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May 2012

	07/05/12 Garry McCarthy, Chicago's Rise in Murders, and the Pot Solution Noah Isackson profiles Garry McCarthy as the police superintendent deals with rising homicides, low manpower, and an intractable gang problem; meanwhile, Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky show how all that resulted in the marijuana-decriminalization ordinance. Posted at 6:08 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	07/05/12 How Not to Report On Your Own Comfort On the Hottest Day Ever About 78 years ago, Chicago went through not just the Depression, but the hottest day ever recorded in the city. On one stagnant day, the city baked... but the Tribune Tower was pleasantly refreshing. Posted at 10:55 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	06/04/12 The Geography of Economic Hardship in Chicago A look at the economic geography of Chicago, following the most recent census—from the extremely depressed community areas of Fuller Park and Riverdale to the Near North, which has by far the highest incomes in the city, over ten times that of Fuller Park. Posted at 3:12 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	06/04/12 Monday Roundup: The Fastest Man in Chicago Plus: Art Shay and the greatest racquetball photo ever taken; the growing disparity between breast cancer mortality among black and white women in Chicago; and more Posted at 12:19 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	06/01/12 Two Sobering Graphs About the Illinois Pension Crisis One reason for increasing pensions? Decreasing government. The 2002 Early Retirement Initiative got a lot of people off the government payroll... and onto the pension rolls. Posted at 5:48 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	06/01/12 Illinois Pension Reform: You Were Expecting Consensus? Unloved and unwanted pension-reform negotiations slip between the deadline. It was probably inevitable, given the general assembly's problems keeping its own pension fund in order—the worst in the state. On the other hand, it's probably for the best to keep the bill in the air for awhile. Posted at 3:59 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (3)
	05/31/12 The Politics of Mike Bost's Pension Rant: Upstate, Downstate A downstate representative from Murphysboro gets mad, and his rant on teacher-pension funding goes viral, thanks to some paper-throwing and barnyard epithets. What's bothering him: Michael Madigan, or something more? Posted at 6:59 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/31/12 The NATO Summit: Was It Worth It? NATO wanted to have the summit here for geopolitical messaging. The city wanted it as an "open for business" sign to the international community. Does that make up for the as-yet-unknown tab? Posted at 1:44 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/30/12 The Death and Life of American City-Planning Journalism The American Planning Association put its journalism awards on hiatus because not enough people cared. Has urban-planning journalism disappeared, or just migrated online? Posted at 4:57 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/30/12 Rahm Emanuel Goes After Public Safety Spending, Because That's Where the Money Is As the city looks to reduce its budget and its pension obligations, it's inevitable that public-safety employees would come under the green eyeshades. For all the fuss about clouted folks taking big pensions, the real problem is much more powerful: math. Posted at 1:49 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/29/12 Chicago Crime: Shootings Slightly Up, Murders Way Up. What Gives? In the first few months of the year, homicides are up by half over last year, though shootings are up only 14 percent. It sounds odd, but it happens. Beneath the basic crime data there's a lot of underlying complexity, but it's not well-researched or understood. Posted at 6:21 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (7)
	05/29/12 The Chicago Cubs: The Worst Team In Baseball (In the Clutch) The Cubs are tied for the worst record in baseball after their 12-game losing streak, the fifth-worst in team history. But they're easily the worst—if by worst you mean hardest to watch—team in baseball through the first third of the season. Posted at 3:02 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	05/25/12 So About Those Olympics: Go for the Silver After the USOC settled its score with the IOC and paved the way for a future U.S. Olympic games, there's inevitable random chatter about another Chicago bid. If you thought the NATO summit was irritating and/or a police state.... Posted at 4:43 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	05/25/12 This Week in Urbanism: Chicago Doesn't Like the Speed Cameras, Especially Chicago Men A Trib poll finds that a majority of residents are opposed to speed cameras, with a weird difference: women are split, men are way against them. Is it because men are the ones who usually get ticketed? Plus: a look at the city's eight-year plan to improve bike lanes. Posted at 10:26 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/24/12 Q&A With Kelly Degnan, Political Advisor to the U.S. Mission to NATO The Medill grad, former foreign service officer in Pakistan, and recent political advisor to ISAF task forces in Afghanistan discusses her career, and the situation in the places where she first and most recently served as a diplomat. Posted at 2:19 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/22/12 NATO Wrapups: Odds, and Possible Ends Why NATO was just as flummoxing as the protesters outside; "Obama's debacle" and other post-NATO reads; how the almost-redundantly named Operation Active Endeavour might represent the future of NATO; and more. Posted at 7:30 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
05/22/12 NATO Wrapups: How the City Stayed Relatively Calm Comparing Seattle's disastrous 1999 WTO riots with this weekend's relatively peaceful NATO protests: what lessons can be learned about the boundaries between protesters and police? Posted at 3:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/22/12 Chicago NATO Summit: Climbing Down the Mountain of Conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan The summit ends with a plan to bring the U.S. and its NATO allies out of Afghanistan for the good of both countries, and for what Afghanistan needs to do to make that happen. But Pakistan and its supply routes present a challenge not only to the logistics of withdrawal, but the long-term stability of the region. Posted at 1:30 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/21/12 NATO Summit, Domestic Politics Edition: Barack Obama on Cory Booker, Bain Capital, and Mitt Romney The president fields a question on the Newark mayor and campaign surrogate's suggestion that attacks on private equity are "nauseating": "when you're President, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits." Posted at 9:33 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/21/12 Chicago NATO Protests: Why They're Protesting Answering the question that's on the mind of Chicago commuters and office workers: What do all these people in the streets want, and when do they want it? Posted at 2:23 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	05/20/12 Chicago NATO Summit: No Plan to Intervene In Syria, On Pace for Afghan Funding The UN secretary general discusses buying unarmed drones for Smart Defense, NATO's stance on Syria, the new European missile defense system, and funding the Afghan security forces in a time of austerity. Posted at 7:26 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/20/12 Chicago NATO Summit: Dispatches from McCormick Place AndersFogh Rasmussen talks "security in the age of austerity" and his confidence that Francois Hollande's desire to withdraw French troops from Afghanistan won't be a problem; Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai talk Afghanistan 2014-2024. Posted at 3:50 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/20/12 [Photos] NATO Protests Day Two: What an Eight-Hour March Looks Like A rally for the "NATO 3" turns into an impromptu march, leading protesters and police on a day-long, miles-long journey through the Loop, South Loop, and West Loop, resulting in six arrests and a protester being struck by a CPD van. Posted at 1:19 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/18/12 Chicago NATO Protests: The Tearing Down of the NATO Banner, and an Arrestee on WTTW Video shows how the NATO banner on Michigan was torn down as the protest march briefly made it up Michigan Avenue; a protester talks to Chicago Tonight about detention and the police Posted at 10:19 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/18/12 Garry McCarthy Talks Officer Bar Codes, NATO Lakeview Protest, Not Bridgeport Arrests The police chief refuses several questions about the long investigation that ended in a pre-emptive raid, but discusses facilitating unplanned street protests and why the CPD has bar codes on their arms. Posted at 6:16 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/18/12 Taking a Break From Chicago Protests to Contemplate the Future of NATO and Afghanistan Lots to come at the NATO summit, but not a lot to look forward to: will France or the U.S. pull out early? Can the NATO nations coordinate budgets around Smart Defense? And what's "Afghan good enough"? Posted at 5:50 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/18/12 Chicago NATO Protests: Michigan Avenue After the National Nurses United rally at Daley Plaza ended, a smaller group of protesters moved north to Michigan Avenue... then back south, leading cops in a slow cat-and-mouse game. Posted at 4:16 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/18/12 First Chicago NATO Protest: National Nurses United Daley Plaza was filled this afternoon by National Nurses United, a rally headlined by Tom Morello and part of an international day of action in support of a "robin hood tax" on financial trades. Posted at 3:37 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/17/12 Chicago NATO