Events

I've gotten an offer I couldn't refuse. Starting January 5th, I'll be the Chief Technology Officer of Holden International. Holden has a deep technology strategy for 2015 and beyond. As the guy who (with 10th Magnitude) developed a good hunk of their existing technology, they had me as their first choice for this new role. I'm beyond excited to be working with them again. It's kind of weird to be leaving West Monroe Partners after such a short tenure. Really, I can't think of better circumstances for my...

Major announcement coming this afternoon. While prepping for that, however, I have cued up more things to read and one to watch: The Times revisits John Hughes locations in and around Chicago. Surprising no one, a study has found that Chicago's red light cameras don't make us safer. But they do generate revenue for the city. Crain's reviews the biggest Chicago architecture stories of 2014. And I found this classic Margo Guryan tune from 1968 that I can't get out of my head:

The trouble with holiday parties on Wednesday is that you have to function on Thursday. So, to spare my brain from having to do anything other than the work-related things its already got to do, here are things I will read later: Dick Cheney is a monster. Police subterfuge is a security problem, and can have very bad unintended consequences. There are some new improvements in Microsoft Azure automation. Our policy on Cuba, which the president just ended, was colossally stupid. Chicago's winter may not...

After 38 years of publication, Dr. Dobbs is shutting down: Why would a well-known site, dearly loved by its readers and coming off a year of record page views, be sunset by its owner? In one word, revenue. Four years ago, when I came to Dr. Dobb's, we had healthy profits and revenue, almost all of it from advertising. Despite our excellent growth on the editorial side, our revenue declined such that today it's barely 30% of what it was when I started. While some of this drop is undoubtedly due to...

Finally, after 50 years of stupidity: The United States intends to open an official embassy in Cuba in the coming months, the White House announced Wednesday, part of a broader normalizing of diplomatic relations after the countries exchanged prisoners. The White House said that Obama would order Secretary of State John Kerry to begin discussions with Cuban officials on re-establishing diplomatic relations and high-level discussions and visits between the countries are expected to follow. The opening of...

What happens when you're a talking head and your mom calls into your show? The Woodhouse brothers are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Brad is a Democratic operative who helps run the super PAC American Bridge and Dallas, by contrast, is a Republican who helps run the conservative Carolina Rising. The were on C-SPAN to talk about their documentary, Woodhouse Divided, when their mother called in. Hilarity ensued:

Very busy today; less so the rest of the week. So after I'm done with this deliverable today I'll read these: Wow, the Bears suck ass. Wait, yak poop is a problem? Oy, NASA spent $349m on a project after the project was cancelled. Heh, politicians sometimes lie. Cool, the space L2O is leaving next month will reopen quickly with a rotating-chef concept. Yo, come hear The Messiah on Saturday. Back to the mines...

In the legislation passed over the weekend that will keep the U.S. government operating for another few months, the House had its cake and ate it with respect to marijuana. Slate's Josh Voorhees explains: Among the myriad policy riders buried inside the 1,600-plus-page bill is one aimed at blocking the Washington, D.C., City Council from legalizing recreational marijuana, something voters in the district instructed them to do by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 last month. That ban was inserted at the behest...

I was a bit overloaded yesterday, so I didn't have time to absorb these articles thoroughly: The Atlantic's CityLab blog wants an end to horrible license plates. Krugman is weary of financial commentators who can't learn what the zero-lower-bound means. Want some real excitement? The IRS has raised standard mileage rates for 2015. I know: shut the front door! Illinois Climatologist Jim Angel says we have almost no chance of a white Christmas this year. I say, fine. Even though I thought the 10 km walk...

...if we weren't arming drug dealers?"—Aaron Sorkin Alas, Americans increasingly want everyone to have guns: For the first time since Pew began asking the question two decades ago, a majority of Americans now say that gun rights are more important than gun control — a striking shift in public opinion over both the last generation and just the last few years. As recently as December 2012, in the immediate aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., shooting, 51 percent of people surveyed by Pew said it was more...