Events

The CCMBA Dubai residency starts in just over 3 days, and I'm leaving in 53 hours. I hope I've learned from the mistakes I made in the London residency, so I can make all new mistakes. Some observations so far: I do not need the one-kilo power converter; I only need a couple of UK-US adapters. This is because, as I realized in London, everything I have with a plug accepts all international power characteristics. (The U.S. is 110 volts, 60 Hertz; the U.K. and U.A.E. both use 220 volts, 50 Hertz, with...

Chicago Tribune transport columnist John Hilkevich is shocked—shocked!—this morning to find that Chicago parking tickets are up 26% this year: The stepped-up enforcement contributed to a $7 million year-over-year increase in parking ticket revenue, which totaled $119.2 million from January through August, the Chicago Department of Revenue reported. Fines assessed from tickets go to the city's nearly depleted general fund. Revenue collected from a four-fold increase in parking rates this year is kept by...

The state of Illinois mysteriously doubled its funding request for upgrading the Chicago-St. Louis rail corridor to handle moderately-high-speed trains. First, of the $4.5 bn now requested, only $1.2 bn will go to the actual track upgrades; the state now wants additional funds to build a second track along the route. Second, the upgrades will increase the route's top speed from 126 km/h to only 176 km/h, not exactly a serious rival for other HSR projects worldwide (like, for example, Shanghai's MagLev...

Technically yesterday's incident happened on a Northwest airplane, but since Delta owns Northwest now, and after last week's error, I'm wondering if the jokes from the 1990s about Delta's navigation abilities might not be coming back in earnest: Today a Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 flight missed their destination of Minneapolis by 150 miles. The flight crew said they became engrossed in a conversation about airline policy (and honestly, who couldn't?) and lost track of their location. However, the FAA...

First, via AV Web, a report that a Delta 767 landed just a bit off the runway centerline returning from Rio de Janeiro Monday: A couple of Delta Airlines pilots have been suspended after the Boeing 767 they were flying from Rio de Janeiro landed on a taxiway at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport early Monday morning. The FAA reported there were no other aircraft on the taxiway and the landing and rollout were normal. Spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the crew was dealing with a medical emergency on board and had...

Mayor Daley found another $500m hole in the city's budget this year, so he's proposing...nothing new: Mayor Richard Daley unveils his new budget this morning, and he's going to call for spending more money from the controversial parking meter lease, slashing the tourism promotion budget and ending Chicago's longest-running public party, Venetian Night. A key labor union that bankrolled challengers to Daley's council allies in the last election praised the mayor's decision to raid reserves from the $1.15...

A Wicker Park chicken-wing stand annoyed hundreds of potential customers recently by sticking fake parking ticket advertisements in their windshields: Wing Stop's "parking tickets" are menus that look strikingly similar to Chicago's more menacing version, both in design and color scheme. But instead of expensive violations for expired meters and double parking, the restaurant's version has citations listing the restaurant's signature hot wings, sides, drinks and even offers a free order of fries with...

Of course the Taliban treat their prisoners better than we do. It's excellent P.R. for them, and makes us look really bad: At first, our guards impressed me. They vowed to follow the tenets of Islam that mandate the good treatment of prisoners. In my case, they unquestionably did. They gave me bottled water, let me walk in a small yard each day and never beat me. But they viewed me — a nonobservant Christian — as religiously unclean and demanded that I use a separate drinking glass to protect them from...

Here's the Culture Dash video mentioned in the previous entry. I held off publishing it until I confirmed that the school had published all of the videos to the class. I have also cut two interviews out, as I mentioned before, as the subjects clearly did not want them broadcast. One even told us he didn't want the interview "ending up on YouTube." Unfortunately, he was the bulk of the video's entire first section, so it won't take Roger Ebert to detect that something is missing. Here, then, is (about...

I spent 12 hours this week editing video[1] into a 5-minute class project, which I think turned out all right, but which taught me a few lessons I hope help other people. Shooting video looks easy. You point the camera, you push "record" to start, and you push "stop" when done. Voilà, you've got video! If only. Shooting video you have to edit together into a cohesive, 5-minute package actually requires serious planning and attention. As a camera operator, you do not want your editor to curse you out...