Events

The saga of the Webcam continues. At least it's back on its perch. Here's what I found when I got to my office a few minutes ago: And here is what the Inner Drive Webcam saw as it teetered, tottered, and tumbled to the floor of the office. At 5:53pm Central time, all was fine: Then, suddenly, the mounting began to give way. The first shock came at 5:54; the second, at 5:57: The mounting held for a while; here are shots at 6:15 and 6:30: The end, when it came at 6:33, came swiftly. A jolt at 6:31...

Yesterday I posted about news articles I found funny, that included a Chicago Tribune report that Mayor Daley was musing about hosting the 2016 Olympics. Today the Tribune's architecture critic wrote a surprisingly detailed column about it, offering a list of pros and cons. Now, forgetting for a second that just a moment ago I posted about the U.S. paying Iraqi media paid to run news stories, what do people think? Should we try to host the 2016 Olympics in Chicago?

Molly Ivins suggests in her latest column (URL to follow) that we can dtect American military interference in Iraqi news by headlines such as: "26 million Iraqis Unhurt in Latest Terror Blast." "Few Changes Needed to Turn Abu Ghraib Into an Applebee's." "Voting Machines in Upcoming Elections Donated by Florida." "New Automatic Citizenship Law Turns U.S. forces Into Crack Iraqi Army Overnight." And now for something completely different: Did you know pet pigeons are banned in Chicago? I didn't either.

Me engaged in my favorite activity that doesn't involve Anne, at Jack London's Pub, Carmel by the Sea, California:

MSNBC this hour: Alito argued Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Let the games begin...

For no reason that I can determine, an unusual number of today's Chicago Tribune headlines tickled my funnybone. (Registration may be required for some of the stories.) First, the editorial Religion, Science and Civility, which tells us: ...[S]cience and religion—evolution and intelligent design—can exist together; they are not mutually exclusive. This we call "equivocating." Science and religion can co-exist the same way Capulets and Montagues can co-exist, and when they try to get together in any...

Sigh. Astute readers will gather from the preceding post that I am out of the office for a couple of days. And pessimists will agree that, if something were going to go wrong in the office, it would go wrong the day I left. Pessimists: rejoice! The Inner Drive Webcam has decided to add a new page to its history: Now, as nearly as I can figure it, you're looking there at the back end of the computer that hosts the camera (highlighted below), upside-down. I'll have to review the archives on Saturday to...

Every day, my dad walks Reggie, his Austrailian shepherd, along the beach. Today, however, it rained. The humans had Gore-Tex® jackets. The dog didn't:

WLS-TV is reporting that the Chicago Sun-Times' Red Streak tabloid will end after the Thursday issue. According to WLS, the Sun-Times launched the infra-tabloid because the Chicago Tribune started publishing its own tabloid, RedEye. Now that Tribune has given up trying to charge money for RedEye, which probably didn't affect the its revenue at all since no one in Chicago ever paid for it in the first place, the Sun-Times is declaring victory. If anyone out there believes that either Red Streak or RedEye...

Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly suggests that the wiretap scandal (reg.req.) may be worse than it appears: It seems clear that there's something involved here that goes far beyond ordinary wiretaps, regardless of the technology used. Perhaps some kind of massive data mining, which makes it impossible to get individual warrants? Stay tuned. Read the full story from Drum.