Pollen levels in Chicago have exploded in the past week:
The area’s pollen values surged Tuesday to the highest levels of the year, the latest development in a allergy season which has brought misery to many across the Chicago area. Dr. Joseph Leija, allergist at Loyola Gottlieb Memorial Hospital and provider of this area’s pollen counts, lamented in his daily report that the slow pace of spring warming has combined with the season’s huge rain tallies to bring high tree counts at the same time high grass and weed levels are present. The result, says Dr. Leija, has been to make allergy sufferers miserable despite the lovely weather of late. Swollen and itchy eyes were among the reasons many patients visited his office as well as the need for medication adjustments
Tree, grass and weed pollen were ALL reported as “high” Tuesday. Tree pollen reached 1,000 grains per cubic yard—just 500 below the “alert level” of 1,500.
This is just tree pollen; the mold, grass, and ragweed maps have pretty colors over Illinois also:
I've been sneezing and coughing for three days now. I'm really looking forward to the plants finishing up their orgy of...well, orgies.
Illinois Republican Party chair Pat Brady has quit:
With same-sex marriage legislation pending in the Illinois legislature, Brady this year voiced his support for the proposal despite a plank in the state GOP platform that said marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman. Brady said he made the endorsement personally, not as Republican chairman, but conservatives in the top echelon of the GOP party quickly complained.
Though Brady survived immediate attempts to dump him, a meeting of the Republican State Central Committee in Tinley Park last month made clear his fate. GOP leaders agreed to put together a succession plan, allowing Brady, of St. Charles, an exit strategy that made clear his days were numbered as they began a search for a new chairman.
Meanwhile, Minnesota today passed marriage equality in the State Senate, clearing the way for the state to become the 11th to enact such a law, possibly as early as Friday. Illinois will almost certainly pass the legislation this term as well.
The Illinois GOP is on the wrong side of this, as Brady well knows. I'm sorry they're following Jim Oberweis into legislative irrelevance. A healthy democracy needs a healthy opposition, to keep the majority from over-reaching. We don't have that in Illinois right now, largely because the state GOP has become a rigid, ideologically-hidebound caricature of itself. And we're all suffering for it.
Over the past week, the city replaced the north leaf of the Wells St. Bridge. This morning it looked like this:
Previous coverage here.
Unfortunately, as Paul Lukas points out, people have forgotten the difference:
Here's the deal: Virtually any software that includes a typography function (whether for word processing, desktop publishing, graphic design, or whatever) now employs something called "smart quotes." The idea behind smart quotes is that the software recognizes when there's a blank space immediately before or after a quotation mark and adds the appropriate curvature to the mark, creating open-quotes and close-quotes. That way you end up with nicely curved quotation marks instead of straight or "neutered" marks (like the ones you see on most of this page).
This all works fine unless you have a word or term that begins with an apostrophe, like ’til or ’em (as in "Bring ’em on"). Since the keystroke for an apostrophe is the same as the one for a single quote mark, the software improperly interprets the space and the keystroke as the start of a quotation and imparts the wrong curvature to the mark. There's a way to override the smart quotes and impose a proper apostrophe in these situations (on a Mac, you type option-shift-close-bracket), but an increasing number of writers, editors, and designers either aren't bothering to do so, don't feel it's necessary, or don't even realize it's necessary. The result is a cascade of improperly oriented apostrophes on signs, on billboards, in TV commercials, in the names of businesses, and even on mainstream media web sites. Call it the apostrophe catastrophe.
To the extent I have pet peeves, it's a big one of mine. For example, there's a coffee shop at the corner of Webster and Sheffield called Jam 'n Honey—or, rather, Jam ‘n Honey—with a half-meter-high open quote where an apostrophe should be.
Actually, they're a two-fer. They're also missing a second apostrophe, as ’n’ drops off both the a and d from "and." What the typography-challenged proprietors have there is "jam an honey," which is just stupid.
This is how civilization crashes: simple acts of negligence.
Since its purchase by InBev (Anheuser Busch) two years ago, Goose Island Brewing Co. has increased production significantly by brewing beer in other states. While this does allow them to produce more beer and to sell it nationwide, it has also changed the beer. Green Line Pale Ale now comes from Baldwinsville, N.Y., which I'm pretty sure doesn't have an El. Flagship 312 Urban Wheat Ale comes from Baldwinsville (area code 315) and Fort Collins, Colo. (area code 970). Since water is the principal ingredient of beer, I wonder how this could fail to change the formula.
Goose Island CEO Andrew Goler says it doesn't:
“Anheuser-Busch is letting us do our own thing,” says [Goeler], who took over as Goose Island's CEO on Jan. 1, replacing founder John Hall. “I'm not getting directives.”
When Belgium's Anheuser-Busch InBev swallowed Goose Island for $38.8 million in 2011, it provided a relief valve for an overwhelmed brewing facility. (The companies were intertwined in 2006 when Goose Island signed a distribution deal with Anheuser-Busch.)
Moving production for three of Goose Island's most popular beers out of Chicago, a decision that enthusiasts worried was the beginning of the end for the craft brand, solved a long-standing problem of pent-up demand. Top sellers are now brewed at Anheuser-Busch InBev facilities in Fort Collins, Colo., and Baldwinsville, N.Y., an expansion that allows Goose Island bottles to be carried in all 50 states.
"I think there were some irrational doubts about what's going to happen to Goose Island," says Greg Hall, 47, Goose Island's former brewmaster and son of its founder. "It's not like they're trying to make India Pale Ale and Bud Light comes out."
No, but it's no longer the same IPA, either.
Large corporations tend to digest smaller acquisitions. And Goose Island is no longer part of the Craft Brewers Association, because it's no longer a craft brew. We'll see how long Goose Island retains its independence.
I just listened to a This American Life segment by Andrew Forsthoefel, a 23-year-old from southeastern Pennsylvania who walked across the U.S. for a year. Fascinating.
He wound up, after walking 6,000 km, in Half Moon Bay, Calif., about 800 m from my family's house. I have to say, if I were to walk across the U.S., I'd want to wind up in Half Moon Bay, too.
What a start to this kid's life. I'm looking forward to hearing more from him.
After a lot of really difficult work and evaluating a half-dozen 3rd-party libraries, I've finally gotten a round-trip between a local ASP.NET application and SalesForce. This is the first victory in two big battles against the SalesForce integration model I've been fighting for the last two weeks.
The next hurdle will be to get the SalesForce API to accept my application's SAML assertion after the user is authenticated. I really have no idea how to do that yet—and no one I've spoken with knows, either.
Still, this was a good way to end a long work-week. And soon: pizza.
OK, Papa John's, you're out of the doghouse. Sort of.
About six months ago, Papa John's CEO John Schnatter speculated about cutting worker hours to avoid some of the Affordable Care Act's requirements. As a direct result of this, I joined the millions of other Americans in a quiet boycott of the chain.
It's unfortunate. They make the best pizza in their category (cheap and delivered). I mean, of course I'd rather have a thin, wide, gooey slice from some nameless deli on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at 2am. But for the last six months, on those rare occasions when I've had a craving, I've ordered from Domino's, who really aren't much better on the political side. I suppose I could order from Ranalli's, which used to be right around the corner (and allowed dogs on the patio).
Anyway, I actually like Papa John's pizza. I think six months may be long enough for this round. Schnatter seems to have learned his lesson. And he still makes decent, cheap, fast pizza.
I find it fascinating when someone whose entire brand rests on its association with a particular place makes this kind of threat:
"I'm not sure how anyone is going to stop the signs in the outfield," Ricketts said upon the unveiling of drawings of his renovation plan, "but if it comes to the point that we don't have the ability to do what we need to do in our outfield then we're going to have to consider moving."
Ah, yeah. "Consider" moving. Tribune columnist Steve Rosenbloom scoffs:
Look, if you’re going to play the move card, then play it like you mean it. Ricketts didn’t. He came off like a guy who wanted nothing to do with those words in any order. It was done so weakly, in fact, that I’m surprised there wasn’t closed-captioning.
I can see how people got the wrong idea, though. Supporters were thrilled to have Ricketts hint even slightly that he knew how to play politics. Nope. Sorry. Not happening.
The only place anyone might believe Ricketts could move the Cubs today is Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood.
Meanwhile, the Cubs actually won last night, putting them only three games behind the 4th-place team. We can't even give our tickets away at this point.
Crain's has details this morning about what Ricketts wants to build at Wrigley:
Two weeks after the Cubs and city officials announced a "framework agreement" on a $500 million renovation of Wrigley Field and development of its surrounding property, the team has released images of its plans, which include a 6,000-square-foot jumbotron in left field and a horizontal 1,000-square-foot advertising sign in right field as the framework outlined last month.
With the images now complete (you can see them below and on Crain's Tumblr page here), the Cubs later today will formally file their planned development application with the city's Plan Commission, the first step in what could be a months-long public process to get approval for the entire project.
The huge Jumbotron in left field (below) probably won't happen exactly as Ricketts wants; the other stuff, including the hotel across Clark Street, probably will.
