Events

Cassie and I both love these crystal-clear autumn days in Chicago, though as far as I know she spent her first two autumns in Tennessee. Does Nashville have crisp fall mornings? I don't know for sure, and Cassie won't say. I meant to highlight these stories yesterday but got into the deep flow of refactoring: People who adopted dogs during the pandemic have discovered that dogs cost money. No kidding. Also, living alone costs more than living with a partner, even though singles have more social contacts...

The Tribune yesterday reported that local breweries have started producing more lagers as people get tired of IPAs: Lager accounts for most of the beer sold in the world — including the 16 biggest-selling brands in the United States — but it has rarely been a recipe for success for craft breweries, which often default to ratcheting up experimentation, flavor and intensity. Lager, by contrast, tends to be approachable and predictable. Think Miller Lite. Michelob Ultra. Modelo Especial. While tropically...

I was pretty busy today, with most of my brain trying to figure out how to re-architect something that I didn't realize needed it until recently. So a few things piled up in my inbox: David Corn is reporting that US Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has basically halted his party's own progress to, well, progress, threatened to leave the Democratic Party if he didn't get his way. Part of the President's agenda includes starting to build a 320 km/h rail line from New York to Boston that includes a tunnel...

Had fun yesterday? Try these next 10: 11. All dace are platy. Some dace are cod. Therefore: (A) All cod are not platy (B) Some cod are not platy (C) Some cod are platy (D) All platy are dace (E) All dace are not cod (F) Some dace are not cod 12. Some skinks are plastrons. All turtles are not skinks. Therefore: (A) All skinks are not plastrons (B) Some turtles are skinks (C) All turtles are plastrons (D) Some turtles are not plastrons (E) Some skinks are not plastrons (F) All skinks are turtles 13. If...

I found this quiz in a (virtual) pile of things from my first year at university. Have fun! Answers and more questions tomorrow. (The answers may surprise you, unless you really dig in to the logic.) 1. Either auxins are proteins or petioles grow on auxins. If auxins areproteins then petioles grow on auxins. Therefore: (A) Petioles grow on auxins (B) Either auxins are not proteins or petioles do not grow on auxins (C) If petioles grow on auxins then auxins are proteins (D) Auxins are not proteins (E)...

While swatting away my 4th "your car's extended warranty is about to expire" call today (including one in Spanish), I consoled myself reading about new ideas on how to reduce the environmental impact of brewing beer: From start to finish, making alcoholic beverages asks a lot from the environment. It takes about 20 gallons of water to produce a single eight-ounce serving of beer and 30 gallons per five-ounce serving of wine. Then there’s the glass and aluminum production for alcohol containers, the...

On this day in 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon completed their survey of the disputed Maryland-Pennsylvania border, which became even more contentious in 1780 when Pennsylvania aboolished slavery. A group of surveyors started re-surveying the border in 2019; I can't find out whether they finished. Meanwhile, 255 years later, politics is still mostly local: Our professional women's basketball team, the Chicago Sky, won the WNBA championship yesterday. Chicago's recently-retired Inspector General...

No, not the Harold Ramis character; the working cat at Empirical Brewery in Chicago, letting Cassie know who runs the joint:

671 days. The Apollo Chorus of Chicago last performed in public on 15 December 2019, 671 days ago. This morning we performed at the Chicago History Museum, outside, without masks, to an audience of about 100 people. It is absolutely wonderful to be performing again. The cool, sunny weather helped, too. And the decision not to wear tuxedos.

In June 1943, a group of white American MPs attacked a company of Black American soldiers in the town of Bamber Bridge, England (near Blackpool). The English took the side of the Black soldiers: During the war, American soldiers accounted for the vast majority of black people in Britain. Britain’s population was overwhelmingly white, most of the country almost entirely so. Black Britons numbered around eight thousand in total, and were clustered in London, Liverpool and a few other ports. For the...