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March 2012

	04/02/12 'The Hunger Games' Has Me Terrified to Go to Millennium Park The latest casualty of cutting-edge modern architecture in the service of post-apocalyptic movies is Frank Gehry, whose familiar rippling stainless steel makes a (very watered-down) appearance in this year's blockbuster hit. Posted at 11:57 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/30/12 Would Winning the Mega Millions Make You Unhappy or Broke? It's accepted folk wisdom that lottery winners end up miserable and/or bankrupt. Two Northwestern psychologists found that winning the lottery actually makes you happy and less stressed—but less able to enjoy what you did before, for no net effect on your happiness. One piece of advice: if you win, keep the news to yourself. Posted at 4:52 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/30/12 Facebook, Law, and Employment: Before Dissing Your Boss, Think Like a Lawyer A bill working its way through the Illinois legislature would ban employers from asking for your social media passwords. Your public likes and tweets are still fair game—unless they're "concerted." Posted at 3:13 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/30/12 Chicago's Infrastructure Trust and Washington's Gridlock The mayor rolls out a comprehensive, $7-billion infrastructure scheme, elements of which you'll recognize. Meanwhile, federal transportation funding of all kinds nearly came to a halt this week, as the political reckoning got pushed back a mere 90 days. Washington's ideological divide is putting immense pressure on cities and states to deal with overdue infrastructure issues. Posted at 12:49 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/29/12 Brookfield Zoo Welcomes Its First Black-Footed Cat Kitten, the Least Domestic of the Domestic Cats Born underweight on Valentine's Day, the six-week-old black-footed cat has been nursed back to (reasonable) health. When it grows up, this member of a very old domestic cat species will be a tiny but fearsome hunter. Posted at 6:22 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/29/12 Where the Chicago Accent Comes From and How Politics is Changing It Ever wondered why Chicago sounds so much different from the rest of the state (and more like Buffalo than downstate)? It begins with the Erie Canal, probably has a lot to do with the Civil War, and seems to be getting even more distinct. Posted at 3:55 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	03/29/12 Cocktail Bars, Second City Syndrome, and Chicago's Most Ingredient-Exclusive Dive The latest reason to lament living in Chicago—the fact that its cutting-edge bar scene is several years behind superior ones (guess where). Why? No single-liquor bars. Does that exclusivity even work? Why, yes, and Chicago has an institution to prove it. Posted at 12:53 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/28/12 Naperville Right to Life Activists Protest IVF Clinic In vitro fertilization has never stirred the same controversy as abortion or embryonic stem-cell research, in part because evangelical Christians have a wide (and fine-grained) diversity of views on the procedure. But there are rumblings of a consensus, including a row in Naperville over a proposed clinic. Posted at 6:23 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/28/12 The Art and Science of Parking in Chicago Demand for parking in new Chicago apartment building drops, and the drop all comes from renters, not buyers. Millennials just aren't buying cars, so expect the trend to continue... and, hopefully, make architecture better. Posted at 4:57 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/28/12 The Social Value of Horrifying Open Comment Threads Journalists hate what's become of most comment sections, something that was supposed to be a great hope of the social web, because they run counter to the philosophy of reasoned discourse. But there's a great deal of gold to be mined from that pit (even if news organizations shouldn't be hosting it themselves). Posted at 2:38 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/28/12 Bobby Rush: Out of Order for Wearing a Hoodie On the House Floor The latest person to express solidarity with Trayvon Martin by wearing a hoodie is veteran Representative Bobby Rush, who was unrecognized by the acting speaker... under the prohibition that you can't wear a hat on the House floor. Posted at 11:00 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (4)
	03/27/12 Happy Birthday to Mies: The Church as Garage, the Gas Station as Sacred Space, and Google's Celebration of Mies's Legacy Google celebrated Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's 126th birthday with a cheeky little doodle. It's a cute and silly way to recognize the legend of Chicago architecture... and exactly what he needs to take the edge off. Posted at 8:26 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/27/12 A Rare Tiny House in Chicago Tiny houses have a cult following on the Internet, but they're hard to find in big cities. Fortunately, there's one in Chicago—though it's way, way out there in Dunning. Posted at 4:33 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/27/12 Why Gas Is So Expensive During the Summer (And Especially in Chicago) Every summer, gas prices go up. It's not just demand. Gas, like clothing, has to get lighter as temperatures rise, to prevent not just pollution but vapor lock. It's even pricier here in Chicago, one of America's "gas islands." Posted at 2:43 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (5)
