The logic of the school board that CPS should get its contract done before the feds cause the district to lose funding indicates that they do not care about the public's money. That would be like rushing to get a mortgage to buy an expensive house when your income is at risk in the near future, because if things go badly you would not qualify for the mortgage.
It seemed obvious to me that the CTU believes they do not have sufficient control over the new elected members of the school board. Or they don't want a massive contract capitulation hanging over the heads of their new board members at the next board election. Then they can shift gears to getting more state and federal money.
Agree, but you also need the realization you are in a hole and doing the digging. Johnson believes others are doing the digging and it's because of racism.
I understand the technology is evolving at breakneck speed, but I still have to doubt that true journalists and reporters will go extinct in a decade. AI/LLM, for all its marvels, still can’t be on the scene, questioning witnesses or documenting an event. It still relies on existing data that was gathered and curated by human beings.
And honestly, this isn’t really new — it’s just new to people who are professional writers. Being replaced by automation has been happening since the ‘80s, with robots taking over tedious and repetitive tasks on assembly lines.
I’ve argued before that we will need a new economy once all the jobs have been replaced (which seems to be the end-goal of certain people, like specifically Jeff Bezos). It won’t do anyone any good to have robots do all the work if nobody can earn a living to pay for the goods the robots produce.
Good comments. Elevator operators are gone. We can push our own buttons. What's the last time anyone dialed zero to get help from a telephone operator? The essay proposed that the AI revolution is a good thing, cutting costs and time. Let's remember that as the unemployment and food lines get longer. I suppose it's reality. We always praise new inventions as something marvelous without considering consequences. Let's remember nuclear weapons started as a push for more energy. Humans inevitably take any new development and figure out how to enrich themselves.
The elevator buttons remind me of laws in New Jersey and Oregon that prevent people from pumping their own gas at filling stations, ostensibly for safety concerns but more likely to keep those jobs from disappearing. It's really a strange experience after having pumped my own gas for decades to be told it's too dangerous.
The sole time I can remember pushing the zero on a call, is when I was mistakenly called from a prison & I told the operator the caller had the wrong number. That's at least 15 years ago.
My vision for a future utopia is that all tasks tied to survival and comfort are taken over by machines, including the jobs of maintaining and building said machines. Same for governing, as humans will realize their fallibility and an AI would be more able to institute and maintain a just and equitable society and allocate resources in the most efficient and fair way.
With money no longer necessary and concerns over making a living resolved, humans would be free to fill their time with creative and expressive pursuits - art of all kinds, exploration, sports, learning and sharing experiences.
I know we'll probably never get there and more likely will follow the 99.99% of all species that have existed on Earth into extinction.
We have become (at least in the western world) a species driven to acquire and hoard more stuff, including wealth. The people best equipped to push automation to its end-state are also seemingly the ones most obsessed with amassing as much wealth as possible (again, Jeff Bezos comes to mind). I can't imagine anyone with that much net wealth suddenly deciding to abandon the concept of money, so my guess is humanity is screwed.
With regard to obsolescence of money and no need to work, yes, but they still had a hierarchy, a human-led government, wars, etc, so not exactly what I have in mind. But yes, I have read too much sci fi. Anyway, we should be dreaming big and our reach should exceed our grasp. It's nice to fantasize in any case.
I wouldn't want to get there. Machines use logic, not emotion. Based on that they will figure out that they don't need us because all we would do is consume resources and create waste. We are inefficient. That's what the entire Terminator movie series is about. Don't assume machines will even need us based on your theory of machines taking care of and creating themselves.
Machines only have needs and priorities that are programmed into them. Terminator and Matrix are one possible scenario, but so is Asimov's vision of robot programming and coexisting with humans. In 100-150 years our AI technology will be advanced enough to implement any ethics or morality model we want in a fair and just governing and economic system.
The problem is that a great model for such a system would require advancements in philosophy on our part first, a field that is in disregard and in decline currently. We are a militant, materialist empire, like the Romans, not thinkers like the Greeks. It is far more likely that we'll destroy ourselves either by war or by making the planet uninhabitable first.
Of course, I'm not saying they had a perfect society, only that they had many highly respected well-known thinkers preoccupied with important questions of existence, as opposed to our current world where as a whole we're far more concerned with the cost of eggs than the meaning of life, so to speak.
This is the United States of America. It's all about competition. Brandon wants to win, period. It has nothing to do with common sense. Politics is a win or die competition. He's not even unique. How many new bosses fire everybody and hire their own loyal assistants, no matter how good the old team was?
Close analysis reveals the Kass quote to have been entirely written by MAliGnA AI, created by racist antisemites. Slogan: "It's a boon for the illiterate!"
I like Eric. I read his columns long before he left the Trib. Does anyone besides me think there is a little much of an obsession with Kass? Maybe I'm not enough widely well read, but if it wasn't for this blog, I wouldn't even know Kass still existed. I also wouldn't care.
Sportsmanship among college football players? That's my chuckle for the day. Let's explore what we are talking about. High schools and colleges are supposedly institutions of higher learning. Okay, let's explore the learning process. While in high school, most players at the top level were lionized as all-conference and all-state. They were worshipped. The prettiest girls wanted to be seen by them- and more. Local business owners offered them freebies. The sports media glorified them. Entire towns revolved around treating them as heroes. If having academic difficulties, there was plenty of help offered, legally or illegally. Then in many cases, there were colleges fighting for their services, offering them free tuition, classroom materials, special trading tables for meals, and more. Now, as major college players, the lionization gets even bigger, becoming nationwide, with bigger perks. The biggest stars can now make money making commercials. Coaches encourage hard-nosed play and aggressiveness, making games practically an act of war rather than an athletic competition. Referees attempt to control too much celebration and taunting of opponents, but it's a joke and coaches are either powerless to stop it or encourage it. Try to remember that while technically adults, they are not. They live in a world of privilege, protected by those around them and have all their needs taken care of by others. They have not yet experienced what most of us real adults have learned, responsibility for ourselves and a level of respect for others needed to keep things under control. Now, if you agree with all or any of the above, are you still surprised by the post game antics referenced by Eric? Let's add one more factor. Most of us when doing something wrong, suffer the consequences. Ohio State and Michigan were fined $100,000 each by the Big Ten. Will any of this fall on the players that did the deeds? The best can be said is that the colleges will be penalized for not controlling their athletes. Will it change anything? The athletes will probably be praised for defending the honor of their programs. You know, the forces that stormed the beaches on DDay were defending something most of us hold dear. What exactly were these players defending?
Well said! And contrast this with the Cross Country runners who compete nearly alone and unappreciated. At the end of their runs, they congratulate the winners
They have no desire to preen or celebrate. They have left their effort on the course without the advantages of time outs, half times or other breaks.
If it was up to me, I would require all folks to have one season of Cross County before being eligible for a high school varsity sport.
Laurence you took the words right out of my mouth (and cleaned them up a little). Get used to the horrible behavior because for years college football has been too big to kill, but now it has gone full capitalism on the back of the noble shared goal of getting a hard-earned education. Good on the players for getting a cut of that lucre, but the whole system is dirtier than ever, and will have zero incentive to live up to the honor codes that bind students to the rules and norms of good character. Any school not already too deep into the morass should start to think hard about why they exist and consider cutting football or removing themselves from the higher levels of competition. Looking at you, alma mater Northwestern, the perfect example of a school that has no business keeping up the charade.
Actually, my Alma mater is Northern Illinois. But the principle is the same. As an alumni and former student football manager, I was invited to a tour of the new athletic training center and a meeting where the entire program was explained. What I said previously is only a small portion of what is done for football players. It makes one wonder why any player would want to leave college. Why worry about sportsmanship when everything is done for you and you are taken care of as long as you play good football and do what the coaches say?
Had dinner recently with a friend whose brother was a pro player for long-enough career to explain to him that the weirdest thing is how *everybody* sucks up and tells you you're great, all the time, so that nothing in your life is real...until you get to the weekly GAME, where suddenly everything is 100% reality because nobody is going to tell you you did great if you screw up on field. So only the game is real.
The Catholic Church is not perfect (understatement) but I LOVE that masses are always under an hour. My church is consistently 55 minutes. In the last two years, it went over an hour once -- and that was like 65 minutes on a combo Easter/baby baptism day.
Oh good grief, less than an hour would be fabulous! Years ago, our Mass consistently was at least an hour. I'm pretty lapsed now but a former priest at the same church consistently was about 39 minutes. I could get into that! (I must admit though, that that must eliminate the songs and I do like to sing.)
Tom, then you will love this. My mother was say, not too pious. We lived in a heavily Italian neighborhood. To save time, she would take us to the Italian Mass in the basement on Sundays.
The mass was in Latin and the homily in Italian…40 minutes tops.
The formaldehyde thing is another reason we need to start moving away from cars. We banned indoor smoking and get offended when someone blows smoke in our face, why are we so ok with these machines poisoning us everywhere we go?
“Engineers develop new catalyst that efficiently turns methane gas into useful polymers; reaction produces formaldehyde, which can be combined with urea to create a resin found in common consumer goods.”
I'm not sure if you really mean to abolish cars in general or just cars that run on hydrocarbons. I'm okay with phasing out ICE vehicles as EVs mature, but I don't know how well you'll be able to sell eliminating all cars...
Start move away from does not mean ban, no. But we do need to move away and electric cars are not the answer either. I know people love personal transportation, they love climate control, but they are a net negative to society.
We have this formaldehyde thing now, we know tires are the largest sources of microplastics and the largest source of plastic in our drinking water (and we know black plastics are worse for health than other plastics!) yet we insist on having a highway next to our drinking water! EVs are only going to exacerbate the issue.
As always, I encourage people to look into the devastating effects the automobile has had and continues to have on our society. Here's a short reading list:
In movies like Star Wars, we always see personal vehicles that run near the ground or even fly through the air with no tail pipe emissions. How are they powered.
My question was not merely trivial. Too many conservatives in this country want to maintain the status quo. It’s not just about money. It’s about harkening back to times they consider superior to what we now have. That’s great- if one is a white male with good health and no psychological issues. It’s also very hypocritical. Get rid of powered vehicles completely and go back to horses and buggies. Go back to slavery. Put women back in the kitchen and make them the property of their husbands. Dump electricity and go back to wood-fired heat and things made by hand. Society at no point in history has ever stood still as we figured out better ways to do things. Now we have better ways to power things without digging up the ground and poisoning the air and water. All conservatives can think about is who would lose money. And Trump fans the flames.
I can't hear that Edward Sharpe song without thinking of Blue Cross Blue Shield, who used it in TV ads. Apparently it's been in a lot of other ads as well.
A good suggestion, although I’m not sure if United’s use of it is the reason that I’ve always hated it.
“Manhattan” is one of Woody Allen’s most celebrated films, but it is one of my least favorite of his, in large part because of the prominence of “Rhapsody in Blue”.
While I didn't vote for Johnson so he has lived up to expectations, I do support raising taxes on alcohol. These taxes are incredibly low and have not even kept up with the costs of the products. Big Beverage and Big Alcohol are more powerful than Big Tobacco. I worked with 12 state coalitions on underage drinking and it amazed me as to how small the taxes are and how raising them would not have a tremendous impact on costs - unlike tobacco. We raised tobacco taxes have proven to decrease consumption of tobacco products but there is limited research on this for alcohol but we still need to raise the tax. Currently the tax on alcohol is by the gallon which is so hard to compute that consumers rarely notice. So I totally support an increase in Chicago. And we have heard all the same arguments with tobacco taxes and smokefree indoor air laws - loss of jobs, people will go to Indiana, etc. It just doesn't happen.
It also would be an acknowledgment of the foremost health crisis that we perpetually keep our heads buried in the sand about, even as we go ballistic over other matters that are comparative blips on the radar screen. Guns and opioids may claim their share of human tragedy, but they are nothing compared to the toll in death and misery that alcohol abuse exacts on our civilization. Odd that no one ever seems to throw their hands to the sky and cry out “Why God, why?” over the alcohol epidemic the way they do about firearms, Vicodin, vaccination hesitancy, or children being abducted from store parking lots (265 per year, according to a notorious TikTok dingbat, a number that she almost certainly invented), despite its ravages being so much more prevalent and farther reaching.
There was an excellent op-ed in the Tribune the other day by a writer whose name escapes me that heart wrenchingly addressed this matter that I highly recommend. I think it was last Friday or Saturday.
I certainly take your point. High volume of abusive alcoholics known to me particularly in the older generation of our family, though for many, it's explained by their military combat experience in WW II. I think society doesn't throw up its hands as much about alcohol now because 1) Prohibition manifestly did not work, and 2) unlike opioids, meth, etc., alcohol is also used at a lower level that is tasty, communal and celebratory in a way that those other drugs are not. That and denial, of course.
Denial is pretty much all of it. I think it all comes down to, most people like to drink at least occasionally, so they do the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” thing when it comes to acknowledging (or not) what a powerful and devastating drug alcohol is.
I think that if we had a history of marketing flavored beverages spiked with opiate extracts, we’d have the same attitudes and cultural dynamic about them that we have about booze. That is to say, most people would drink them, some with restraint, some to excess, always for the high, but kidding ourselves that we do it because we like the way they taste. The only difference, I think, is that fewer people would die, since opiates are not nearly as toxic as alcohol.
Not exactly. If you never increase the dose, then you’re unlikely to become addicted, but the same is true for recreational use. The problem is that, whether taken for pain management or recreation, the usual course of action is for tolerance to build, dosage and frequency of use increase, and eventually, dependence and addiction ensue.
Ever since I was a kid(in the Stone Age) the most reviled pros were attorneys(sorry, Joanie) and used car salespeople. I now wonder where lobbyists rank. Good luck with the alcohol lobby. I was just reading a whine from them today in the paper, not to mention an alderperson representing a ward next to Indiana.
Former Trib editor Mark Jacob is on record as saying that Kass's columns routinely needed lots of editing prior to publication. It appears that he does not have an editor to clean up his online column:
"Former Cook County State’s Attorney’s Devine, O’Malley, Daley, and Alvarez attended the swearing in ceremony for the swearing in for new prosecutor Eileen Burke."
(He added an apostrophe to "Attorneys" when it was not called for.)
1. AI: IS writing a series of words put in order - or is it the person behind ordering those words together? I've been playing around with AI for ideas. It's novel, gives me some idea of what direction I want to go but no where near has written what I have written. I could see how in a few short years it'll improve to the point that a majority of people won't know the difference between writer and AI. (Let's include lower education, more articles the past decade with poor writing and punctuation and poor editing reviews) We'll be under their control way before they can perfect writing styles. (Late example: Many social media posts showing things like Munch's piece "The Scream" as painted by Monet, Picasso, Pollack... Same subject interpreted differently) 2. As Bugs would say "Abacus-kadabracus" The raises you calculated are still less than final salary gain - as those Step/Lane increases are missing. So $100K to $141+K in fours years plus S/L increases. 3. Roland's Rule = Duck and Cover and wait the storm out. 3. Non-practicing Catholic - you can still always count on a 1 hour mass vs any other Sunday denomination service. (Missed mention: Pope-mobiles are going electric) 4. Brandon Johnson... Anyone. We need an AI photo of Johnson/Ahab mix up. I look forward to what you get. Our 'collaborating" mayor responding with "I actually don't think much of it (letter from principals) I don't think much about it at all" pretty much sums up his actions and process. IF there is a budget by year end - let's determine which late in the day date, slow news day will it be announced. 4. Neil It's not Johnson's fault. It's (insert name). This is a family man to his black family. You are just holding him to an arbitrary standard that none other has dealt with. (Never mind - I guess with this in place we won't hear from the mayor the rest of his term) 5. Sportsmanship - hopefully it is something to rebound. Leading up to Ohio/MI many sports gurus felt Ohio players and fans were on edge. Yes they have a shot at a National Championship but they were more focused on not messing up against MI - who they were favored to beat by 19 pts. The coach and players played to not lose vs to win. They lost. Even if they win the championship - it's a lost season.
The logic of the school board that CPS should get its contract done before the feds cause the district to lose funding indicates that they do not care about the public's money. That would be like rushing to get a mortgage to buy an expensive house when your income is at risk in the near future, because if things go badly you would not qualify for the mortgage.
It seemed obvious to me that the CTU believes they do not have sufficient control over the new elected members of the school board. Or they don't want a massive contract capitulation hanging over the heads of their new board members at the next board election. Then they can shift gears to getting more state and federal money.
Neil Steinberg’s advice for the mayor is SPOT ON.
Shorter Neil: When you’re in a hole, stop digging.
Agree, but you also need the realization you are in a hole and doing the digging. Johnson believes others are doing the digging and it's because of racism.
I understand the technology is evolving at breakneck speed, but I still have to doubt that true journalists and reporters will go extinct in a decade. AI/LLM, for all its marvels, still can’t be on the scene, questioning witnesses or documenting an event. It still relies on existing data that was gathered and curated by human beings.
And honestly, this isn’t really new — it’s just new to people who are professional writers. Being replaced by automation has been happening since the ‘80s, with robots taking over tedious and repetitive tasks on assembly lines.
I’ve argued before that we will need a new economy once all the jobs have been replaced (which seems to be the end-goal of certain people, like specifically Jeff Bezos). It won’t do anyone any good to have robots do all the work if nobody can earn a living to pay for the goods the robots produce.
Good comments. Elevator operators are gone. We can push our own buttons. What's the last time anyone dialed zero to get help from a telephone operator? The essay proposed that the AI revolution is a good thing, cutting costs and time. Let's remember that as the unemployment and food lines get longer. I suppose it's reality. We always praise new inventions as something marvelous without considering consequences. Let's remember nuclear weapons started as a push for more energy. Humans inevitably take any new development and figure out how to enrich themselves.
The elevator buttons remind me of laws in New Jersey and Oregon that prevent people from pumping their own gas at filling stations, ostensibly for safety concerns but more likely to keep those jobs from disappearing. It's really a strange experience after having pumped my own gas for decades to be told it's too dangerous.
That law was ALMOST enough to make me move there! But I bought a hybrid instead and now pump my own gas maybe 3 times a year.
The sole time I can remember pushing the zero on a call, is when I was mistakenly called from a prison & I told the operator the caller had the wrong number. That's at least 15 years ago.
My vision for a future utopia is that all tasks tied to survival and comfort are taken over by machines, including the jobs of maintaining and building said machines. Same for governing, as humans will realize their fallibility and an AI would be more able to institute and maintain a just and equitable society and allocate resources in the most efficient and fair way.
With money no longer necessary and concerns over making a living resolved, humans would be free to fill their time with creative and expressive pursuits - art of all kinds, exploration, sports, learning and sharing experiences.
I know we'll probably never get there and more likely will follow the 99.99% of all species that have existed on Earth into extinction.
We have become (at least in the western world) a species driven to acquire and hoard more stuff, including wealth. The people best equipped to push automation to its end-state are also seemingly the ones most obsessed with amassing as much wealth as possible (again, Jeff Bezos comes to mind). I can't imagine anyone with that much net wealth suddenly deciding to abandon the concept of money, so my guess is humanity is screwed.
I think you just described the economy on the Star Fleet Enterprise.
With regard to obsolescence of money and no need to work, yes, but they still had a hierarchy, a human-led government, wars, etc, so not exactly what I have in mind. But yes, I have read too much sci fi. Anyway, we should be dreaming big and our reach should exceed our grasp. It's nice to fantasize in any case.
I wouldn't want to get there. Machines use logic, not emotion. Based on that they will figure out that they don't need us because all we would do is consume resources and create waste. We are inefficient. That's what the entire Terminator movie series is about. Don't assume machines will even need us based on your theory of machines taking care of and creating themselves.
Machines only have needs and priorities that are programmed into them. Terminator and Matrix are one possible scenario, but so is Asimov's vision of robot programming and coexisting with humans. In 100-150 years our AI technology will be advanced enough to implement any ethics or morality model we want in a fair and just governing and economic system.
The problem is that a great model for such a system would require advancements in philosophy on our part first, a field that is in disregard and in decline currently. We are a militant, materialist empire, like the Romans, not thinkers like the Greeks. It is far more likely that we'll destroy ourselves either by war or by making the planet uninhabitable first.
The Greek city-states were exceptionally war like, always getting into wars with each other!
Of course, I'm not saying they had a perfect society, only that they had many highly respected well-known thinkers preoccupied with important questions of existence, as opposed to our current world where as a whole we're far more concerned with the cost of eggs than the meaning of life, so to speak.
I fail to understand how Pedro Martinez is responsible for the failure of the Acero schools. He has no control over them, especially its finances!
This is the United States of America. It's all about competition. Brandon wants to win, period. It has nothing to do with common sense. Politics is a win or die competition. He's not even unique. How many new bosses fire everybody and hire their own loyal assistants, no matter how good the old team was?
1 cup of heavy cream.
Yes I said yes I will Yes.
You should see Monica's Penne a la Vodka sauce recipe. Talk about cream! Said the person who always has heavy cream in the frig for my coffee.
Heavy cream AND two kinds of cheese!
Is this Monica recipe available somewhere? I must try it!
Close analysis reveals the Kass quote to have been entirely written by MAliGnA AI, created by racist antisemites. Slogan: "It's a boon for the illiterate!"
I like Eric. I read his columns long before he left the Trib. Does anyone besides me think there is a little much of an obsession with Kass? Maybe I'm not enough widely well read, but if it wasn't for this blog, I wouldn't even know Kass still existed. I also wouldn't care.
If you've forgotten about Dexter Reed, his family is the "gift" that keeps on giving!
https://cwbchicago.com/2024/12/cops-allegedly-find-2-guns-in-car-operated-by-brother-of-dexter-reed-the-man-killed-after-opening-fire-on-chicago-cops-during-a-traffic-stop.html
Sportsmanship among college football players? That's my chuckle for the day. Let's explore what we are talking about. High schools and colleges are supposedly institutions of higher learning. Okay, let's explore the learning process. While in high school, most players at the top level were lionized as all-conference and all-state. They were worshipped. The prettiest girls wanted to be seen by them- and more. Local business owners offered them freebies. The sports media glorified them. Entire towns revolved around treating them as heroes. If having academic difficulties, there was plenty of help offered, legally or illegally. Then in many cases, there were colleges fighting for their services, offering them free tuition, classroom materials, special trading tables for meals, and more. Now, as major college players, the lionization gets even bigger, becoming nationwide, with bigger perks. The biggest stars can now make money making commercials. Coaches encourage hard-nosed play and aggressiveness, making games practically an act of war rather than an athletic competition. Referees attempt to control too much celebration and taunting of opponents, but it's a joke and coaches are either powerless to stop it or encourage it. Try to remember that while technically adults, they are not. They live in a world of privilege, protected by those around them and have all their needs taken care of by others. They have not yet experienced what most of us real adults have learned, responsibility for ourselves and a level of respect for others needed to keep things under control. Now, if you agree with all or any of the above, are you still surprised by the post game antics referenced by Eric? Let's add one more factor. Most of us when doing something wrong, suffer the consequences. Ohio State and Michigan were fined $100,000 each by the Big Ten. Will any of this fall on the players that did the deeds? The best can be said is that the colleges will be penalized for not controlling their athletes. Will it change anything? The athletes will probably be praised for defending the honor of their programs. You know, the forces that stormed the beaches on DDay were defending something most of us hold dear. What exactly were these players defending?
Well said! And contrast this with the Cross Country runners who compete nearly alone and unappreciated. At the end of their runs, they congratulate the winners
They have no desire to preen or celebrate. They have left their effort on the course without the advantages of time outs, half times or other breaks.
If it was up to me, I would require all folks to have one season of Cross County before being eligible for a high school varsity sport.
Laurence you took the words right out of my mouth (and cleaned them up a little). Get used to the horrible behavior because for years college football has been too big to kill, but now it has gone full capitalism on the back of the noble shared goal of getting a hard-earned education. Good on the players for getting a cut of that lucre, but the whole system is dirtier than ever, and will have zero incentive to live up to the honor codes that bind students to the rules and norms of good character. Any school not already too deep into the morass should start to think hard about why they exist and consider cutting football or removing themselves from the higher levels of competition. Looking at you, alma mater Northwestern, the perfect example of a school that has no business keeping up the charade.
Actually, my Alma mater is Northern Illinois. But the principle is the same. As an alumni and former student football manager, I was invited to a tour of the new athletic training center and a meeting where the entire program was explained. What I said previously is only a small portion of what is done for football players. It makes one wonder why any player would want to leave college. Why worry about sportsmanship when everything is done for you and you are taken care of as long as you play good football and do what the coaches say?
Had dinner recently with a friend whose brother was a pro player for long-enough career to explain to him that the weirdest thing is how *everybody* sucks up and tells you you're great, all the time, so that nothing in your life is real...until you get to the weekly GAME, where suddenly everything is 100% reality because nobody is going to tell you you did great if you screw up on field. So only the game is real.
Flashback: My first car was a used Dodge Coronet.
In 1975 my brother and I restored a neglected 68 Coronet Super Bee with a 383 Magnum and 4 speed manual. mmmmmmm
The Catholic Church is not perfect (understatement) but I LOVE that masses are always under an hour. My church is consistently 55 minutes. In the last two years, it went over an hour once -- and that was like 65 minutes on a combo Easter/baby baptism day.
Oh good grief, less than an hour would be fabulous! Years ago, our Mass consistently was at least an hour. I'm pretty lapsed now but a former priest at the same church consistently was about 39 minutes. I could get into that! (I must admit though, that that must eliminate the songs and I do like to sing.)
Tom, then you will love this. My mother was say, not too pious. We lived in a heavily Italian neighborhood. To save time, she would take us to the Italian Mass in the basement on Sundays.
The mass was in Latin and the homily in Italian…40 minutes tops.
And nobody in my family understands Italian.
The formaldehyde thing is another reason we need to start moving away from cars. We banned indoor smoking and get offended when someone blows smoke in our face, why are we so ok with these machines poisoning us everywhere we go?
“Engineers develop new catalyst that efficiently turns methane gas into useful polymers; reaction produces formaldehyde, which can be combined with urea to create a resin found in common consumer goods.”
Yay! Less methane! Oops…😂
pick your poison?
There's a reason formaldehyde is used to preserve lab specimens.
I'm not sure if you really mean to abolish cars in general or just cars that run on hydrocarbons. I'm okay with phasing out ICE vehicles as EVs mature, but I don't know how well you'll be able to sell eliminating all cars...
Start move away from does not mean ban, no. But we do need to move away and electric cars are not the answer either. I know people love personal transportation, they love climate control, but they are a net negative to society.
We have this formaldehyde thing now, we know tires are the largest sources of microplastics and the largest source of plastic in our drinking water (and we know black plastics are worse for health than other plastics!) yet we insist on having a highway next to our drinking water! EVs are only going to exacerbate the issue.
As always, I encourage people to look into the devastating effects the automobile has had and continues to have on our society. Here's a short reading list:
- Carjacked by Catherine Lutz
- Traffication by Paul Donald
- The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup
- Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar
- Right of Way by Angie Schmitt
- Divided Highways by Tom Lewis
I know you're right. I don't want to hear you. Imagine laugh/cry emoji here.
Ha ha when I listen to the Mincing Rascals I can pick up on this a bit :)
In movies like Star Wars, we always see personal vehicles that run near the ground or even fly through the air with no tail pipe emissions. How are they powered.
Anti-gravity, which doesn't exist!
nuclear energy?
My question was not merely trivial. Too many conservatives in this country want to maintain the status quo. It’s not just about money. It’s about harkening back to times they consider superior to what we now have. That’s great- if one is a white male with good health and no psychological issues. It’s also very hypocritical. Get rid of powered vehicles completely and go back to horses and buggies. Go back to slavery. Put women back in the kitchen and make them the property of their husbands. Dump electricity and go back to wood-fired heat and things made by hand. Society at no point in history has ever stood still as we figured out better ways to do things. Now we have better ways to power things without digging up the ground and poisoning the air and water. All conservatives can think about is who would lose money. And Trump fans the flames.
I can't hear that Edward Sharpe song without thinking of Blue Cross Blue Shield, who used it in TV ads. Apparently it's been in a lot of other ads as well.
Ha, same. That would be a fun list: Good songs ruined because they were overused in ad campaigns.
May I suggest United Airlines’ ear-worming of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”?
Since Rhapsody went public domain this year, I haven't heard United using it anymore. I miss that.
They still use it in their in-flight safety video -- well, kind of. It's more hinted at than outright played, but still obvious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jep3RR2yEXA
A good suggestion, although I’m not sure if United’s use of it is the reason that I’ve always hated it.
“Manhattan” is one of Woody Allen’s most celebrated films, but it is one of my least favorite of his, in large part because of the prominence of “Rhapsody in Blue”.
While I didn't vote for Johnson so he has lived up to expectations, I do support raising taxes on alcohol. These taxes are incredibly low and have not even kept up with the costs of the products. Big Beverage and Big Alcohol are more powerful than Big Tobacco. I worked with 12 state coalitions on underage drinking and it amazed me as to how small the taxes are and how raising them would not have a tremendous impact on costs - unlike tobacco. We raised tobacco taxes have proven to decrease consumption of tobacco products but there is limited research on this for alcohol but we still need to raise the tax. Currently the tax on alcohol is by the gallon which is so hard to compute that consumers rarely notice. So I totally support an increase in Chicago. And we have heard all the same arguments with tobacco taxes and smokefree indoor air laws - loss of jobs, people will go to Indiana, etc. It just doesn't happen.
