Events

It seems I got ahead of events in my post last night. Chicago Public Radio clarified this morning what's going on in the General Assembly: Before it even went to committee, legislators debated not gay marriage, but the process they’ll use to discuss the issue. Republican State Sen. Dale Righter said it’s hard for the public to follow bills as they move around the Statehouse, and the issue shouldn’t be rushed. Senators voted 28-24, in effect stalling the bill. But the gay marriage issue could still be...

House Bill 5170 will very likely go to the Illinois House for a vote before Tuesday, and if it does, it will pass and receive Governor Quinn's signature a few hours later: The Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act is amended by changing Sections 201, 209, and 212 and by adding Section 220 as follows: (750 ILCS 5/201) (from Ch. 40, par. 201) Sec. 201. Formalities.) A marriage between 2 persons a man and a woman licensed, solemnized and registered as provided in this Act is valid in this...

Sigh. Zipcar, short-term rental car service that has occasionally made my life a lot easier, just got swallowed by Avis: Zipcar Inc. has been growing as more people in urban areas forgo owning a car and instead tap car-sharing and hourly rental services when they need a vehicle. The company’s third-quarter sales grew 15% to $78.2 million while its membership (renters) grew 18% to more than 767,000. Zipcar earned $4.3 million in the three-month period and has said it expected 2012 to be the first full...

The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf takes on the troubling contradiction between right-wing support of the 2nd Amendment at the expense of a few others: It's one thing to argue that gun control legislation is a nonstarter, despite tens of thousands of deaths by gunshot per year, because the safeguards articulated in the Bill of Rights are sacrosanct. I can respect that... but not from people who simultaneously insist that 3,000 dead in a terrorist attack justifies departing from the plain text of the...

In 2012: I took 15 trips, visiting 2½ countries (England, France, Wales) and 9 states (Wisconsin, New York, California, Minnesota, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia); flew 25 flight segments for 67,647 km; and drove 7,600 km. The Daily Parker grew by 535 entries, ticking along at an average of 1.48 entries per day (as it has since December 2010). I spent 189 hours walking Parker, 112 hours blogging, 222 hours commuting to work, 2,219 hours working for someone else, and 174 hours working for...

Well, here we are, just the seven point one billion of us. Here's the situation: Depending on how you reckon things, it's 平成25年, ԹՎ ՌՆԿԲ, or 12013. American children born this month will likely graduate from high school in 2031 and from college in 2035. Children born in 1992 can legally drink in the United States. Those born in 1995 can vote in the U.S. (and drink in Britain). That means it's been 21 years since Boutros Boutros-Ghali became U.N. Secretary-General, 21 years since President George H.W....

...started in the Pacific about 14 hours ago. I guess we made it, unless everything east of London has vanished and I just haven't heard yet. Happy new year. Don't forget that auld lang syne.

Thinking of making a change? "Slip out the back, Jack" just not literary enough for you? The Atlantic has some examples of break-up letters by literary figures from history. For example, Anaïs Nin: But in the middle of this fiery and marvellous give and take, going out with you was like going out with a priest. The contrast in temperature was too great. So I waited for my first chance to break—not wanting to leave you alone. You ought to know my value better than to think I can be jealous of the poor...

Yesterday Chicago only got up to -1°C. It's the first time since February 25th, 308 days earlier, that we had a high temperature below freezing, and it's the longest time in recorded history (tying the record set in 1878) Chicago has gone between them. We woke up today at -9°C, the coldest temperature here since February 11th. But tomorrow's forecast calls for a high just above freezing, giving us only 13 days in all of 2012 that failed to get above freezing. I haven't done the analysis but that seems...

Not even 8:15 in the morning, and already NPR has run a story that made me furious. It seems the latest theory right-wing billionaires have concocted to escape scrutiny has somewhat different origins from its present use: In defending secret money, [former bug exterminator Karl] Rove invokes that Supreme Court case, NAACP v. Alabama. He lines up Crossroads GPS on the same side as Parks and the NAACP, and he says the transparency advocates make the same argument as the segregationists. "I think it's...