Events

Just a few articles of note today: The City of Chicago urges residents to call 311 to report non-essential business remaining open. President Trump admitted on "Fox & Friends" this morning that adopting common-sense election reforms would mean "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." (Unless, I suppose, they changed their policies to match the mainstream, right?) The Times reports on General Motors' efforts to produce 2,000 ventilators a month (an order-of-magnitude change from...

And now, Adult Storytime brings you Brenda's Beaver Needs a Barber:

Subway ridership numbers for New York City show a slower-than-expected drop-off. Still, IHME has New York Covid-19 cases peaking April 7th, while Covid Act Now says April 28th. Florida, where idiots flocked to beaches and churches this weekend, should see its peak mid-May with cases lingering through July. IHME puts Illinois' peak at April 18th; Covid Act Now, April 28th. But our shelter-in-place rules should lengthen our experience through the beginning of June. Oh, goody. The New York Times has new...

At some point, we will probably settle on the red planet. In a fascinating article from 2018, The Atlantic wondered how we'll police it: Consider the basic science of crime-scene analysis. In the dry, freezer-like air and extreme solar exposure of Mars, DNA will age differently than it does on Earth. Blood from blunt-trauma and stab wounds will produce dramatically new spatter patterns in the planet’s low gravity. Electrostatic charge will give a new kind of evidentiary value to dust found clinging to...

A Tweet is making the rounds right now: The Covid corporate bonus bailout costs about $18,000 per citizen. So Congress is taking $18,000 from you, giving $16,800 to corporations and giving you back a check for $1,200. My reply to the Facebook friend who posted the Tweet: It's not that simple. First, given the current political landscape, where a minority of 44% of the population have 53 Senate votes to the 66% of us who have 47, compromise—that is, weakening the recovery legislation—was inevitable....

Passover starts next week, but in no small irony, most seders have been cancelled because of plague. It would have been enough if we just had covid-19; but we also get thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes tonight: Adhering to the stay-at-home order should come easier Saturday as the rumble of thunder began in the early morning hours and was expected to continue throughout the day. In a hazardous weather outlook, officials warned of possible thunderstorms, large hail and up to 60 mph winds through Sunday....

People who don't study history tend not to understand why our foreign allies and adversaries behave the ways they do. Case in point: the Soviet Union, of which the largest part lives on as the Russian Federation, ended in part because we forced them to spend down their economy just to keep up with us. They might still hate us a little for that. One man who helped this effort, Gus Weiss, hit on the idea of sabotaging the technology that Soviet spies bought or stole from American and other Western...

Welcome to 2020, the year when the GOP says the quiet things out loud. In the middle of a pandemic, the Environmental Protection Agency has given every polluter who wants one a get-out-of-jail-free card: The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced a sweeping relaxation of environmental rules in response to the coronavirus pandemic, allowing power plants, factories and other facilities to determine for themselves if they are able to meet legal requirements on reporting air and water...

Because of Chicago's weather yesterday (14°C and sunny), a ton of Gen Z kids broke quarantine and headed to the lakefront. This has now had entirely predictable consequences: Multiple aldermen along and near Chicago's lakefront have confirmed the closure of the trail along Lake Michigan, less than 24 hours after Mayor Lori Lightfoot threatened closure because of a lack of social distancing among trail and park users. Aldermen say the downtown Riverwalk and the 606 Trail are closed, as well. Ald. James...

Welcome to stop #25 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Lunar Brewing Co., 54 E. St. Charles Rd., Villa ParkTrain line: Union Pacific West, Villa ParkTime from Chicago: 36 minutes (Zone D)Distance from station: 900 m Sometimes you find good beer in unexpected places. Lunar Brewing in Villa Park appears as any other dive bar off a suburban stroad, but they have brewed their own beer since 1996. I didn't have a lot of time so I tried only one of the six house beers on draft, the Scottish Ale: I liked...