Events

The European Commission yesterday announced they've reached a broad agreement with the United States to allow trans-Atlantic data transfers that respect European privacy laws: The EU-US Privacy Shield reflects the requirements set out by the European Court of Justice in its ruling on 6 October 2015, which declared the old Safe Harbour framework invalid. The new arrangement will provide stronger obligations on companies in the U.S. to protect the personal data of Europeans and stronger monitoring and...

This is what happens when you work across the street from the Chicago Teachers Union: As part of their negotiations with the Chicago Public Schools and the City of Chicago, the CTU are withdrawing their funds from Bank of America. The Tribune has background: One day after the Chicago Teachers Union rejected a contract proposal from Chicago Public Schools, district officials said they would slash school budgets and stop paying the bulk of teachers' pension contributions — moves CTU's president quickly...

I forgot yesterday—blocked it out, more likely—that not only were the February 1sts in 2011 and 2014 horrible, so was last February 1st. (On the other hand, 2012 was ridiculously warm, and 2013 was just really cold. In 2010, I was in India, so what do I know?) Today it's just rainy and cold (but obviously above freezing), and I'm about to head into it.

Stuff: Deeply Trivial explains a haunting using Occam's Razor. Delta Airlines apologized for a fistfight between two flight attendants. The Chicago Public Schools have been in trouble for a while, but it just got worse. Krugman predicted two horrible people would top the GOP results in Iowa last night, and he was right. New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority will roll out new "open gangway" subway cars by 2020. Hey, brewers, stop these horrible craft brewing trends. Please. Someone call lunch...

It's sunny and just above freezing today, and all our snow melted over the weekend. So let's just remember for a moment the weather in Chicago five years ago today: And just two years ago today, we got our 34th consecutive day with snowfall. So I'll take a snowless, above-freezing February 1st any year.

No more or less than any other state. But that doesn't mean Iowans have any ability to pick winning candidates for president: The problem is not that the people of Iowa are stupid. They are not, by most measurements. It’s that Iowa looks nothing like the rest of America. As a result, the winners, more often than not, are nationally unelectable extremists. Who can remember President Rick Santorum or President Mike Huckabee, both previous winners? Or President Uncommitted, who beat Jimmy Carter in 1976?...

I've meant to post this for a while. Here's a photo looking south-west from a point just southwest of the intersection of Wacker and Michigan, here in Chicago, in April 1986: And here's a similar view today. Note that you can no longer see the Thompson Center, City Hall, or anything else beyond the row of skyscrapers erected on Wacker between Wabash and Clark since then: The photos aren't from the same vantage point, because this afternoon I only had my phone and not my SLR. I will try to get a photo...

On this day 180 years ago (28 January 1836), John L. Wilson purchased 33 hectares of land about 16 km from the city, by what is now 83rd and Cottage Grove. At the time it was a swath of prairie two hours outside Chicago. But through a series of missteps, slow City workers, and a very long-lived lawsuit, no one developed the land until 1940, by which time the city had grown to surround the lot on all sides: The property was so remote—and the value so depressed—that nobody paid much attention to it for...

On this day in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean: A little more than a minute after launch and high above Kennedy Space Center, shuttle Challenger was ripped apart after failure of a rubber seal allowed a spurt of rocket flame to ignite the spacecraft's giant fuel tank. The roiling plume of Challenger's disintegration would sear an image in the nation's psyche that spoke of a particular sorrow; among seven astronauts killed 30 years ago [today] was teacher Christa...

Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner believes in smaller government and lower taxes, so much so that he's blocked the state budget process since the last budget ended in June 2015. Since the state has no budget, we haven't paid our bills, so our IOUs just keep getting bigger: Moody's Investors Service says the state's backlog of unpaid bills and other obligations now is rising roughly $450 million a month, hitting $6.6 billion as of Dec. 31. Projections from Rauner's budget are that the total will...