Events

Politico's Tim Alberta describes what happens "when a party gives up on ideas:" It can now safely be said, as his first term in the White House draws toward closure, that Donald Trump’s party is the very definition of a cult of personality. It stands for no special ideal. It possesses no organizing principle. It represents no detailed vision for governing. Filling the vacuum is a lazy, identity-based populism that draws from that lowest common denominator Sanford alluded to. If it agitates the base, if...

I'm going into my downtown Chicago office twice a week, even though I'm the only one on the floor, just so I can get some variety and also more monitors for my work laptop. Last week the building started piping classical music into the main lobby. They, or the streaming provider, have chosen pretty basic stuff: Mozart piano concerti, Haydn symphonies, the occasional string quartet. Today the walk-on music was Barber's Adagio for Strings. Think about the movies that used this piece and ask yourself, is...

Welcome to stop #32 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Mickey Finn's Brewery, 345 N. Milwaukee Ave., LibertyvilleTrain line: Milwaukee District North, LibertyvilleTime from Chicago: 67 minutes (Zone H)Distance from station: 600 m If you look at the Brews and Choos Map, you will notice that the Milwaukee District North line has only two breweries near its stations in Lake County. Grayslake's Light the Lamp Brewery was delightful, and I may go back this summer. Mickey Finn's, well, they're in...

Atlas Obscura published a map of 1,500 places mentioned in 12 books about American cross-country travel: The above map is the result of a painstaking and admittedly quixotic effort to catalog the country as it has been described in the American road-tripping literature. It includes every place-name reference in 12 books about cross-country travel, from Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872) to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012), and maps the authors’ routes on top of one another. You can track an individual writer’s...

Chicago experienced its hottest summers (June 1st through August 31st) in 1955 (24.7°C), 1995 (24.6°C), and 2012 (24.5°C). As of Thursday, we've had an average temperature of 24.6°C—already tied for 2nd place. If the 10-day forecast holds, we will end the summer a week from Monday with an average temperature of 24.7°C, tying the 1955 record. WGN-TV's Tom Skilling explains why we have this situation, despite none of the three months of 2020 making it into the top 3. (Hint: all three made it into the top...

Brewery closed permanently in June 2024. Welcome to stop #31 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Light the Lamp Brewery, 2 S. Lake St., GrayslakeTrain line: Milwaukee District North, GrayslakeTime from Chicago: 76 minutes (Zone I)Distance from station: 1.0 km A friend and I planned to have dinner up in Lake County yesterday, so I managed to squeeze in two breweries. We've had sunny and warm weather, perfect for sitting in a quiet beer garden with a book. Light the Lamp Brewery totally fits the...

Former vice president Joe Biden accepted the Democratic Party nomination for president last night: Speaking before a row of flags in his home state of Delaware, Mr. Biden urged Americans to have faith that they could “overcome this season of darkness,” and pledged that he would seek to bridge the country’s political divisions in ways Mr. Trump had not. “The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long — too much anger, too much fear, too much division,” Mr. Biden said. “Here and...

Geographer Randy Cerveny heads up an ad hoc committee of the World Meteorological Organisation tasked with validating weather records: Since 2007, Cerveny has been in charge of organizing ad hoc committees to independently verify superlative weather measurements — such as the highest ocean wave or the strongest wind gust. Now, when a new contender for a record appears, he gathers the top experts in any given subject. "If we're looking at temperature, I'm going to get some of the best scientists that...

It's been 153 days since the State of Illinois instituted an emergency shutdown of the economy. Friday March 20th was the last "normal" day in the state; since then, we've lived with lockdowns, social distancing, and all the other fun bits of our pandemic response. I mention this because January 20th is 153 days away. We'll get there.

This photo popped up in my Facebook "Memories" feed this morning, so I spent five minutes correcting it. (You can see the original crop and color correction in my post from 14 August 2009.) Man, that was a great hike. I miss the UK, I miss traveling, and I kind of miss these cows. I hope to see the first two next spring; the cows, I expect, mooed their last years ago.