Obama

Street artist Shepard Fairey who created the famous Hope image of Barack Obama sued The Associated Press, claiming his use of an AP photo in creating the poster did not violate copyright law, because he has dramatically changed the nature of the image and therefore, is protected under the so-called "Fair Use" provisions.

The AP said it is owed credit and compensation for the artist's rendition of the original photo taken by Mannie Garcia who was on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club. (Read the whole story).

Just today, Mannie Garcia discussed on NPR his own legal battle with the AP, claiming the photo was taken while he was working as a freelance photojournalist.

Maybe reading Elizabeth T. Russell’s Art Law Conversations : a surprisingly readable guide for visual artists (2005) might help clear up the muddle? But I doubt it.

BTW...signed originals of both the Hope poster and the Garcia photo have been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.

babychimp

Last night, I spent entirely too long catching up on all the news that I'd missed this week. The story that grabbed my attention--and it did get to the point where I obsessively searched for articles long after I should have been asleep--was the chimp attack in Connecticut.

World lost one of Africa's greatest singer and true fighter against human rights. Haven gained another messenger of peace and an ambassadress of jazz music.
The legendary South African singer Miriam Makeba died early Monday 11/09/08 of a heart attack, after collapsing on stage Sunday night in Italy. She was 76 years old and well known as “mama Africa”. Her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all South Africans during the time of apartheid. In her amazingly impressive career and glorious achievement, "Makeba performed with musical legends from around the world — jazz maestros Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon — and sang for world leaders such as John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela". Her sudden death “plunged South Africa into shock and mourning”. Here is Makeba's Biography, Discography and additional References God bless her soul, rest in peace!

Pulp Tree

So when you bring the green indoors this winter the plants may say "thank you".

Maybe you heard about Midori the blogging houseplant. Midori lives in Donburi Cafe in Kamakura Japan.

Just as plants are finding a voice in Japan the government of Switzerland has placed a ban on the humiliation of plants.

Read about the botanical interface that makes plant blogging possible and check out a product that will help you listen to your own plant.

Interested in this topic, check out these books: Plantwatching: how plants remember, tell time, form partnerships, and more / Malcolm Wilkins and Natural affairs: a botanist looks at the attachments between plants and people / Peter Bernhardt

I think the book I spotted being sold as we finished the Labor Day Mackinac Bridge Walk was Mighty Mac: The Official Picture History of the Mackinac Bridge. But I’m not sure. We were tired, and thousands of people were streaming over the bridge behind us from St. Ignace to Mackinac City. Earlier the governor had jogged over across the five-mile-long span, the Detroit Free Press reported. Very impressive. The walk left me wanting to read the children‘s book Mackinac Bridge: the story of the five-mile poem by Gloria Whelan illustrated by Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen.