By Whet Moser
Compared to its metro peers, Chicago's doesn't offer terrible commutes. The people you should really be sympathizing with are our truckers. Read more
Whet Moser
By Whet Moser
Newt Gingrich keeps needling Barack Obama and Joe Biden about holding hearings in Chicago on Chicago violence. It might look like a trap. But it's not necessarily a bad idea. Read more
By Whet Moser
As Cyntha Brim, poster-judge for the failures of our judicial retention system, goes to trial this week on charges of misdemeanor battery, state rep Kelly Cassidy introduces reforms that would focus voters on the borderline judges. Read more
By Whet Moser
For a couple years in the 1950s, the hamburgers many Chicagoans consumed were as much horse as cow—up to 40 percent. The Syndicate worked a rich arbitrage of cultural taboos, at least until they got caught and horse meat dominated the headlines for a year. Read more
By Whet Moser
It's well known that a portion of high-profile ambassadorships (around 30 percent, usually) go to big-money donors or powerful friends of the president. And two Penn State profs have calculated, broadly, how much it costs and where each is likely to go. But Chicago's Louis Susman proves that you can get there by being a bit of both. Read more
By Whet Moser
The reassignment of desk cops to patrol includes a strengthening of "saturation units," a compromise strategy between the CPD's old, controversial gang-strike units and McCarthy's philosophy of community policing. Read more
By Whet Moser
Does it have too much parking? Too little? Is it too much like its neighbors... or too much like towers in Spain, Chile, Abu Dhabi, and China? Developing one of Chicago's most significant and most underused plots of land is, and will be, a fraught process. Read more
By Whet Moser
A job doing research and development for the Cubs has opened up, working alongside new hire and sabermetrics expert Tom Tango—who explodes the Bartman myth with the Leverage Index. Read more
By Whet Moser
The first use of computers to analyze baseball? It appears to have been a bizarre spasm of midcentury modernization by Phil Wrigley with his struggling Cubs. It didn't take. 20 years later, the White Sox—with future GM Dan Evans—put analysis to its highest use, creating lots and lots of home runs. Read more
By Whet Moser
Aside from the obvious sources—nearby counties and states that don't have Chicago's history of strict gun laws—a surprising number of guns come up north from the Delta into the city, a current dilemma overlaying the old tracks of history. Read more