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February 2012

	02/29/12 The History of House Music and Other Things to Watch Sonali Aggarwal follows up "Whatever Happened to Hip Hop?" with a documentary about Chicago dance music; Jeanne Gang at the Chicago Humanities Festival; William Gibson on the decline of cyberspace. Posted at 6:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/29/12 More on Air Pollution: A Sliding Scale Over Time Chicago has made great progress in cleaning up its skies. But the more we learn about air pollution, the more there is to address. Posted at 4:41 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/29/12 Chicago Coal-Fired Power Plants Will Close to Combat the Smoke Horror After years of protest and politics, the Fisk and Crawford plants will close even earlier than expected. But will it help Chicago's high asthma rates? Outdoor pollution isn't the only form we have to worry about, and it may not be the most important form. Posted at 3:01 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/28/12 Jeanne Gang Breaks Open the Bungalow to Save Cicero's Housing Studio Gang was invited to address the housing crisis in Cicero. Following the lead of its immigrant residents, Gang and her team (which included Theaster Gates) broke up the bungalow into its component pieces and re-envisioned it as the Recombinant House. Posted at 6:30 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (6)
	02/28/12 Black Composer Florence Price, Rediscovered Again The New Black Music Repertory Ensemble of Columbia College plays the work of Florence Price, the first black woman to have a composition performed by a major symphony orchestra. Posted at 3:47 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/28/12 Mapping Lies and Truthiness on Twitter Indiana University researchers develop Truthy, a system that follows Twitter memes with an electronic eye towards what's fake and what's real: sort of a CDC for viral media. Posted at 2:18 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/27/12 Traffic and Class Conflict: The Rich Are Worse Drivers Than You or Me A study out of Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research set out to look at social class and unethical behavior. So they started with how we drive. Posted at 5:58 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/27/12 For Fans of Street Photography, All the Charles Cushman You Could Wish For For years, the Chicago businessman traveled the city and country documenting America (and some of its attractive women) on impossibly vivid Kodachrome. Now Oxford University Press has a celebration of his vast work. Posted at 2:33 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/27/12 Why Chicago Isn't Detroit: More Theories The collapse of Detroit is attributed to a familiar litany of reasons, but they're ones that, in many ways, are shared by our city. A local urban planner, born in Detroit, shares some ideas for why the Motor City's collapse was so much worse than its Rust Belt peers. Posted at 1:30 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	02/24/12 What a Plague of Locusts Looks Like In 1915, a group of Millennarian Chicago expats lived through a plague of locusts in Jerusalem. Their colony is now gone, but they left behind a hotel, Nobel Prize-winning literature, and some beautiful, eerie locust pictures. Posted at 5:35 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/24/12 Illinois's Medicaid Crisis: Same As It Ever Was Steep Medicaid deficits, Chicago casino plans, increasing enrollees, the substantial expense of caring for the elderly and disabled: Illinois's Medicaid crisis looks a lot like the one it had in the 1990s. Posted at 3:09 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/24/12 MF Global: Does Money Vaporize, Just Like That? Did the "vaporized" MF Global money dry up, like a raisin in the sun? Or did it explode? Probably none of the above—as investigators hunt for the missing cash, the answer will probably be much less abstract. Meanwhile, Midwestern farmers are sweating the firm's incompetence. Posted at 1:06 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/23/12 Stern Pinball, Steven Kordek, and Chicago's Pinball Legacy This Week in Pinball: A journalistic and photographic tour of Stern Pinball, last bastion of Chicago's pinball legacy; RIP Steve Kordek, Chicago pinball legend; and more Posted at 5:25 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/23/12 Des Plaines High School Regulates Footloose Dancing Maine West to crack down on inappropriate dancing, from grinding to "bending over." They'll track dirty dancing with wristbands, immortal signal of permission to do things. Posted at 4:17 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/23/12 William Beavers, "Hog With the Big Nuts," Indicted By Feds on Tax Charges In 2010, news broke that County Commissioner William Beavers was under investigation from the feds, who were looking at his expense account. Today, the bill came due. Posted at 3:16 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/23/12 Great Chicago Street Photographers of Past and Present This Week in Awesome Photography: Vivian Maier, Charles Cushman, the Blue Star Hotel, public housing, "My Camera and I In the Loop," and more Posted at 1:56 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/23/12 Big Medicaid Problems: The Decline of Health Insurance Coverage The increase in the Medicaid rolls isn't just a problem of the Great Recession and high unemployment rates—the percentage of wage earners enrolled in the program has doubled over the past 30 years. Posted at 1:10 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/22/12 Barclays Capital Looks at Illinois's Underfunded Pensions The investment bank sees Illinois's shadow and concludes that our pension-funding winter will continue for another generation. But they're not panicked... yet. Posted at 6:02 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/22/12 Falling Slowly "Unless this has ever happened to you, you cannot understand the escalating sense of panic. I'd just get right back up, I thought. No. I could get my arms up on solid ice, but every time I did, another chunk broke off. Reach, crash. Reach, crash. The water had already saturated my parka, making my arms feel leaden. I don't know whether the water was over my head or not, but I knew I could not touch bottom." Posted at 4:08 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/22/12 New to Me: Rotary Connection A look back at Chess Records' house psychedelic band, led by a pre-stardom Minnie Riperton and featuring Phil Upchurch, Mitch Aliotta, and John Jeremiah, among many others. Posted at 3:15 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/22/12 A New Push For Vocational Education in Chicago and the U.S. In the city's big moves on education yesterday, Malcolm X College is being reinvented to integrate with the Medical District, and Crane Tech will go through the same process. It's part of a Great Recession trend back towards an old (and Continental) idea. Posted at 12:31 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/22/12 Long Reads Roundup Boredom in Peoria from Kyle Beachy; a profile of Oak Park/River Forest's wrestling coach; Seven Doe; why the carp must die; and more Posted at 11:14 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/21/12 Pat Quinn Puts Tamms On the Block The state's expensive, troubled supermax prison, long a target of lawsuits and human-rights activists, would give up its small number of inmates to Pontiac as part of the governor's proposed budget cuts. Posted at 6:16 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (5)
	02/21/12 Rapid Bus Transit Gets TIF Dough and More Transportation News New funding for BRT; public transportation is the new gay marriage, the fight over transportation funding, the decline in Illinois fuel tax revenues, and more. Posted at 4:45 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/21/12 Do Corruption and Transparency Drive Down Voting? Learning how the sausage is made can turn your stomach, more so when you can see the reconstituted meat bits. Which may put people off their appetite for politics. Posted at 2:06 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/21/12 Did the Stimulus Save the Economy? Survey Says... A poll of economists from the University of Chicago shows near-unanimous support for the idea that the stimulus increased employment. Now, about those long-term costs.... Posted at 12:55 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/21/12 Corruption, Confirmation Bias, and Sexy Statistics Is Illinois still really corrupt? Is Chicago still really segregated? It depends on who you ask, and how they decide to write their headlines. Posted at 11:24 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/20/12 Last Chance for Luminous Field at Millennium Park Luftwerk's installation art project, a collaboration with Owen Clayton Condon of Third Coast Percussion, completes its run in the park tonight from 6 to 9 pm. Posted at 5:37 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/20/12 Illinois's Medicaid Mess The state is way behind on its Medicaid bills, and facing a hugely expensive backlog, as it has periodically over the past couple decades. The state doesn't have a lot of options for cutting back on its Medicaid spending, but there are a couple areas where substantial progress could be made. Posted at 4:18 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	02/17/12 How Much Do We Want Social Mobility, Anyway? Social mobility has declined in America since the post-war boom, and the effects have been particularly hard on the lowest ten percent of the population. It's an American ideal, but it's not as easy or appealing as it looks. Posted at 4:55 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/17/12 What Does the Obama Campaign Know About You? It's a lot, depending on your interaction with the campaign or related causes. But it's nothing compared with Target, which