Offbeat

There's no way to catch everything that Michigan Radio airs during the week.

Here are some highlights from this week's shows, in case you missed them!

“The Fed: Policy and Transparency”

On Wednesday, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke held the first news conference in the Fed’s 98-year history.

On Thursday, Diane Rehm spoke to a panel about the conference’s contents, its historical significance, and the effectiveness of the Fed’s recent economic policy decisions.

All this year, Michigan Radio has been taking a weekly look at things that are working to improve the state. Today: we take a look at food and Detroit. The city has been called a “food desert,” because of its lack of grocery stores. One group has been trying to change that. Sarah Fleming is the program manager of the Green Grocer Project. It was launched a year ago by the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, and we asked her how it's going.

Free wine and beer samples may soon be regular features at Michigan grocery stores. A law passed last November allows businesses already licensed to sell wine and beer for take-out to apply for an additional license to distribute free samples. This includes supermarkets and party stores.

flash mob - n - a group of people who organize on the Internet and then quickly assemble in a public place, do something bizarre, and disperse; also called inexplicable mob

Cindy Heflin at AnnArbor.com spotted this one - a "flash mob" performance on the University of Michigan's Diag:

The performance was coordinated by students and sponsored by online graduation announcement company GoEnnounce.com.

About 70 students danced to Rusted Roots' "Send me on my way," GoEnnounce said in an e-mail...The performance was choreographed by Erik Heitz, a musical theater major.

Hard to say whether 70 dancers constitutes a "mob" - which according to Websters is a crowd "bent on riotous or destructive action."

Seems more like a "flash dance" to me, but that name's been taken.

Gun rights advocates will gather at a Detroit restaurant Monday night for an “open carry” dinner.

Organizer Rick Ector runs Rick’s Firearm Academy in Detroit and the blog Legally Armed in Detroit.

Ector says the dinner is a “family-oriented” event meant to make “law-abiding” Detroiters aware of their right to openly carry guns in many public places.

“There’s a significant percentage of people that do open carry in Detroit. But primarily when you hear about open carry, it’s done outside of the city limits. And for those individuals who are really specifically inside of Detroit proper, I wanted to be the voice out there sharing this information.”

Michigan law doesn’t explicitly permit open carry, but doesn’t forbid it either. Those carrying openly must have a registered weapon “clearly displayed,” be at least 18 years old, and stay out of designated “pistol-free zones.”

The Bluepointe restaurant on Detroit’s east side is hosting the dinner, which Ector says he initially thought would draw about 50 people.

But he says the event has gotten so much attention he now has “no idea how many people will show up.”

Don't have the phone number? Just Google it.

That modern day phenomenon led callers seeking information from the Internal Revenue Service to accidentally dial a small airport in Sturgis, Michigan.

The FAA airport code for Kirsch Municipal Airport in Sturgis is "IRS."

If you type in a search for IRS on Google Maps, you'll get the airport's phone number.

Andrian Chen wrote about the mix-up on Gawker.com:

"The phone calls started two months ago, and it was just a trickle at first. Since then it's grown to a deluge of "20 to 50 calls a day" from people with tax questions, according to a weary-sounding office manager named Becky who took the time to talk to us this afternoon...

The calls haven't been a huge issue, Becky says, but she's getting sick of them. "It's just irritating," she said. "Most of them calling aren't the most intelligent, calling us at 7pm on the weekends. And it's like, do you seriously think the IRS is going to answer their phone at 7 on a Sunday?"

Becky will be glad when tax day ends at midnight tonight.

She may, or may not know, that if you need to file an extension, form 4868 is the paperwork you seek.

Here's our wrap-up of great stories and shows you may have missed this week on Michigan Radio.

Diane Rehm had a great show on Tuesday on "Slashing the Federal Budget."

The show covered Paul Ryan's 2012 budget proposal as well as addressing some of the issues surrounding federal budgets issues that have lead to an imminent government shutdown.

For more coverage of the government shutdown, check out the "Domestic News Roundup" from Diane Rehm's Friday show as well as Laura Weber's coverage of Governor Snyder's comments about the effects of a potential shutdown on Michigan. 

Over at WHYY's Fresh Air, Terry Gross talked with David Dow (original airdate 2/8/10), a texas attorney who has defended death row inmates for over two decades.

Dow's comments about the failures and triumphs of the criminal justice system, and his thoughts on the nature of evil, are definite highlights.

Dow's book, Autobiography of an Execution, has been released in paperback.

-Brian Short, Michigan Radio Newsroom

A Michigan man was told he could wait five years for a kidney transplant that matched his blood type.

But then he found one on Facebook.

ABC News reports: