Events

NPR reported this morning on a rally in West Virginia funded by Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, and organized by the American Petroleum Institute. Money quote from Blankenship, speaking to the coal miners attending the rally: In Washington they sometimes say those of us in Appalachia need help because we're not very smart. But we're smart enough to know that only God can change the earth's temperature, not Al Gore! You know, it's really hard to argue with logic like that.

Oprah Winfrey has gotten the city to close 400 m of Michigan Avenue, one of the busiest streets in Chicago: The street will be closed to vehicular traffic from Wacker Drive to Ohio Street until 5 a.m. Wednesday. The sidewalks will be open for pedestrians, and there will be access to all buildings in that stretch of Michigan Avenue. The city says that it may close the Michigan Avenue bridge to pedestrian traffic during the taping of the show. A stage will be constructed on Michigan Avenue just north of...

Via reader MS, the instant rimshot.

From the Economist: The Economist's new audio guide, which you can hear on our website, takes travellers through the pitfalls of London life by explaining the right etiquette both for meetings and for pubs, and showing how to earn the approval of British counterparts. Hold off on the wine at lunch, shop for souvenirs at Fortnum & Mason, and if you do have to use Heathrow airport, consider taking the Underground. If you're delayed, you'll be able to curse the transport like any good Londoner. Of course...

Via the Chicago Tribune, Budweiser has an ad running in Ireland shot in Chicago. It's kind of fun:

I got so caught up in Parker Day yesterday I forgot to mention this bit of history: [A] century ago Tuesday, on Sept. 1, 1909, State and Madison Streets became the base line of a new citywide grid system that changed virtually all addresses and also formed the basis for the street systems of many suburbs. [Before then, t]he winding, bending Chicago River was the original start of the grid, but that meant addresses weren't consistent because they weren't based on a straight line, said Tim Samuelson, the...

I adopted the fuzzy dude three years ago today. And you can see why:

Via Gulliver, a new study of taxes levied on visitors to U.S. cities finds Chicago in the lead: The study provides several different views of travel taxes to help readers make informed choices. The top 50 markets are ranked by overall travel tax burden, including general sales tax and discriminatory travel taxes, and by discriminatory travel tax burden, excluding general sales taxes to count only taxes that target car rentals, hotel stays and meals. Separate data are offered for central city and airport...

NPR's Morning Edition has a story today on a "tea party" rally in Nevada. Listening to the people interviewed, the only thing preventing me from recommending that no one be allowed to protest against the government without having taken a basic civics class is that I have taken a basic civics class. Now, I know many people with center-right leanings who can make coherent arguments in favor of or against various policies. I enjoy those debates immensely. The people who spoke to NPR, though? Each had some...

From reader DK: