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July 2012

	08/02/12 Annals of Privatization: Social Impact Bonds and Public Schools Chicago's infrastructure trust gets off to a quiet start, while New York City launches an experiment with social-impact bonds, a similar concept recently imported from England. Posted at 3:04 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/02/12 Chicago's JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound Ready for Lolla Debut Lollapalooza 2012 may have some big headliners scheduled, including Black Sabbath and Red Hot Chili Peppers, but the fest is also an opportunity to check out rising talent. Among the newbies this year is one of my favorite local acts, the neo-soul group JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound, playing their first Lolla this Saturday... Posted at 1:55 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/02/12 Income Segregation in Chicago and the Gentrification of America How segregated is Chicago by wealth? Chicagoland is actually not very segregated compared to other metros, but if you zoom in and take a different look, other patterns emerge that parallel those across the country. Posted at 11:49 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/01/12 Where Do Chicago's Guns Come From? Mostly from Illinois and Indiana—and a surprising percentage come north from Mississippi. As far as how people get them, straw buyers are frequent, but friends, family members, addicts, and burglaries are all available means of illegally obtaining a weapon. Posted at 4:34 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (4)
	08/01/12 The Geography of Persistent Poverty, Life Expectancy, and Food Access in Chicago A new study looks at life expectancy, poverty, population density, and food deserts in Chicago—and finds evidence that, even controlling for many factors, access to grocery stores has an impact on expected lifespan. Posted at 2:28 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	08/01/12 The Latest Chicago Public Schools Skirmish: Elected School Board Chicago is unusual among school districts nationwide for its appointed school board, but less so among urban districts, where school board elections can be expensive and politicized. After an experiment with a hybrid model led to full mayoral control in 1995, there's increased interest, including from some aldermen, in trying again. Posted at 12:10 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/31/12 Can Pat Quinn Ban Assault Weapons in Illinois? Illinois has long been a key battleground in the debate over the Second Amendment, from the banning of labor militias in the 1870s, to the tommy guns that curtailed Americans' rights to certain types of guns, to Morton Grove's handgun ban, the first in the nation. And that past history, stretching back to the Civil War, determines what the state can and can't do. Posted at 6:02 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (3)
	07/31/12 World's Biggest Crane Sails Into the Port of Indiana, Is Awesome The new LR 13000, en route to Whiting to work on its $3.8 billion expansion, is so big that you can hang regular-size cranes from it to make a crane mobile, or just use it to lift massive refinery towers. Posted at 11:08 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/30/12 Building Cultural Infrastructure: Failing Big Versus Failing Small A recent study by the University of Chicago's Cultural Policy Center suggests that America built too many museums and theaters over the past couple decades, or at least spent too much money on them when times were better. Posted at 7:36 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/30/12 The Geography of Child Poverty in Illinois A new study breaks down child poverty by county in Illinois: following national trends, the highest rates are found in far downstate Illinois, where Alexander County's rate doubles that of Cook County. Posted at 3:37 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/30/12 As Employees Are Paid Less, Corporations Are Saving More During the recession, perhaps the most crucial question is: where'd the money go? A lot of it is sitting in corporate accounts, due to major changes in tax and regulatory systems, and a big demographic wave of boomers putting away money for their own futures. Posted at 12:36 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/27/12 Seven Songs to Prep You for Wicker Park Fest 2012 If you’re getting anxious for Lollapalooza next weekend, you can get your music fix Saturday and Sunday at the Wicker Park Fest, which takes over Milwaukee Avenue (from North Avenue to Wood Street) and features a lineup of more than 40 acts on three stages. Many of the bands are from Chicago, and admission is a mere $5 suggested donation (beat that, Lolla). Here are seven songs to sample before hitting the fest... Posted at 4:35 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/27/12 Chicago's Chick-Fil-A Fight: Bad Ideas, Bad Puns The latest from the Chick-fil-A hawks: Mayor Bloomberg gives the thumbs down, and how to ban Chick-fil-A without violating the First Amendment. Posted at 3:16 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/27/12 American Violence and Southern Culture Why is America so much more violent—in particular, so much more homicidal—than other developed countries? One vein of history and social science suggests that its roots are in the South, and the British borderland culture that it originated in. Posted at 12:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (9)
	07/26/12 Chicago Alderman's Chick-Fil-A Block Goes National, Pulls in Emanuel Joe Moreno's stance against Chick-fil-A, and his announcement that he'll use aldermanic privilege to block a Logan Square location, makes national news... and gets bad reviews, even from passionate supporters of gay marriage. Posted at 12:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/26/12 The Midwest Flash Drought Gets Worse The intensive drought has become more intense, nowhere more than in Illinois—in the span of a week, most of the state went from severe drought to extreme drought, the worst decline in the 12 years the USDA has been using its current monitoring system. Posted at 11:56 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/26/12 The Ill Effects of the Long, Hot Summer This year has been unusually hot and dry, approaching records if not breaking them. And that heat pervades everything, from roads, to nuclear power plants, to food prices, to traffic fatalities. Posted at 10:27 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/25/12 Gun Control in the Age of Al Capone The most notorious gangland murder in the city's history kicked off an early round of gun control at the state and national level, leading to a messy but beloved Supreme Court decision. Posted at 6:52 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	07/25/12 Joe Moreno Gets Pushback on Chick-Fil-A Block The 1st Ward alderman has said he'll use aldermanic privilege to prevent the Bible Belt chicken shack from opening a location in Logan Square, following the CEO's comments on gay marriage. Posted at 2:09 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	07/25/12 Annals of American Violence: How to Rob a Stagecoach A handy how-to guide for road agents, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune. Carry a sawed-off shotgun; always get the jump on the driver; don't bother searching pockets; and always, always be sure to make facetious remarks. Posted at 10:28 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/24/12 Austin: Chicago's Deadliest Neighborhood? The West Side neighborhood has 34 homicides in the past 12 months, by far the most of any community area. But it's also the largest community area in Chicago. What happens when you break down the numbers a bit? Posted at 2:09 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/24/12 Long After the Trial, the Burge Story Continues After spending 25 years in prison, Michael Tillman settled with the city for over $5 million dollars, the latest judgement to come out of the Burge torture scandal. Posted at 11:33 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/23/12 MLB Trade Deadline: Ozzie Guillen's New Team Deals His Old One a Blow The failure of the Miami Marlins to contend, even with their offseason spending spree, results in the Tigers picking up two important pieces at the trade deadline and making a surprising White Sox season that much harder. Posted at 6:11 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/23/12 For the Second Straight Year, the Midwest Suffers Under a 'Flash Drought' In mid-May, very little of Illinois was abnormally dry. By mid-June, practically the entire state was in severe drought, or worse. It's another summer of "flash drought," and Iowa State researchers are busy making corn crops that can survive a hotter future. Posted at 3:41 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
07/23/12 Despair, Mental Health, and Mass Murder The theater shootings in Aurora, Colorado—just miles from Columbine, and coming after NIU and Virginia Tech—have gun control back in the news again. Similar incidents led to the 1994 assault-weapons ban, though it was not particularly good or effective law. Public policy is difficult, but that's not a reason for hopelessness. Posted at 12:09 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	07/20/12 Long Reads on Community, Isolation, and Tolerance For the weekend, two of the best articles I've read in awhile—about a teen killer from rural Indiana, and the isolated subcultures of GLBTQ life in in Boystown. Posted at 4:40 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/20/12 Printers' Ball Kicks Off With Preview of Theaster Gates Project The Poetry Foundation's annual literary celebration technically started last night with a sneak peek at a new Gates project at the Kavi Gupta Gallery Posted at 4:20 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/20/12 Anthony Bourdain's Best Spots for One Night in Chicago—Plus Our Editors' Picks The celebrity chef ate, drank, and tweeted his way through the city for his new show, "The Layover," but here are our dining editors' picks for where to go if you have one night to spend in Chicago... Posted at 3:26 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	07/20/12 Chicago Employment Report: 'Most Rapid Improvement in its Job Market of All the Big Cities' A comparison of Chicago's unemployment rate and percent of employed to unemployed since last year... is actually not unhopeful. And it's not just a matter of unemployment falling generally; Chicago's numbers compare favorably to growth spots like San Jose and Houston. Posted at 2:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/19/12 'You Didn't Build That,' Entrepreneurship, and the Silly Season Did Barack Obama actually say that "if you have a business, you didn't build that business"? It seems to depend on your ideology and/or how you diagram sentences. Either way, it's not a very interesting question. Posted at 4:41 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/19/12 Chicago's Problem With Fatal Hit-and-Run Crashes From 2005 to 2009, Chicago's percentage of fatal pedestrian crashes involving hit-and-runs was twice that of the national average. This year the percentage is very high. Stopping crashes is one thing; how do you stop behavior after a crash? Posted at 1:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/19/12 Chicago Starts to Post the State Crosswalk Law at Intersections Why don't Chicago drivers stop at crosswalks? The previously confusing law was only changed in 2010, and habits are hard to break. New crosswalk signs, however, make it completely explicit. Posted at 9:55 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/18/12 'Point Em Out Knock Em Out,' 'Knockout King,' 'Happy Slapping,' and the Murder of Delfino Mora The murder of a 62-year-old immigrant in West Rogers Park is the latest victim attributed to a "game" of random street violence—one that's also cropped up in St. Louis and London. Posted at 4:24 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/17/12 The Jobless Recovery, the Declining Middle Class, and the Skills Mismatch The jobless recovery the country is going through is tightly coupled with the decline of the middle class and the polarization of American incomes. But a Chicago Fed paper suggests that there's demand for middle class workers, and a gap not well explained by a "skills mismatch." Posted at 6:05 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/17/12 'Chicago-Style Politics': The Latest 2012 Meme The frequency of the old cliche "Chicago-style politics" spiked after Barack Obama's rise to the White House—and it's getting hauled off the shelf again by the Romney campaign. Posted at 3:38 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/17/12 Breaking Down the New Cultural Plan—By the Numbers For the first time in 25 years, the city of Chicago has released a draft of a cultural plan, the culmination of an almost six-month process of "creating the city's cultural vision from the bottom up." Here are just five points that stood out... Posted at 2:01 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	07/17/12 Barack Obama's Fundraising Presidency After two fundraisers in Austin today and two more next week in the Bay Area, Obama will come home for his birthday—to host another fundraiser. He's doubled George W. Bush's total in a similar period, but Mitt Romney is creeping up on his heels. Posted at 12:57 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/17/12 (Non-Musical) Artists We Loved at Pitchfork 2012 While the music is the main attraction at Pitchfork, the festival has a long tradition of inviting other vendors to share in the indie-fan wealth. Here are two finds we loved... Posted at 12:37 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/16/12 'Beasts of the Southern Wild' and the Violence of Resettlement Benh Zeitlin's odd, dreamy debut feature has been embraced as a post-Katrina allegory of life in the Delta, but like good folklore, it expands beyond that into the struggles of the dispossesed to stay in places the state would have us improve. Posted at 5:53 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/16/12 The Cost of Buying a House While Black in Chicago A new NBER study finds that blacks and Latinos in four U.S. cities pay, on average, more than other homebuyers no matter what or where they're buying. The highest premium is paid by African-Americans in Cook County. Posted at 12:35 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	07/16/12 Pitchfork 2012: Best and Worst of the Festival With umbrellas in our hands and rainboots on our feet, Chicago braved the storms at Union Park this weekend for the seventh annual Pitchfork Music Festival. Photographers Ray Whitehouse and James Trevenen shot the wildest style, crowds, and performances, while writer Elly Fishman caught the best of the fest’s performers—both on stage and off... Posted at 11:54 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/16/12 Overheard at Pitchfork 2012 "You know you've made it when you have sperm whales on your shirt," and other quoteworthy gems from the weekend Posted at 10:32 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/13/12 'The Hearts of Age': Juvenilia From Woodstock Kid Orson Welles In 1934, Orson Welles had departed Chicagoland and was on the verge of his New York theater breakthrough. But that year he married Wheaton native Virginia Nicholson—and the two shot a film, Welles's first, at his beloved alma mater in Woodstock. Posted at 5:16 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/13/12 Five Must-Haves for Pitchfork 2012 If tomorrow and Sunday see storms like today's, we might just rename this year’s festival “Pitch-a-tent-fork.” Still, the show goes on, so here are five essentials to get you through the weekend... Posted at 4:54 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/13/12 Chicago Life During Wartime: The Photographs of John Vachon A file clerk who became a photographer with the help of the Farm Service Administration's team of stars, John Vachon captured two summers in Chicago as America was at war. Posted at 3:29 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	07/12/12 Ellis Coleman, Mike Powell, and the Flying Squirrel The four-time All-American from Oak Park-River Forest developed one of the most remarkable moves in wrestling—but the story of him and his coach gets more dramatic from there. Posted at 6:29 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/12/12 Barack Obama's Midwestern Problem It's unlikely that the President will need to spend much time in Illinois this election season, or his opponent. Not to worry: demographic changes ensure there will be plenty of rallies in the swing states next door. Posted at 4:45 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/12/12 Jesse Jackson Jr.: The Fog of Mood Disorder, Culture, and Reporting Like Thomas Eagleton almost exactly 40 years ago, reports of "exhaustion" from a politician spiraled into a confusing media scrum. We've gotten better about discussing mental illness since then, but the vocabulary, and our expectations, remain flawed. Posted at 3:43 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	07/11/12 Annals of 'Chicago-Style Politics' Have you ever arm-twisted? Been part of a quarrelsome political faction? Even derided a classical-realist painter? You, too, could be a Chicago-style politician. Posted at 6:12 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/11/12 The Heat Wave: Playing Dice With the Universe Was the most recent heat wave caused by global warming? It's not a yes or no question, but we're starting to get a more nuanced sense of what "maybe" means. The Dust Bowl summers that set Chicago's record high provide a good metaphor. Posted at 4:43 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/11/12 Worst Campaign Ever, Lincoln-Douglas Edition In their debate at Freeport, Steven A. Douglas gave America the first iteration of "Cadillac-driving welfare queens," while Abraham Lincoln's rhetoric subtly traced the geography of Illinois politics. Posted at 1:35 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/10/12 Transportation Segregation: Los Angeles Versus Chicago If you think Chicago's public transportation is segregated, the numbers from the comparatively desegregated metropolis of Los Angeles will surprise you. Is it race or class at work? I'd start with parking. Posted at 6:38 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/10/12 About Obama's 'Middle-Class' 'Tax Cut' For 'Families' Is the president planning on cutting taxes "for middle class families"? Yes, in the way that you get the biggest piece of cake on your birthday, but don't get to eat the whole thing. Posted at 1:08 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/09/12 LIBOR: The Little Number that Runs the World The London Interbank Offer Rate scandal hasn't gotten much attention in these parts, even though it effects everything from student loans to the trillions in futures whizzing through Chicago every day. It's worth getting into—it's not going away for a long time. Posted at 6:40 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/09/12 Garry McCarthy vs. Jody Weis, By the Numbers Garry McCarthy's predecessor saw a spike in crimes early in his tenure running the Chicago Police Department—including 64 murders in July of 2008. The numbers came down, however, and cops and aldermen are looking back to the adjustments Weis made. Posted at 4:15 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	07/06/12 Coffee, Crime, and Chicago Do more coffee shops equal less crime? In Chicago, during a critical period in the city's violent history, the answer is yes: for homicides, at least. The results for robbery, however, are interestingly dependent on race. Posted at 5:06 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	07/06/12 The Geography of Chicago Public Library Usage How often people check out items, and how often they use CPL computers, versus socioeconomic data. Plus: e-books and downloadable media would be the equivalent of Chicago's third-biggest library. Posted at 1:41 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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