Personal posts
Posts on architecture, obsessions, photography, poems, visits to art exhibits, essays, family, and or things about me organized under art, home, and work.
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City of Chicago Inspector General Website
The Inspector General of the City of Chicago launched a new website today. It sports a nifty new seal, a secure form for reporting corruption in Chicago, a Feedburner-hosted RSS feed, some stultifying reads about the ordinances and executive orders establishing the office’s power, and a really astonishing array of articles and editorials praising the…
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Congressman Luis Gutierrez Can’t Get Service in a Sprint Store, Either
So, against my better judgement, yesterday I took my kids with me to the Sprint Store on the corner of North, Milwaukee, and Damen. I get in line. I look in front of me, at the counter, and see a frustrated man dealing with the “customer service representative”. This store is notorious in my circle…
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The Market is a Force for Human Good
All hail Jane Jacobs, who believed in market forces. Jane Jacobs, 89: Urban crusader. Her first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, became a bible for neighbourhood organizers and what she termed the “foot people”. It made the case against the utopian planning culture of the times — residential…
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On the Same Day, Live Birth Version
Longtime readers will remember my fascination with unrelated people who happen to die on the same day, being forever linked. Here’s a twist on that: Katies Holmes, the wife of Tom Cruise, psycho, and the person Cruise criticized for being treated for post-partum depression, Brooke Shields, had babies on the same day. The Contra Costa…
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Fun With Crap in the New York Times Stylesheet
I always like reading the stylesheets for websites– they are windows into the attitude and personality of the site developer. To find a stylesheet, just right-click inside the window of any site and choose "View Source". Then do a search for "css". It’s always in the head (or beginning) of the document. Here’s the head…