Events

Sediment under Lake Chichancanab on the Yucatan Peninsula has offered scientists a clearer view of what happened to the Mayan civilization: Scientists have several theories about why the collapse happened, including deforestation, overpopulation and extreme drought. New research, published in Science Thursday, focuses on the drought and suggests, for the first time, how extreme it was. [S]cientists found a 50 percent decrease in annual precipitation over more than 100 years, from 800 to 1,000 A.D. At...

When I get home tonight, I'll need to read these (and so should you): The New York Times magazine has a long article on how we almost fixed climate change between 1979 and 1989; New Republic has a critique. A house in the Irving Park community in northwest Chicago might have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. A non-profit organization in Chicago is trying to fix our polluted canals, starting with a stretch by the flagship Whole Foods Market on Kingsbury. National Geographic has the story of Mauro...

Bloomberg published on Monday a super-cool analysis of U.S. land use patterns: Using surveys, satellite images and categorizations from various government agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture divides the U.S. into six major types of land. The data can’t be pinpointed to a city block—each square on the map represents 250,000 acres of land. But piecing the data together state-by-state can give a general sense of how U.S. land is used. Gathered together, cropland would take up more than a fifth of...

Happy August! (Wait, where did April go?) As I munch on my salad at my desk today, I'm reading these stories: New Republic wonders if Charles Koch really thinks mainstream Democrats will embrace his vision. (tl;dr: not bloody likely.) Jennifer Rubin takes a look at President Trump's latest rally in Tampa with alarm at his supporters' disconnection from reality. The Atlantic outlines how Paul Manafort's trial in Virginia this week exposes the growing kleptocracy in Washington. In Chicago, businesses and...

Greg Sargent points out how President Trump's latest tweetstorm shows his utter contempt for the voters who elected him: The campaign story Trump told about self-enriching globalist elites was that they have employed permissive immigration and misguided or corrupt trade policies to subject U.S. workers to debilitating labor competition from border-crossing migrants and slave-wage workers in China. Trump supplemented this economic nationalism with vows to make wealthy investors pay more, secure huge...

Aimee Mann performed last night at Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park—for free! So naturally I went. The weather couldn't have been better, so the picnic area was totally full. Which meant that the pavilion itself had plenty of seats. Which meant I got to see her directly rather than just projected on a big screen. Just for posterity, here's her set list: 4th of July Little Bombs Patient Zero The Moth Labrador Humpty Dumpty You Can't Help Me You Never Loved Me Goose Snow Cone (which, she...

On this day in 1850, Chicago had its first (sort-of) professional opera performance. It wasn't exactly up to the Lyric's standards: In New York, P.T. Barnum was paying Jenny Lind—“The Swedish Nightingale”—$1,000 a night to perform. Chicago’s first opera didn’t have Jenny Lind. But the local promoters were crafty enough to choose one of her biggest hits for their first show, at Rice’s Theatre. The opera was Bellini’s La Sonnambula. Four singers are not enough for an opera. So the Chicago cast was filled...

It's 25°C and partly cloudy today, so I'm spending as much as possible outside. Regular posting will resume when I'm once again trapped inside by some unfortunate event, like work.

The New York Times has published an interactive map showing the 2016 presidential election results at the precinct level. Generally, precincts are the smallest unit of reporting electoral data, often with just a few hundred people in them. My precinct, for example, has just over 1,000 residents and occupies less than 6 hectares. A companion article breaks down how most of the precincts overwhelmingly went to one or the other candidate. Mine, for example, had 613 votes for Hillary Clinton and just 40 for...

As London broils in 34°C heat today, New Republic's Emily Atkin asks, "Why are some major news outlets still covering extreme weather like it's an act of God?" The science is clear: Heat-trapping greenhouse gases have artificially increased the average temperature across the globe, making extreme heat events more likely. This has also increased the risk of frequent and more devastating wildfires, as prolonged heat dries soil and turns vegetation into tinder. And yet, despite these facts, there’s no...