can predict whether or not you're pregnant, down to which term. Posted at 2:07 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/16/12 Traffic Overflow: Crime Versus Accidents, and More In an analysis of fatal and serious pedestrian crashes, the city found that they correlate with high-crime areas. It's long been a phenomenon of interest to law enforcement and sociologists. Posted at 6:01 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	02/16/12 The Case for Chicago Speed Cameras The debate over speed cameras has focused on pedestrian fatalities, and specifically child pedestrian fatalities. And it's been at cross-purposes over some less than useful data. Expanding the scope makes a better case for them than the administration's presented. Posted at 4:38 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (4)
	02/16/12 Airplane Cloud Rings and Falling Ice Injuries Why a "hole-punch" cloud appeared over O'Hare last Friday, a brief history of falling ice injuries in Chicago, and the diversity of our city's falling-ice warning signs. Posted at 1:28 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/15/12 Illinois Voters Send Pols Mixed Messages on Taxes and Debt We want to raise taxes on the rich, because we think the tax code favors them. But we don't want to raise taxes to pay down the deficit, and we want to cut government benefits. If you can put these pieces together, you might make a good politician. How's your hair? Posted at 7:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/15/12 Chicago-Area Corruption: Are We Really the Worst? A new UIC report fingers the Chicago area as the most corrupt region in the country, and Illinois as the third-most corrupt state in America. But look out, pols: eastern Kentucky has a strong game going. Posted at 3:23 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/14/12 Happy St. Valentine's Day (Massacre) In our archives, Jonathan Eig gives "the most logical and satisfying solution to the crime ever presented." Plus: the St. Valentine's Day massacre as technological innovation. Posted at 6:18 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/14/12 The Public Problem of Private Equity, Part 2: Mitt's Revenge Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital has brought discussions of money, mergers, and power to the fore. So far it's mostly just caused a bunch of trouble for Romney, but could it change the way we invest taxpayer money as well? Posted at 5:26 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/14/12 Most Powerful Chicagoans: In Chicago, Is Food the New Art? Our list of the most powerful Chicagoans is out, and chefs and restauranteurs make a substantial showing among the city's cultural and business elite. Posted at 4:48 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/14/12 Chicago's Terrible Rail Bottleneck Amtrak's stats confirm what you've probably already noticed—traffic congestion is terrible, whether you're in a train or a car. But it's just as bad for the people whose jobs are on the rails, thanks to the nation's worst rail bottleneck. Posted at 2:28 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	02/13/12 Olympic Swimmer Matt Grevers Wins Valentine's Day One of Chicagoland's finest athletes, a Northwestern alum and medal-winning Olympic swimmer, makes news from the medal stand: with gold, and this time diamond as well. Posted at 2:26 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/13/12 The Decline of the Chicago Neighborhood Tavern: A Daley and Demographic Legacy Chicago now has less than ten percent of the number of taverns as it did in the days of the saloon. Two abstemious mayors, the changing demographics of alcohol consumers, and the spread of liquor licenses to other establishments have done them in. Posted at 1:54 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/10/12 Alice Clement, Cora Strayer, and Kate Warne: Badass Female Flatfoots of Old Chicago Alice Clement was an early feminist, foe to mashers, friend of lost girls, movie producer (and star)... and Chicago's first female detective. Plus: Cora Strayer and Kate Warne, early female gumshoes of the private sector. Posted at 5:31 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/10/12 The Birth Control Issue Is a Winning One for the Obama Administration The administration's health policy, in combination with decade-old EEOC rules, has created a media firestorm about religious freedom, with pundits calling it the end of Obama's chances in 2012. In the real world, it will probably provide a modest electoral boost. Posted at 1:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/09/12 A Night of Discerning Drinking Chicago magazine writers, editors, and readers gathered last night at Bucktown hot spot Duchamp to celebrate cocktails and budding mixologists. Posted at 3:39 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/09/12 How to Merge an Airline and Other Business News Just making the coffee at the world's largest carrier takes a whole beverage committee; Mayor