	03/26/12 This Week in the Arts The Logan Center for the Arts is going up in Hyde Park; the Anshe Kenesseth Israel temple is coming down in North Lawndale; the Congress Theater is the center of a controversy involving Joe Moreno; and more Posted at 5:07 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/26/12 Annexation, the Midwest, and the Rise of the Sun Belt Why is the Midwest in financial and population decline while the Sun Belt thrives? Annexation, which pulled in vast swaths of suburb just as people were fleeing urban cores, has a lot to do with it. Posted at 2:20 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/23/12 For Whom Taco Bell Tolls: A Transitional Theory of Good Food It's a very long road from cheese-soaked casserole dishes to Rick Bayless, and culture takes a long time to travel it. At some point, it has to swing through Taco Bell. Posted at 10:25 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/22/12 This Week in Open Data and Other Civics Political television ad data, a goldmine of transparency; Illinois, not as corrupt as you might think, depending on how you measure it; a short history of open data in Chicago; our new "convergence cloud"; and more. Posted at 5:33 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/22/12 University of Illinois President Michael Hogan Resigns The tenure of continuously embattled UI president Michael Hogan is over after less than two years. It's not the first time he's left a frustrated institution after a short term as its president. Posted at 3:42 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/22/12 The Mistpouffers of Clintonville, Wisconsin: A Brief History of Brontides, Icequakes, and Other Mysterious Booms A hamlet 40 miles west of Green Bay has been shaken by a series of "booms," scaring the townsfolk and drawing national attention. But strange, unexplained booms, shakes, and shocks are common throughout the world, and have been a mystery for centuries. Posted at 1:31 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/21/12 Illinois Primaries Postmortem: If You Care, Which Few Seemed To Low turnout, a big victory for Rahm, a respectable victory for the local Democratic establishment, a substantial (if completely predictable) victory for Mitt Romney: an uneventful Illinois primary for the most important election since 1860. Posted at 5:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/21/12 Baseball Preview: 10 Reasons to Look Forward to Chicago Baseball, Other Than It Being Baseball This year might not be the horror show lots of people are predicting—the White Sox might even have an outside shot in a weak division. But the most interesting player to watch could be a Royals minor-leaguer out in Kane County. Posted at 3:47 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/21/12 Long Reads for Hump Day Gary's new mayor, Karen Freeman-Wilson; the curious case of Chicago hip-hop star/cult favorite Chief Keef; Alan Turing's undersung legacy in the field of biology; and more. Posted at 11:52 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/20/12 Good Reads on the Illinois Primaries and Other Debacles Mitt Romney's dog problem; Obama's Muslim problem; Republicans' Illinois problem; Chicago's voting problem; Derrick Smith's FBI problem; and more from election day. Posted at 6:02 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/20/12 PandoDaily: Another Coastal Publication Takes on the 'Midwest Mentality' Chicago's startup tech scene gets some new national attention thanks to the incubator 1871, but it wouldn't be a Trend without someone from not-flyover country giving us the what-for. Posted at 4:39 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/19/12 Another St Patrick's Day Full of Dread Travels through Chicago on a particularly warm and inebriated St. Patrick's Day, when a broad swath of the city agrees on a date in early spring to lose all control. Posted at 6:27 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	03/19/12 CTA Ridership Up, Along With Public Transportation Use Everywhere Public transportation use in Chicago has hit levels not seen since the 1990s, mostly because of rising gas prices and employment. It's up throughout the U.S., though the increase is mostly in rail rather than buses. Posted at 4:16 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/19/12 This Week in Chicago Development: Polish Triangle, Bloomingdale Trail, the Transit Stations of Arthur Gerber Plans move forward for a mixed-use development at the Polish Triangle on the old Pizza Hut lot; the Bloomingdale Trail and its gateway parks grow closer to reality; and more on development and urbanism. Posted at 3:24 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/19/12 The Illinois GOP Primary: Romney's Juggernaut Versus Evangelical Catholic Rick Santorum This time, the Illinois presidential primary matters. But it's not looking like a close contest, with Mitt Romney expected to pick up a substantial victory over Rick Santorum, with the Mormon picking up the Catholic vote and the Catholic