Events

Just hours after a jury handed down a $26-million verdict against the company, Yellow Cab filed for bankruptcy protection overnight: The verdict was reached around 7 p.m. Tuesday. At 3:45 a.m. Wednesday, Yellow Cab Affiliation Inc. of Chicago filed for Chapter 11 reorganization with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago, according to the court documents. In its filing, company officials said Yellow Cab is "experiencing financial difficulty due to, among other things, a judgment entered against the...

Under the status update "...it's as though millions of llamas suddenly cried out and were suddenly silenced," one of my Facebook friends posted this sad news: Maxis—the developer of SimCity, and a studio I’m comfortable calling one of the most influential of all time—is closing shop. The news was confirmed by designer Guillaume Pierre over Twitter. “Well it was a fun 12 years,” wrote Pierre, “but it's time to turn off the lights and put the key under the door.” Founded by Will Wright and Jeff Braun in...

Very cool simulation: A new data visualization from a coder named Will Gallia shows commuters working their way through a day in the life of London’s Tube as exactly that: busy little pixels of commuting energy. There are a few fun takeaways from this living, breathing transit map. Things get really, really busy, for instance, at around 8:40 in the morning, and again at around 6:10 at night. But there are also areas of consistent low activity: The Hainault Loop in the far right corner, for instance...

Yesterday evening when I walked to rehearsal the temperature in Chicago was 22°C. Four hours later it was 8°C, and it fell to 2°C by sunrise. This is what we call a "pneumonia front," especially when this sort of thing happens mid-day. People go to work or school dressed for warm weather and catch pneumonia on the way home. Add to that the 46 km/h wind gusts out of the north and it's a banner spring morning here in Chicago. Sláinte!

Anthropogenic climate change may have permanently destabilized both the West and East Antarctic Ice Sheets, meaning the planet could experience 3.3 to 4.3 meter sea-level rises in the next few centuries. And even better, gravity will push more towards North America than towards anyplace else: In the event of a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, scientists have determined that the United States will receive moresea level rise than almost any other part of the world. (Granted, so will other...

I was nowhere near Wrigley Field over the weekend, which is good because the St. Patrick's Day "celebration" up there netted 17 arrests (by 3am Sunday) and over 90 police visits to a single McDonald's: 1:47PM — RING THE BELL! We have our first knock-out of the day. An ambulance is summoned for “a guy so drunk he can’t stand up” at 3525 Clark. 1:49PM — Another prize is awarded as police issue the day’s first ticket for drinking on the public way. Rahm’s budget office thanks you, sir. [many, many reports...

Apparently my last four weekends have been pretty busy. Once again I have almost no time to post anything, not least because it's sunny and 13°C, so Parker and I are getting ready to go hiking. So here's a listicle. Generally I hate them, but this one from Inc. listing frequently-misused cliché phrases made me point to my screen and shout "yes, that!" 11. Baited breath The term "bated" is an adjective meaning suspense. It originated from the verb "abate," meaning to stop or lessen. Therefore, "to wait...

I'm in my office, looking outside at the sunny 15°C day and—oh, dear, I must be coming down with something, perhaps I should go home and rest? Chicago was last this warm on November 10th, when it got up to 17°C. That was four months ago. Four. Months. One hundred twenty-three days. *cough* Yep, definitely too sick to stay in the office now...

Yesterday NPR's Fresh Air interviewed Lee Jackson, author of Dirty Old London. Apparently my second-favorite city in the world came late to the sanitation party: [B]y the 1890s, there were approximately 300,000 horses and 1,000 tons of dung a day in London. What the Victorians did, Lee says, was employ boys ages 12 to 14 to dodge between the traffic and try to scoop up the excrement as soon as it hit the streets. This is the thing that's often forgotten: that London at the start of the 19th century, it...

The author of 70 books, including the Discworld series, died this morning at his home in the UK: Pratchett, who had early onset Alzheimer’s disease, leaves his wife, Lyn, and their daughter, Rhianna. He continued to write and completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014 before succumbing to the final stages of the disease. He was the UK’s bestselling author of the 1990s and sold more than 85m books worldwide. After his diagnosis, he urged people to “keep things cheerful”...