Emanuel on the long-delayed O'Hare express; the ethics of shoppping; and more. Posted at 3:14 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/09/12 Guinnessometrics: Saving Science and Statistics With Beer A Roosevelt University economist looks into the scientific and statistical legacy of W.S. Gosset, aka "Student," Guinness's legendary Oxford-educated brewmaster and scientific-paradigm-shifter. Posted at 1:19 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	02/09/12 How an Illinois Prof's Paper on Wind Farms and Microclimate Became a Macro Story UIUC's Somnath Baidya Roy wrote a 2010 paper on how wind farms effect nearby surface temperatures. In 2012, it got picked up and used as a cudgel in the climate-change wars. Posted at 10:08 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/08/12 How Clint Eastwood's Patriotic Chrysler Ad Is Secretly Anti-Everything "Halftime in America": anti-capitalist, anti-union, anti-Union, and worst of all, anti-Norse. Everyone hates the Super Bowl's most beloved ad. Posted at 1:31 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/08/12 Indiana: Right-to-Work Again Our Rust Belt neighbors are a beachhead for right-to-work laws in the industrial Midwest. But it's happened before, when the pols and capitalists who birthed the modern conservative movement passed a similar law that lasted for nine years. Posted at 12:40 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/08/12 "Gang Signs" in the Chicago City Sticker: A Rorschach Test Does Chicago's new city sticker depict the signs and symbols of the Maniac Latin Disciples? Or is it an annunciation of the city's public safety officials? It's as much in the eye of the beholder as anything. Posted at 10:53 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (6)
	02/07/12 The Case of the Missing 1.2 Million: This Is What Happens When Baby Boomers Retire Thanks to Clint Eastwood and a positive jobs report, there's some very cautious optimism about the economy. But behind the scenes, there's a lot of math and yelling about who's employed, who's not, who wants a job, and who's done with working. Posted at 5:05 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/07/12 Chicago Italian Beef and Other Good Things The best Italian beef in Chicago is right around the corner from where you are; an Italian beef gallery; why white bread comes from Rockford; 366 days of kindness; and more. Posted at 3:56 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/07/12 College Football Playoffs: Modest Good News From the Big 10 The conference makes a push to add a real, if small and short, playoff to the BCS system, as low TV ratings have the powers that be considering what fans have wanted for years. Posted at 2:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/07/12 How to Build a Better Bike Lane in Chicago The organization that helped inspire the new Kinzie bike lane stops by Chicago for one of its "Cities for Cycling" roadshows, as the city attempts to expand its cycling infrastructure... and protect bikers and drivers from each other. Posted at 1:32 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/06/12 Chicago's Youth Violence Epidemic: A Victim of Success? Chicago's youth violence numbers remain terrible, both in comparison to broader homicide trends and in comparison to our peer cities. One cause may stem not from the failure of the city's approach to gangs, but its arguable success. Posted at 6:27 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	02/06/12 Privacy and Social Networks: Facebook Is Using You... With Your Permission A Chicago law prof, long on the frontlines of technology and the law, foresees a disturbing future in which we've ceded our privacy to the social networks that define us. It actually looks a lot like our present, and our past. Posted at 3:23 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/01/12 More Chicago Ward Mapping and Other Political Reads The possibility that a lawsuit could be filed over the recent ward remapping of the city is still in play. But not everyone's dissatisfied: a small, active Polish coalition made significant gains on the northwest side. Posted at 4:15 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	02/01/12 CME Turns Down City Money, and the TIF Debate Continues The CME Group, fresh off its tax-break legislative victory, declined a TIF deal that originated in the Daley administration and would have given them $15 million. And with that, another round of tax increment finance talk kicks off. Posted at 3:08 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	02/01/12 RIP Don Cornelius, "Soul Train" Host The creator of television's longest-running nationally-syndicated show is a Chicago broadcasting legend, but he had to head for Hollywood for "Soul Train" to become what it was. Plus: James Brown, David Bowie, and Gladys Knight on the Soul Train stage. Posted at 12:33 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)

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