courting the state's evangelicals. Posted at 1:07 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/19/12 Kurt Vonnegut in Chicago: Some Footnotes Reviews of And So It Goes, a recent biography of Kurt Vonnegut, and the Library of America's first collection of the author's works, plus a look at how Chicago shaped the famous novelist. Posted at 11:04 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/16/12 Dyeing the Chicago River Green: Its Origins in the Actual Greening of the River Chicago's storied tradition of turning the river a crazed day-glo nuclear green was the inadvertent result of cleaning up the river for the 1960s construction boom, and the brainstorm of one of Mayor Daley's powerful friends. Posted at 4:39 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/16/12 'This American Life' Retracts Mike Daisey Apple/Foxconn Episode, Cancels Chicago Theatre Broadcast TAL pulls its most popular episode podcast—and devotes this week's show to the aftermath—after fabrications by monologuist Mike Daisey are revealed by a Marketplace reporter. Posted at 1:58 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/16/12 The Chicago Infrastructure Trust: A Sign of the Times The proposal for the Chicago Infrastructure Trust, recently presented to City Council, is making news as America's first civic infrastructure bank. But it's a familiar idea overseas, as a response to familiar fiscal crises. Posted at 11:29 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/15/12 Heat and Crime: It's Not Just You Feeling It It's accepted wisdom that crime gets worse in the spring and summer. But the relationship between crime and temperature is even closer than that, and the questions are many: does heat make you angry and stupid? Is there a point where it gets too hot to commit crime? And what happens after the heat wave? Posted at 4:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/15/12 Illinois's Musical Tastes: As Middle-of-the-Road As You Might Expect A survey of American music preferences by state suggests what you might already expect about Illinois—collectively we like just about everything, but in distinct moderation. Posted at 10:05 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/14/12 Good Reads on the Upcoming Chicago Elections Only five contemplating days 'til the next local election. In the contentious Cook County Clerk's race between Dorothy Brown and Rick Munoz, the crucial issue might just be information technology and access to data. Posted at 4:53 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	03/14/12 The Chicago Speed Camera Debate Accelerates The Tribune calls into question City Hall's data on red-light cameras and traffic fatalities, as the mayor gets a priestly cameo in the fight for extending the system to speed cameras. Posted at 3:35 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/13/12 Brandon Marshall: The Bears Really Wanted a 1000-Yard Receiver The Bears have had one thousand-yard receiver in the past decade, and two Pro Bowl receivers in the past 40 years. Today they added a three-time Pro Bowler who's had five straight seasons with that many yards—and a new backup quarterback to boot. Posted at 7:16 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/13/12 Great Lakes Ice Declines Precipitously Great Lakes ice cover hit its lowest level in recorded history this year. Most of that can be attributed to the unusually warm winter, but over the past four decades the trend is towards substantially lower ice cover. Posted at 4:31 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/13/12 Chicago's Speed Cameras Reach an Intersection at City Hall Emanuel is expected to go to City Hall tomorrow for the final push on speed cameras—armed with data and talking points from a consulting company that shares ties with For a Better Chicago and the speed camera company. Lost in all this has been the legitimate case for the legislation—and how the incidents the city's used to make its case bring up other critical pedestrian-safety issues. Posted at 1:14 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/12/12 Reasons for Cubs Fans to Hope: Alfonso Soriano The Cubs' multimillion-dollar-man went from not worth the money to awful by any measure last year. But he did it in a way that suggests 2012 could be a bounceback year, replacing some of the offense that the team gave up this offseason. Posted at 6:13 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/12/12 Daylight Saving Time: Way More Complicated Than Just Setting Your Clocks Back Daylight Saving Time and time zones have caused controversy (and an identity crisis) in Indiana for decades. For a few years now, the state's been on DST and off "Indiana time"—and it's been good for business, if not for the environment. Posted at 4:13 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/12/12 Income Inequality: It's Hard Out There For the Rich (But Not the Very Rich) The "middle-class rich" want the things that define middle-class America, and they want them in the country's wealthy big cities. Meanwhile, the really rich are pulling away from them at an increasing clip. It's no wonder they're pessimistic. Posted at 2:01 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/09/12 This Week in Chicago Apps and Other Data: Poetry and CPS Socio-Economic Tiers