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August 2011

	09/01/11 Power Outages and the Future of the Electric Grid Chicago's summer storms and Hurricane Irene have focused the kind of attention on power outages that you don't get when it's in the boonies. But it's not just you, or the weather: power outages are on the rise. Posted at 3:53 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/31/11 Chicago's 'Kind of Broken' 911 System: Why? The top cop turns heads with a statement that CPD officers sometimes cannot respond to shots-fired 911 calls because they are "tied up on a lower-level priority." But it's an old problem that ties into the city's somewhat inexplicable method of 911 response. Posted at 2:54 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/31/11 Fermilab Scientist Fixes Airline Boarding Dr. Jason Steffens, a postdoc at the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics, develops an efficient method for boarding a plane, and finds that the block-boarding method has serious flaws. Posted at 12:09 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/30/11 Adam Dunn Rises to the Top of Another Dubious Leaderboard Adam Dunn has had the worst season by any player in the past two decades, and the ninth-worst in the past 50 years. But he has provided us with some interesting statistics to enliven an otherwise-boring baseball season. Posted at 5:24 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/30/11 TIFs, Reforms, and Structural Deficits Is Chicago ready for TIF reform? Perhaps it's ready for some reasonable changes to the internal workings of the special taxing scheme, but who knows about the future of the city's structural tax and budget problems. Posted at 2:35 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/30/11 The Chicago Pedigree of My New Schwinn A bike nerd post about stumbling on an obscure piece of local bike manufacturing history: the fillet-brazed lightweight Schwinn. Posted at 1:09 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/30/11 The Playboy Club and the 'Mad Men' Fetish I can't get away from dudes lining up to look like Don Draper, the man women want and men want to be, despite the fact that he's a self-loathing jerk. Or maybe I'm just jealous that I'm not being target-marketed to. Posted at 11:54 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/29/11 Mayor Emanuel Talks (A Little Bit) About TIFs The mayor's Tax Increment Financing Task Force issues its final report just before the new mayor holds two budget townhalls. There's actually some straight talk in it, but no calls for radical change. Posted at 5:19 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/26/11 The Extraordinary Chicago Railroad Photography of Jack Delano One of the overlooked masters of the government's FSA/OWI program is Jack Delano, who captured a pivotal moment in industrial Chicago at the height of World War II. Posted at 4:52 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/26/11 Chicago Dancing Festival: The Really, Really Good Kind of Dance A free performance at Millennium Park Saturday is probably your best opportunity this year to see rock-star performances, from the New York City Ballet, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and others. Posted at 11:30 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/25/11 The Illinois Tollway Rate Hike: Ripping the Band-Aid Off Hurts An 88 percent hike in tollway fares opens up the inevitable frustration. If these sorts of fares rose with inflation like most other things we pay for, politicians could rest a little easier. Posted at 5:29 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/25/11 Mike Daisey to Talk Steve Jobs With Chris Hayes The author, monologuist, and former Apple fanboy has an increasingly complicated relationship with his technology, and should provide an interesting reflection on the great entrepreneur's resignation. Posted at 2:54 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/25/11 The Ex-Con-Tended Bees of O'Hare Airport A honey company and the North Lawndale Employment Network put ex-offenders to work as beekeepers in the shadow of O'Hare. Posted at 11:30 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/24/11 Sonic, Chick-fil-A, and the Chain Cultists News that Sonic Drive-In might come to Uptown brings back memories of a life spent in fast-food joints and regional chain restaurants. Posted at 6:54 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/24/11 Caterpillar, GE, and Groupon in China Three companies go to the world's biggest developing market... and it's the new kid that learns the hardest lesson. What it means for the new economy, and the new old economy. Posted at 1:41 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/23/11 Classical Music Gig Poster Design: Finally the World Listens to Me Small steps towards saving classical music: booze, cheap tickets, diverse programs, and poster design. Thanks, Spektral Quartet. Posted at 4:04 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/23/11 DC Earthquake? NYC Earthquake? Both, Really Much of the East Coast just took a hit from a 5.9-magnitude earthquake near Washington, DC, centered between Charlottesville and Richmond. Here's why it was felt not just in the nation's capital, but in New York City as well. Plus: why the East Coast's less frequent, less intense earthquakes affect the region more than on the West Coast. Posted at 1:29 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/23/11 Why Millennials Don't Know How to Use Google A recent study conducted in Illinois colleges finds the usual: students don't know how to research stuff. Only now, they don't know how to research stuff using Google. They were just born too late. Posted at 11:56 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (3)
