Events

Via Sullivan yesterday evening—and for no other reason—I'm passing on an old Baffler article about the morning after: There’s certainly nothing pious or heroic in a hangover. But, trapped in its clutches, you can begin to see it as a wonderful counterbalance, an essential link in the rhythm of life, a stern ebb to an indecorous flow. The hangover is what prompts you to vow, as you fester with your cellmates in that island sanitarium of the demetabolized, “I will never drink again.” Without its vengeful...

In the wake of Arizona torturing a prisoner to death this week, Josh Marshall thinks this signals the end: Why is this craziness happening now? The simplest, best, and almost certainly accurate explanation is that as the noose has tightened around the death penalty, both internationally and within the United States, fewer and fewer credentialed experts have been willing to involve themselves with state mandated executions. Pharmaceutical companies have become more aggressive in making sure their drugs...

I'm back in Chicago today, but catching up on all the things I couldn't do from Cleveland. Regular posting should resume tomorrow. Also, at 6 hours and 15 minutes to get from the client site to my house door-to-door, plus renting a car in Cleveland and having to schlepp bags hither and yon, I'm wondering if I should just drive next time.

Capital punishment is apparently not barbaric enough in itself in Arizona, where another botched execution has made national—but, strangely, not local—news: A condemned Arizona inmate gasped and snorted for more than an hour and a half during his execution Wednesday before he died in an episode sure to add to the scrutiny surrounding the death penalty in the U.S. Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne's office said Joseph Rudolph Wood was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m., one hour and 57 minutes after the...

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...