Events

The first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is about to begin. I'll be sipping on one or more martinis and making snarky comments. For real live-blogging check out Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan. Oh, and the Times. I was going to watch PBS, but apparently Bloomberg will be fact-checking in real time. Let the games begin... 21:04 EDT: Oh, can't do Bloomberg. Moved back to PBS with Gwen Ifill, Mark Shields, David Gergen, and a few other sane people. 21:06: Bad timing! My big New...

My goal yesterday was to walk at least as far as I did back in June, when I hoofed it from Uptown to Highland Park (28.95 km, 4:32:52, 32,595 steps). Well, yesterday I didn't, for a couple of reasons: first, I'm recovering from a cold. Second, it was 5°C warmer yesterday than June 16th. And third, I started later in the day, so I had less time to do the trip. Also I was a bit stupid: around hour 3½, I hit the wall, but didn't realize I had, until I finally stopped in a convenience store and downed a...

As of yesterday's final home game, the Cubs have won 99 games and lost 56—the best record in baseball this year—including 57 games at Wrigley, which tied the team record set in 1933 and 1935. There are six games left in the season, so the Cubs won't pass 107 games (last reached in 1907) or their team-record 116 wins (set in 1906). But who cares? The only record that most of us Cubs fans want to see broken is the one for most World Series won in a season, which currently stands at 1 (last set in 1908)....

I didn't walk as far as I'd planned today, but it was still pretty damn far. And hot. So I'm pooped. More later.

Tonight I've gotten invited to hear Lin-Manuel Miranda speak at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and after that, a masquerade. Then tomorrow is Chicago Gourmet. Then Sunday I'll either plotz or walk 30 kilometers. (Though in truth I'll probably be fine as my cold, tapering though it is, makes me not want to indulge too much.) Meanwhile, here are some articles that I may read in the next few hours: This month has been really hot and rainy in Illinois. Bleah. One more thing Trump is wrong about: Stop and...

Garrett Epps, writing for The Atlantic, warns that the advent of Trumpism comes mainly from an erosion of our collective understanding of and belief in the reasons our Constitution was written in the first place: Trumpism is the symptom, not the cause, of the malaise. I think we have for some time been living in the post-Constitution era. America’s fundamental law remains and will remain important as a source of litigation. But the nation seems to have turned away from a search of values in the...

Here are some things that are occupying me while I figure out who delivers matzoh ball soup: Andrew Sullivan recounts his time being an Internet addict. The Daily WTF explains how not to do caching. Deeply Trivial talks about natural-language processing. CityLab bemoans Chicago's crime wave. The AP describes how Trump screwed Gary, Ind., in much the same way he would screw the entire country. I also have a book or 50 somewhere. And I need a nap.

Via Deeply Trivial, BoingBoing's Caroline Seide posits the radical notion that Hillary Clinton's likability challenges may be simply because she's a complex woman: Hillary Clinton is on one hand the most qualified human being to ever run for president of the United States, and, on the other, one of the most disliked presidential candidates of all time. In fact, Donald Trump is the only candidate who is more disliked than Clinton. And he’s not onlyovertly racist, sexist, and Islamophobic, but also unfit...

Four days after clinching the National League Central, the Cubs are still the only team in baseball to have gotten to the division championship, and the only team to have won 90+ games, and the only team to have lost fewer than 60. Hey, it could happen this year. Of course, the sign on Sheffield still says AC0071108, meaning it's been 108 years since they last won the World Series and 71 since they last won a pennant. 

The Chicago Tribune reports that the annoying trend of using smaller airplanes for longer routes is taking off over the Atlantic: The re-engined 737 Max and A320neo jets offer a 15 percent fuel saving meant to cut costs on the shortest inter-city services. At the same time the revamp has added about 800 km to their range -- just enough to allow the narrow-bodies to span the 5,000 km between the eastern U.S. and Western Europe. Norwegian Air Shuttle, JetBlue Airways and Portugal's TAP are among airlines...