Land O Links
*Two Michigan suburbs are ranked in the top 10 nationally for offering the best in the way of suburban life. Hint: One is in metro Grand Rapids and one is in metro Detroit. Click through to see if your guess was right.
UNCOVERED: Ice coverage of the Great Lakes is on a steady decline, says Michigan’s Office of Great Lakes. This satellite image shows the situation in March 2012. (courtesy photo/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)*Ice coverage on the Great Lakes in winter has decreased 71 percent in the last 40 years. That’s one of the tidbits in a presentation by Jon Allan, the new director of the Department of Environmental Quality’s Office of the Great Lakes. Also, 40 percent of Lake Superior’s outflow is due to evaporation.
*The Education Achievement Authority came under criticism from a state representative this week for its reporting of its financial details.
A Michigan Radio report on the EAA’s work in Detroit schools raises another financial angle: The entity’s heavy reliance on Teach for America graduates to lead classrooms:
*Pay close attention to the Manchin amendment votes on gun control here because they may confuse you. It shows 54 votes in the affirmative in the 100-vote Senate, yet it fell “six votes short.” That’s because the Senate, under the control of both parties, has made various supermajority requirements not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution part of the operating procedure.
This isn’t about gun control, it’s about constitutional government.
*Remember the BP oil spill? It seems so long ago that it must all be cleaned up by now, right?
“Yet even three years later, the residual effects of the oil spill are still apparent on the Gulf Coast. I covered the BP oil spill from the start, and have gone on documenting the effects of the hardest-hit areas in Louisiana and Mississippi, revisiting those areas over the last week. Below are some of the photos I have taken. Along the Mississippi coast one can still find tar balls. In Louisiana I observed, among other disturbing signs of the spill, oil sheen along a coastal marsh, and erosion on an island in Barataria Bay sped up by the death of mangrove trees and marsh grass."
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