Plus: Sunspot images, "The New Optimism," means of determining the optimal baseball batting order, and a forthcoming social-services finder for Chicago. Posted at 6:25 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/09/12 Derrick Bell, Barack Obama, and Andrew Breitbart: Breaking Kayfabe The latest figure to arise from the president's past is a controversial Harvard Law prof, captured in grainy video by PBS and popularized by the late provocateur Andrew Breitbart. Bell was indeed radical—but he spent most of his career in conflict with liberals. In lies a much more rich tale than a few minutes of pseudo-scoop tells. Posted at 4:19 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/08/12 Americans: Deeply Pessimistic About Their Personal Economic Futures, Especially the Rich The wealthy are different from you and me: they're actually a lot more pessimistic about their expected incomes in the near future. And as a whole, we're as pessimistic as we've ever been, at least as far back as the data goes. Posted at 4:33 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/08/12 RIP Yasuhiro Ishimoto, a Great Photographic Chronicler of Chicago and Japan The late photographer, a student of Harry Callahan and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, ended up in Chicago because of World War II's exclusion zones, and became an integral part of the city's mid-century art scene. Posted at 2:38 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/07/12 Massive Solar Flares and Bumps In the Universe A coronal mass ejection is headed our way. It doesn't look like it'll do much damage—like the one that took out a Chicago-San Francisco transcontinental telephone line back in 1972—but it might get the northern lights down this way. Posted at 4:38 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/07/12 Is Trying for the Olympics and Failing Better Than Actually Getting Them? Some people are still sore about Chicago not getting the Olympics, a wound re-opened by the G8 mess. But in trying and failing, we might have won by losing. Posted at 2:11 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/07/12 A Profile of Chicago Hacker Jeremy Hammond, and the Police Work That Captured Him Hactivist Jeremy Hammond, practitioner of not-so-civil disobedience, gets busted by the feds... for the second time in his young life. It's practically a replay of his first arrest. Posted at 11:24 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/06/12 The G8 Summit Versus the NATO Summit: Which Is More Awesome? In the day since Chicago got the G8 swept out from under us, there has been much lamentation about how the Second City just can't catch a break. But the NATO summit is the one the cool kids actually enjoy. And anyway, not everyone can be Kananaskis (or Heiligendamm). Posted at 7:24 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (3)
	03/06/12 CTA Bus Tracker Increases Ridership, Modestly A new study suggests that the CTA's implementation of bus tracking—on its web site, on smart phones, and at bus stops—has led to a small but noticeable increase in weekday ridership, even if you adjust for what you'd expect. Posted at 5:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/06/12 William Heirens, "Lipstick Killer," Dead at 83 America's longest-serving inmate, incarcerated by the state of Illinois since 1946, passed away after a decades-long battle to clear his name, equaled only by the efforts of his victim's sister to keep him in prison. Doubts surrounding his guilt, however, are likely to persist. Posted at 3:52 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/06/12 Who Wouldn't Want the G8 Summit? The G8 says thanks-but-no-thanks to Chicago, as it moves its annual summit to the sort of place that it seems most comfortable: an impregnable resort with a history of hosting the very powerful. Posted at 12:44 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/02/12 John Carter of Mars? He's from Chicago Disney's new blockbuster has its origins at an office at Monroe and Wacker, where failed businessman and pencil-sharpener-agent Edgar Rice Burroughs churned out the serialized tale A Princess From Mars in order to put food on the table. Posted at 1:32 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	03/01/12 The Obama Birth Certificate and the Layers Conspiracy Sheriff Joe Arpaio claims that the digital layers contained within the Obama birth-certificate PDF are evidence that it's faked. If you have a scanner and Adobe Illustrator, you can play along with the debunking at home. Posted at 6:28 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (5)
	03/01/12 Chicago Gang-Violence Documentaries Online The Interrupters hits the Web courtesy of PBS's Frontline. Plus: The Heart Broken In Half, an old doc by Taggart Siegel and the late Dwight Conquergood; and the eerie, low-budget Great American Youth, a quasi-encomium to the Gaylords. Posted at 4:05 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	03/01/12 Authenticity, Romney, and Mittloads of Money The GOP frontrunner has been the subject of criticism and derision for his gaffetastic relationship to his vast wealth. It's hard out there for the authentically wealthy. Posted at 1:22 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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