Summit: Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Mark Jacobson Chicago's most famous activist couple talks about the "military arm of the one percent" with Amy Goodman; plus, a handy rundown of what's important inside McCormick Place this weekend. Posted at 4:44 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/17/12 Occupy and Public-Private Space Memories of 1968 give protesting an association with speaking, writing, performance, and rhetoric. Occupy concerns itself with something less ephemeral: space, and things. Posted at 2:25 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	05/17/12 Chicago NATO Summit: How to Participate, Or Just Follow Along From Your Computer A roundup of guides, events, people to follow on Twitter, livestreams to watch, and more for NATO weekend, whether you want to participate, follow from a safe distance, or just figure out what's going on Posted at 12:30 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	05/16/12 How Studs Terkel Wanted to Be Remembered "Is it important to leave an impact? Yeah, of course it is, otherwise what's the point? I think the point is to delight in life." Posted at 4:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/16/12 Chicago NATO Summit: Unilateralism, Protests, Media Coverage What people are protesting—it's not just NATO by a long shot; concerns about NATO and unilateralism; local vs. international coverage; and more Posted at 4:37 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/16/12 The Loop: Is the El a 'Universal Principle of Human Organization'? A new paper suggests that big-city subway systems around the world are all converging towards one mathematically modeled shape: a core-and-branch structure that will look familiar to Chicagoans. And it looks an awful lot like what some early Chicago sociologists thought, too. Posted at 2:43 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	05/15/12 Chicago NATO Summit Agenda: 'Smart Defense' for an Austere West NATO responds to its ongoing existential crisis by offering "Smart Defense": inexpensive military services for the new austerity. Did they mention their lubrication and fuel nozzle services? Posted at 7:50 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/15/12 Chicago NATO Summit Agenda: The Beginning of the End of the Afghan War On the agenda at NATO: getting out of Afghanistan and turning it over to the Afghan security forces; getting Pakistan to let us get out through their country; making sure Russia doesn't shoot missiles at the European missile shield, at least before it's done; giving North Atlantic countries something to do besides world war. Posted at 5:40 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/15/12 Chicagoans on Rahm Emanuel's First Year as Mayor: Waiting and Seeing The mayor scores his highest approval ratings from whites (61 percent) and the wealthy (62 percent), which is likely driven in part by perceptions of neighborhood crime. But "no opinion" still scores pretty high after the mayor's first year. Posted at 11:41 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/14/12 Chicago: The 10th Best Biking City In America, According to Bike Score Chicago comes in behind its Midwest peers Minneapolis and Madison, finishing just behind Tuscon to round out the top 10, but take it with a grain of salt: we're at something of a disadvantage due to the city's physical size. Posted at 6:19 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	05/14/12 NATO Week Begins Quietly in Chicago, With Eight Arrests A large, Catholic Workers-organized protest at Obama's downtown headquarters ends with eight arrests—but behind the numbers, it went peacefully, and even politely. Posted at 3:25 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/14/12 J.J. Abrams's 'Revolution': A Chicago Show That Might Not Get Cancelled The creator of Lost and Felicity gives Chicago the post-apocalyptic depiction it deserves, while Law & Order creator Dick Wolf brings the first fake Mayor Emanuel to network TV. Posted at 1:48 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/14/12 Could Bikers' Ed Make Cycling and Driving Safer? Could the early, intensive education the Dutch put their citizens through to teach them how to be good bike commuters make drivers in our less-dense country more friendly to cyclists, and vice versa? Posted at 11:16 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/11/12 A Chicago Writer on Bullying, and Getting Through It Stephanie Kuehnert looks back on bullying and homophobia for Rookie, while the Washington Post looks into Mitt Romney's past, and his high school during the 1960s. Posted at 3:08 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	05/10/12 Naomi Schaefer Riley and Defining Blogging Down A journalist goes after some Northwestern grad students, their black-studies program, and the entire field... and gets fired over it, setting off a debate about the limits of what you can and can't say about race, and where you can and can't say it. Posted at 8:01 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	05/10/12 For the Rich, Income Inequality and Volatility Is a Good Bet Economist Peter Orszag makes the case for progressive taxes on, and to, the One Percent: higher taxes means less income volatility for the wealthy. But there are logical reasons his argument is likely to fall on deaf ears, and evidence that it does. Posted at 3:01 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/09/12 The Man Who Invented the Save, Its Future, and How to Tell When Your Closer Is Done The save, a product of Chicago journalism, changed the face of baseball. But perhaps we can do better with shutdowns and meltdowns. Sabermetricians, and maybe Len Kasper, will lead the way. Posted at 7:00 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
