Events

Downloading to my Kindle right now: The State of the American Dog Cost of Living is All About Housing This Executive Order Is Totally Gay Part-Time Workers Deserve the Shift, Not the Shaft ...and a few articles I found last week that just made it onto my Kindle tonight. Oh, and I almost forgot: today is the 80th anniversary of John Dillinger's death just six blocks from where I now live.

Business travel has certain built-in costs. All we business travelers really want in a hotel is a decent night's sleep. Alas, alas. Here's the review I just submitted to TripAdvisor about how one engineering decision can make someone want to leave and never come back: I'm now in my second stay at the Aloft Beachwood in as many weeks. As a traveling professional, I often spend time in places without cute bistros or even sidewalks to put them on, where four nights out of seven I'm surrounded by decor I...

Since Cabrini-Green came down a couple of years ago, developers have salivated over the possibilities for the Near North area. This morning's Crain's has the latest: Construction crews recently were busy drilling holes for the foundation of an 18-story, 240-unit apartment building at Division and Howe streets, one of several private developments sprouting just steps from the former Cabrini-Green towers. “The skyline's going to change really quickly over there,” says Matt Edlen, director of Midwest and...

Once the Tribune published a story about strange, unexplained spikes in red-light traffic camera tickets, even Ted Baxter could foresee the lawsuit. But even before that scandal, there was this one, which has also spawned a lawsuit: Matthew Falkner, who received a red-light ticket for $100 in January 2013, alleges in the suit that Redflex was only able to generate more than $100 million in revenue over the last 11 years because it had bribed a city official to get the contract. The lawsuit alleges a...

Pilot and journalist James Fallows has an op-ed in today's New York Times explaining how MH17 was following the rules: Before Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 took off on Thursday, its crew and dispatchers would have known that a few hours earlier Ukrainian authorities had prohibited flights at 32,000 feet and below across eastern parts of their country, “due to combat actions ... near the state border” with Russia, as the official notice put it, including the downing of a Ukrainian military transport plane...

Stuff to read this weekend, perhaps on my flight Sunday night: Josh Marshall calls the MH17 shoot-down a mind-boggling screw-up of Putin's. So does David Remnick, but more nuanced. Chicago's infamous red-light cameras have suddenly started issuing massive numbers of tickets, and nobody seems to know why. A 2013 court decision has caused an increase in delays on Amtrak trains nationwide... ...which isn't helping their financial situation. Now back to the mines. Which, given the client I'm working on...

I'm still outraged at the Russian thugs who shot down MH17 today. But a couple of other things were noteworthy: Someone, possibly Chinese military, infiltrated the e-QIP database that the Office of Management and Budget maintains to keep security clearance information. Schneier points out, "This is a big deal. If I were a government, trying to figure out who to target for blackmail, bribery, and other coercive tactics, this would be a nice database to have." In a turn of events that should surprise no...

Rebel forces in southeastern Ukraine appear to be responsible for downing a civilian plane with 295 passengers and crew aboard. The U.S. has confirmed someone shot the plane down with a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile: An unnamed American official has confirmed that the Malaysian passenger jet that crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday was shot down, according to multiple media reports. The official told CNN that a radar spotted a surface-to-air missile track an aircraft right before Malaysia...

Via the Economist's Gulliver blog, Airbus has taken out a patent on the worst airplane seats imaginable: Airbus’s patent says that traditional seats cannot be narrowed any further, or the pitch reduced much more, in order to accommodate extra passengers. Therefore, carriers will have to redesign the seats if they want to cram in more flyers. Its suggestion is a fold-down saddle, a small backrest and a couple of retractable armrests. Certainly no tray-tables, underseat storage or pockets to keep your...

The Atlantic's CityLab blog, of course: For all the monorail enthusiasts out there just now learning that New York once had its own single-track wonder, put your excitement on hold. For on this date in 1910, during its inaugural journey, the monorail lurched over, sending scores of people to the hospital. The painful incident can be traced to the slick salesmanship of one Howard Tunis, who did so well demonstrating his novel design for an electric monorail at a 1907 exposition in Virginia that he gained...