Events

If you haven't discovered Randy Rainbow, here you go: He was in Chicago last night, at Thalia Hall in Pilsen, and I got a chance to hear him live. And today, he's on the cover of the Washington Post Magazine: In a topsy-turvy era, is it surprising that a political commentator should dress in sequins, feather boas and pink cat-eye glasses? Because that’s Randy Rainbow (yes, it’s his given name). In real life, the 37-year-old leads a solitary existence in an orderly apartment adorned with oversize...

It's the first day of summer, and I had to wait for an air-conditioner repair guy, so I started updating the Inner Drive Technology website. Version 4 of the Inner Drive Framework is what we call a "breaking change." It's totally incompatible, in other words. So this should be fun.

The Illinois legislature has passed a bill legalizing small amounts of recreational marijuana and directing the governor to pardon thousands of low-level drug offenders: Illinois is poised to be the 11th state in the country to legalize recreational marijuana beginning Jan. 1, 2020. The state House of Representatives approved its legalization bill 66-47 on Friday. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, who campaigned on legalizing cannabis, quickly released a statement saying he’ll sign the legislation. “It is...

The Tribune reports that today ends Chicago's second-wettest spring ever, the wettest May ever, and the only second month in recorded history (out of 1,770 months) to have 21 days of precipitation. This might become the new normal: 9 of the last 10 Mays have had above-average precipitation. Lake Michigan, the inland sea ten blocks from where I'm sitting, has near-record water levels: Lake Ontario, downstream, has swelled by almost a meter in the last two months to all-time record levels: So not only has...

As Chicago finishes the wettest May in history, Bloomberg points out that all the rain has caused serious problems with Illinois agriculture: Rabobank is predicting an unprecedented number of unplanted acres of corn, the most widely grown American crop. A Bloomberg survey of 10 traders and analysts indicates growers could file insurance claims for about 6 million corn acres they haven’t been able to sow, almost double the record in 2013. Corn futures surged more than 20% to a three-year high over the...

Two made the news this week. First, Lampert has sued Sears (which he owns) for not conveying property that his investment firm bought from the doomed retailer: Lampert's Transform is accusing the Sears estate, a bankrupt shell entity that is winding down under court supervision, of multiple wrongs including breaking the agreement by holding on to the chain's headquarters in Illinois. The estate is also intentionally delaying payments to vendors and trying to shift $166 million in accounts payable costs...

Williams College Biology Professor Luana Maroja sounds the alarm as she sees students challenging long-established science on political grounds: The trouble began when we discussed the notion of heritability as it applies to human intelligence. I asked students to think about the limitations of the data, which do not control for environmental differences, and explained that the raw numbers say nothing about whether observed differences are indeed “inborn”—that is, genetic. There is, of course, a long...

Today's Daily Parker flash of inspiration will memorialize my update to an obsolete proverb. Instead of "a stopped watch is right twice a day," substitute "a dead mobile gets no bad texts." On second thought, they're not orthogonal. But in my defense, I was thinking of the president at the time.

Just a few things in the news: The Illinois legislature has approved an amendment to the state constitution that, if approved by voters in November 2020, will allow the state to set up a graduated income tax. The current proposal would slightly lower taxes for most people but dramatically increase taxes for people making over $500,000 per year. James Fallows has a look at the real complexities of the urban-rural divide in the US. James Comey has an Op-Ed in the Post about the dumb lies the President...

Yesterday Chicago set a few weather records: wettest Memorial Day ever recorded, tied for most days in May with measurable prediction (18), tied for most days in May that have had more than 7.6 mm of precipitation (10), and up to the 3rd wettest month of May (186 mm). And we have more rain predicted tonight. Warmer air holds more moisture. The atmosphere worldwide is warmer. QED.