	08/22/11 More Reasons Walmart Is Moving into Chicago As America goes, so goes Walmart: as the economy contracts, the big-box retailer is creating ever smaller boxes to fit our shrinking incomes into. Posted at 5:48 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/22/11 Eighth Blackbird Plays Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" and "Double Sextet" The great Chicago new-music group performs a piece they commissioned from the 70-year-old composer, plus his classic "Music for 18 Musicians," in a free Millennium Park concert. Posted at 3:15 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/19/11 The Next Cubs GM: Why Not Kim Ng? Starting as a White Sox intern out of the University of Chicago, Kim Ng became the youngest assistant GM in baseball history, and most recently spent nine years with the Los Angeles Dodgers before moving to the commissioner's office. Her name regularly comes up when a GM job opens. Could she be a good fit for the Cubs? Posted at 12:24 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/19/11 Jim Hendry Out as Cubs GM The Cubs' embattled general manager gets cut, just a few days after reports that his job with the team was safe. Did his inaction at the trade deadline do him in? And is Sam Zell to blame? [Update: Hendry knew for almost a month before today.] Posted at 10:37 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/18/11 Sears Layoffs, Losses, and the Kardashian Kollection Sears passes through another rough quarter, with store closings, layoffs, revenue drain, and more corporate turnover. Is it a brand that's lost its identity, or did its customer base lose its identity? Posted at 5:34 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (4)
	08/18/11 Chicago Is Curious, Orange: In Timelapse and From Space A timelapse video captures the nighttime beauty of the Chicago grid going west into the distance, and an astronaut shows us a storm heading towards Chicago. Posted at 3:55 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/18/11 One of Chicago's Wooden Alleys Gets Restored A last remnant of old Chicago, having served the Gold Coast for over a century, is in the process of being remade. Hopefully it will last longer than the two years that some of the Brown Line's planking gave us. Posted at 2:44 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/18/11 The Triple Double Oreo and the U.S. as International Market The Oreo equivalent of the Big Mac is actually an Argentinian cookie coming back to us here in the states, as Kraft's growing international market works both ways. Posted at 2:06 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	08/18/11 The Air and Water Show Screams into Chicago If it sounds like an air raid downtown, it's that time of year again, a magic weekend when the blood pressure of every downtown office worker spikes. Posted at 12:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/18/11 Milton Friedman's Grandson to Build Floating Libertarian Nation How the political ideals of the most influential economist of his generation became a movement for free-floating man-made island nations in the hands of his grandson, director of the Seasteading Institute. Posted at 11:48 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (5)
	08/17/11 Today in Chicago Transportation Ideas: Bus Rapid Transit and an Apps Contest The Metropolitan Planning Council suggests a much more ambitious (and expensive) version of ultra-express buses than the CTA plans to roll out in the next couple years. Plus: a chance to build, or at least judge, computer apps for Chicagoans. Posted at 4:45 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/17/11 Education: How Much You Panic About Illinois ACT Scores Depends On How You Frame the Numbers Are three-quarters of Illinois high-school graduates not "college ready"? If by "college-ready" you mean "even odds that they'll get a D in at least one class freshman year," then yes. Posted at 2:38 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/16/11 The Indiana State Fair Stage Collapse: Why Regulations and Meteorology Matter The Weather Channel offers a blistering defense of God from Gov. Mitch Daniels, and the Indianapolis Star delves into how scaffolding regulated... and how it isn't. Posted at 6:58 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/16/11 Sara Lee vs Oscar Meyer: 10 Poetically Banal Statements from the Hot Dog Lawsuit The fight between two encased-meat giants concerns, quite simply, how we perceive reality and truth, and whether it's best described as "100% beef" or "100% beeflicious." Posted at 2:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/16/11 Did Joe Biden Compare Republicans to Terrorists? And Does it Matter? The president gets cornered by a Tea Party activist, and Joe Biden's alleged remarks are news once again. Fortunately, there's better rhetoric that both parties seem to agree on. Posted at 11:50 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/15/11 Is Sports Architecture in Decline? New York City goes zero for three in its newest arenas. But Midwestern sports architecture provides hope for the future... and in Chicago, you can see its storied past, where it all went wrong, and where it started to improve. Posted at 5:54 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/15/11 Why Did Google Buy Motorola Mobility? Google picks up the Libertyville-based company for $12.5 billion in cash. The main reason has a lot to do with increasingly aggressive patent warfare between the nation's biggest tech companies—a legal bulwark, in short. But the purchase may have implications for your cable box, as well. Posted at 2:38 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	08/12/11 PTSD and Violence, Abroad and At Home From "The Interrupters" to adverse childhood experiences: CeaseFire is just one of the approaches to violence that's an attempt to move the discussion into the field of public health. Posted at 4:25 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/11/11 The Kingdom Tower: Skyscraper for the Next Financial Collapse? Chicago's fingerprints are all over the world's tallest building, scheduled to completed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2017. Here's hoping it doesn't portend another financial disaster. Posted at 6:02 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/11/11 Da Mare on Da Stand? Daley and the Burge Case Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer rules that Richard M. Daley can be the subject of a civil lawsuit on the basis of his role—as mayor—in the Burge scandal. It might lead to a deposition... but the opening for anything more is very narrow. Posted at 3:34 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/10/11 CM Punk, Bruce Mau, and Other Good Chicago Things A straight-edge Chicago wrestler grapples with kayfabe; Bruce Mau tackles the empire; Roger Ebert reviews "The Interrupters"; grain elevators and constitutional law; and more Posted at 5:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/10/11 Five Great Reads by Alex Kotlowitz Chicagomag.com's first writer-in-residence on race, Vivian Meier, stick-up men, exchanging letters with his father, and more. Posted at 3:40 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/10/11 Wisconsin Recall Postmortems: GOP Retains Majority, Someone Or Another Wins Who won Wisconsin last night? The GOP retained four of six seats, meaning... no one's really sure. Tune in next week for the Democratic recalls! And perhaps next year, for Gov. Scott Walker himself. Posted at 1:55 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/10/11 Restaurant Tip Inflation: the 20 Percent Solution? One of the most prominent restaurant critics in the country insists that you tip 20 percent at all times, which comes as a shock to some. When did 20 percent become expected? Earlier, it seems, than I thought. Posted at 1:06 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (15)
	08/09/11 Soak 'Em If You Got 'Em: Pot Ticketing as Revenue Stream? Recent comments suggest that Chicago's top cop could be amenable to softening the city's approach to policing low-level possession. It would also be another bad-behavior-based revenue stream, which are becoming an increasing part of the city's shaky finances. Posted at 5:33 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/09/11 Wisconsin Recall Roundup: All Eyes on Cheeseheads Racing Sausages for Recall; presidential-size turnouts; gubernatorial-level campaign money; and total unpredictability. Our neighbors to the north live in much more interesting times. Posted at 4:23 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/09/11 Alex Kotlowitz and Our Upcoming Blog, 'Off the Grid' Chicagomag.com on Friday will launch a blog called Off the Grid: Dispatches from Chicago’s Writers-in-Residence. Every so often, we plan to feature a new writer who will post about topics of his or her choosing—anything from personal essays to reported pieces. The only requirement is that the stories be about Chicago and its people. We’re thrilled, then, to introduce our inaugural writer-in-residence, Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and... Posted at 3:31 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/09/11 Mayor Emanuel, Property Taxes, and Chicago Schools Did the mayor go back on a campaign promise not to impose new taxes, or were higher property taxes always an option for making up the CPS budget shortfall? Posted at 1:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/08/11 Chicago to Soften Its Purgatorial Orange Glow With White CMH Street Lights The city uses stimulus money to replace some of its high-pressure sodium street lights with white, "suburban" ceramic metal halide ones. Posted at 7:24 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (4)
	08/08/11 Lollapalooza 2011: Best and Worst of the Festival Say what you will about Lollapalooza—it’s too mainstream, it’s too hot, it’s too commercial, it’s too crowded—but, overall, it’s a pretty great show. Bands that get by on good hair and a hit at other fests fall flat when stacked up against plain talent—regardless of whether it’s in or out (or in again for the third or fourth time—this being Lolla’s 20th anniversary). It would be an inhuman task to take it all in, but several acts... Posted at 4:07 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/08/11 S&P Downgrade Vs the Market, By the Headlines and the Numbers Standard & Poor's downgrades U.S. debt... which sees no shortage of buyers as the market goes through one of its worst days in years, with the Dow down over 600 points. What's going on? Posted at 4:00 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/08/11 The Latino Baby Boom, in Chicago and the U.S. A surge in Latino births produced a tremendous shift in the demographics of Chicago toddlers, portending substantial policy and political changes to come. Posted at 12:00 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/05/11 Bureaucracy vs. Ice Cream Nice Cream, one of my favorite local food makers, runs into a licensing issue with the state even after having operated without problems for a couple years in the city. Looks like it's time for another tweak to the food laws. Posted at 6:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (3)
