Events

The Tribune reported about half an hour ago that the Cubs have agreed to the Mayor's proposal and will scale back their signage plans: The Cubs agreed to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s requested conditions in order to present its latest renovation proposal Thursday to the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, including reducing the size of signs along exterior outfield walls and to continue negotiating with rooftop owners who have said the signs will hurt their businesses, according to a City Hall source. The changes...

For the last couple of days, I've had trouble getting to Microsoft's Azure blog. From my office in downtown Chicago, clicking the link gives me an error message: The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. However, going to the same URL from a virtual machine on Azure takes me to the blog. So what's going on here? It took a little detective work, but I think Microsoft has a configuration error one of a set of geographically-distributed Azure...

The heirs of actor John Wayne, who manage his likeness and other trademarks associated with him, have sued Duke University to resolve a long-running dispute over the name: Duke University has been fighting with the late actor's heirs over "Duke" trademarks (restaurant services, gaming machines, celebrity licensing services, etc.) for nearly a decade, and last year, the school stepped forward after John Wayne's family attempted to register "Duke" for all alcoholic beverages except beer. The school told...

To lose one partially-completed airplane is unfortunate; to lose six smacks of carelessness: Nineteen cars in a 90-car BNSF Railway Co train loaded with six 737 narrow-body fuselages and assemblies for Boeing's 777 and 747 wide-body jets derailed near Rivulet, Montana on Thursday. Oops. At least no one was hurt. Photo: Kyle Massick, Reuters

Via Calculated Risk, the Atlantic cautions people not to freak out about 20-somethings living at home: More than ever, young people are living in their parents' basements. You've surely heard that one before. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the New Republic, Salon, and others have repeated it over and over in the last few years. More than 15.3 million twentysomethings—and half of young people under 25—live "in their parents’ home," according to official Census statistics. There's just one...

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart . (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx .) In the early part of July, we hardly notice sunrises and sunsets. Days are long, it's still light out at 9pm (in Chicago), and we commute to work in broad sunlight. About a month from now we'll get a twinge when the sun sets at 8pm, and then, faster and faster, we'll notice the days getting shorter and our morning commutes getting darker. Meh. That's in a month....

Way back in the Ford and Carter administrations, part of my family lived in Manhattan Beach, Calif., a close-in suburb of L.A. During that period, Steven Spielberg made Jaws. And then this happened yesterday: A swimmer was attacked by a shark Saturday morning. The unidentified victim, described as a long-distance swimmer between 35 and 40 years of age, suffered a single bite wound on the right side of his rib cage. He was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and was described as stable. Witnesses told...

Nothing of political or social import this morning. Just a photo from yesterday, of my friend's 20-month-old daughter climbing up a slide. I watched this kid go up and down this slide structure like she owned it. I'm no developmental psychologist, but it sure seemed to me she was way ahead of where a 20-month-old would ordinarily be in spatial reasoning and motor control. Plus she's damn cute:

Embattled clothing retailer American Apparel tweeted an Independence Day ad yesterday showing a stylized photo of the 1986 Challenger explosion with the hashtags "#smoke" and "#clouds." (I will not post the image here.) Shortly after, they tweeted a heartfelt apology blaming the child that somehow they put in charge of social media. Unfortunately, they also have a child, Ryan Holiday (born in June 1987), running their entire marketing department, who threw his social media flunky under the bus to cover...

I love the night buses in London. Given my habit of staying on Chicago time, I've ridden my share of them. (If American 90 arrives after 11:30pm, I'm guaranteed to do so.) So today's story in the Atlantic's CityLab blog about the phenomenon made me smile: You see, London’s night buses are actually the great, unsung glory of the city’s travel network. Compared with cabs, they’re dirt cheap (they cost the same as a regular daytime bus), come extremely frequently and cover a wide area, and go quickly...