05/09/12 Richard Lugar: The Tipping Point for Bipartisanship or Just Good Strategy? Richard Mourdock, Indiana state treasurer and perennial candidate, pulled off a huge upset (by a huge margin), knocking off a six-term senator in yesterday's primary. It's a sign of the times, but don't dismiss it as unstrategic post-bipartisanship. Posted at 4:52 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/08/12 Cook County: Under 2 Million Catholics For First Time in Decades, Still Very Catholic By raw numbers, there are fewer Catholics in Cook County than there used to be, and by percentage as well. But it's probably more to do with losing citydwellers than losing faith, as the collar counties have seen large increases in their Catholic populations. The only religion to add big numbers in Cook County? Muslims, with Pentecostals trailing far behind. Posted at 6:51 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/08/12 How Sears Guitars Changed the Sound of American Music Twice Sears's cheap line of Silvertone guitars—and its catalog's immense reach—introduced both Delta bluesmen and suburban garage teens to the instrument, shaping the course of American music. Posted at 4:11 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	05/08/12 If You Didn't Think Chicago's Marilyn Monroe Sculpture Could Get Any More Eerie How to pack up a massive, infamous sculpture: some disassembly, and a crane, required. Caution: may result in severe injury to the uncanny valley. Posted at 12:01 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/07/12 What a Walkable City Looks Like Inside Your Head This is your brain in traffic: how we perceive the neighborhoods, streets, and buildings around us—in the car, on foot, and on bike, we create different mental maps. Posted at 7:08 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	05/07/12 Vintage CTA Photos: A Brief Visual History of Our El Cars From the hodgepodge of el tracks, streetcars, and horse cars of turn of the century Chicago, to the design indecisions of mid-century Chicago, to the sleek, SOM-defined el cars of today: a visual tour through mass transit design. Posted at 5:24 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	05/07/12 The Chicago Rail Bottleneck: What It Looks Like on the Ground The Chicago rail bottleneck is back in the news, and improving—but the legislative bottleneck threatening it is in the news as well, as transportation funding runs aground on Washington's partisan divide. Posted at 12:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/04/12 The Parking Meter Lease, And Non-Compete Clauses, Rear Their Heads Again Another week, another possibility the city owes a contractor money based on non-compete clauses in privatization deals. At least we're not alone? Posted at 7:13 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)
	05/04/12 A Brief History of Football Head Injuries and a Look Towards the Future In 1905, a rash of football fatalities almost snuffed out the sport before it began, leading to bans from Illinois school boards and the president's intervention. Another crisis in the 1960s was solved by science. With concussions, we're still trying to decide which is the better approach. Posted at 5:04 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/02/12 Joe Cowley, Sexism, and Title IX Joe Cowley has taken a lot of heat for his "satirical" tweets about women, but he took an especially bad week to use Title IX to needle a female peer: the 40th anniversary of the law that revolutionized female athletics in this country. Posted at 2:56 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/02/12 I Hope the Prairie Buys You More: Fauxtopias, Then and Now A tour of the Detroit suburbs and its historical villages that doubles as a reflection on architecture and memory; and a look at IKEA's model London neighborhood in the shadow of Olympic Stadium. Posted at 12:23 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	05/01/12 NATO, the Chicago Infrastructure Trust, and the Entrepreneurial City Chicago missed out on the Olympics (and the rooftop missiles and rent hikes that inevitably follow). But we do get the NATO consolation prize, and we're not missing out on the "entrepreneurial city" either. Posted at 8:04 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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