	08/05/11 The New Chicago Public Schools Budget at a Glance The CPS just released its proposed 2012 budget, and it's facing revenue and expenditure problems. Here's what you need to know before next week's public hearings, and this month's vote. Posted at 3:50 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/05/11 From Tinkertoy to Computer Programming: Great Moments in Chicago Toys How a Chicago tombstone-maker's wooden toy set inspired one of the great computer scientists of our time, and how Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel resulted in the invention of Lincoln Logs... by his son. Posted at 2:49 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/05/11 Marc Maron on the Interview Show and at Mayne Stage The veteran comedian, podcast star, and new public radio show does five shows, starting tonight, in two different venues on a whirlwind tour of Chicago. Posted at 1:33 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/04/11 The Volatility Index and the Dow Drop When the market is feeling ill, look around for the VIX: the CBOE index that charts fear—or maybe just sensible pessimism—in the marketplace. Posted at 5:30 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/04/11 Kraft Klefts, Market Jumps The food colossus announces a surprising split, dividing its legacy grocery division and its growing snacks and international divisions—led in part by soap salesman turned international marketer Sanjay Khosla. Posted at 4:14 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/04/11 Rage Against the Application of Ketchup to Hot Dogs Chicagoans have reason to reject ketchup on their hot dogs, but still need to appreciate the condiment as a near-perfect creation and its role in the education of one's palate. Posted at 2:18 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/04/11 The Man Who Witnessed the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln The last living witness to the Lincoln assassination tells all, or at least all that he can remember, on the mid-century game show "What's My Secret?" Posted at 1:22 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/04/11 Ald. Burke and the Case of the $600k Security Detail The BGA manages to get the total bill for the police detail that the veteran alderman and, uh, Finance Committee chair has had since the Council Wars years. It's even more than you might have guessed. Posted at 11:48 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/03/11 Leave Barack Obama Alone The debt ceiling debate has widened the progressive-centrist rift in the Democratic party, as liberals vent their frustrations at the president. In practical terms, it's misplaced. Posted at 5:08 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	08/03/11 Chicago Homeless Services the Latest Victim of Budget Cuts The city's overnight homeless services get axed, as Division of Family and Support Services faces layoffs. But don't entirely blame the city—the fraying of the social safety net starts at the top. Posted at 3:41 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/03/11 The Cubs: A Bad Baseball Team, a Good Franchise No matter how bad they are, the Cubs always outdraw most teams in baseball. But during previous failed seasons, there was something interesting about the team. Could this year be the one that they're both bad and boring enough to give the franchise some incentives? Posted at 1:23 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/02/11 The Dismal Science: Unemployment Rates, Suicide, and Traffic Deaths Two studies, one by the CDC and another by a Loyola prof, find that suicide rates correlate with U.S. unemployment rates and mass layoffs, respectively. A third has similar findings for Europe, but also suggests traffic fatalities decrease during times of economic hardship, which may explain local trends. Posted at 6:23 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/02/11 Half of Chicago Traffic Aides Kicked to the Curb The ranks of the city's TMA take about a fifty-percent cut. It's a dangerous job and a scorned position, but is it worth the money? No one seems to think so, but no one seems to know, either. Posted at 1:56 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/01/11 So Long, Olin: A Kreutz, Er, Sayonara The Bears' veteran center is a surprise off-season departure, given the mere half-million-dollar gap between the two parties, and the Chicago football world is shocked. But something on the Bears' O-line has to change. Posted at 6:14 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/01/11 Historical Best of Chicago: Fear and Loathing in 19th-Century Chicago Poverty tourism, opium-smoking, prison museums, panoramas of suffering, and other sordid entertainments for Chicago tourists at the end of a century. Posted at 4:50 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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