It also would be an acknowledgment of the foremost health crisis that we perpetually keep our heads buried in the sand about, even as we go ballistic over other matters that are comparative blips on the radar screen. Guns and opioids may claim their share of human tragedy, but they are nothing compared to the toll in death and misery that alcohol abuse exacts on our civilization. Odd that no one ever seems to throw their hands to the sky and cry out “Why God, why?” over the alcohol epidemic the way they do about firearms, Vicodin, vaccination hesitancy, or children being abducted from store parking lots (265 per year, according to a notorious TikTok dingbat, a number that she almost certainly invented), despite its ravages being so much more prevalent and farther reaching.
There was an excellent op-ed in the Tribune the other day by a writer whose name escapes me that heart wrenchingly addressed this matter that I highly recommend. I think it was last Friday or Saturday.
I certainly take your point. High volume of abusive alcoholics known to me particularly in the older generation of our family, though for many, it's explained by their military combat experience in WW II. I think society doesn't throw up its hands as much about alcohol now because 1) Prohibition manifestly did not work, and 2) unlike opioids, meth, etc., alcohol is also used at a lower level that is tasty, communal and celebratory in a way that those other drugs are not. That and denial, of course.
Denial is pretty much all of it. I think it all comes down to, most people like to drink at least occasionally, so they do the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” thing when it comes to acknowledging (or not) what a powerful and devastating drug alcohol is.
I think that if we had a history of marketing flavored beverages spiked with opiate extracts, we’d have the same attitudes and cultural dynamic about them that we have about booze. That is to say, most people would drink them, some with restraint, some to excess, always for the high, but kidding ourselves that we do it because we like the way they taste. The only difference, I think, is that fewer people would die, since opiates are not nearly as toxic as alcohol.
Opioids have a serious use for pain control. If you're actually having extreme pain, you don't get addicted!
Not exactly. If you never increase the dose, then you’re unlikely to become addicted, but the same is true for recreational use. The problem is that, whether taken for pain management or recreation, the usual course of action is for tolerance to build, dosage and frequency of use increase, and eventually, dependence and addiction ensue.
Post surgery, I was on very, very high doses of Vicodin for over a week for the pain. As soon as the pain went away, so did any desire for the drug.
Ever since I was a kid(in the Stone Age) the most reviled pros were attorneys(sorry, Joanie) and used car salespeople. I now wonder where lobbyists rank. Good luck with the alcohol lobby. I was just reading a whine from them today in the paper, not to mention an alderperson representing a ward next to Indiana.
Former Trib editor Mark Jacob is on record as saying that Kass's columns routinely needed lots of editing prior to publication. It appears that he does not have an editor to clean up his online column:
"Former Cook County State’s Attorney’s Devine, O’Malley, Daley, and Alvarez attended the swearing in ceremony for the swearing in for new prosecutor Eileen Burke."
(He added an apostrophe to "Attorneys" when it was not called for.)
If "the K is silent" Kass appears diminutive, it's probably just an optical illusion resulting from a .75 scale body paired with a 1.25 scale head.
You can't spell jackass without Kass...
1. AI: IS writing a series of words put in order - or is it the person behind ordering those words together? I've been playing around with AI for ideas. It's novel, gives me some idea of what direction I want to go but no where near has written what I have written. I could see how in a few short years it'll improve to the point that a majority of people won't know the difference between writer and AI. (Let's include lower education, more articles the past decade with poor writing and punctuation and poor editing reviews) We'll be under their control way before they can perfect writing styles. (Late example: Many social media posts showing things like Munch's piece "The Scream" as painted by Monet, Picasso, Pollack... Same subject interpreted differently) 2. As Bugs would say "Abacus-kadabracus" The raises you calculated are still less than final salary gain - as those Step/Lane increases are missing. So $100K to $141+K in fours years plus S/L increases. 3. Roland's Rule = Duck and Cover and wait the storm out. 3. Non-practicing Catholic - you can still always count on a 1 hour mass vs any other Sunday denomination service. (Missed mention: Pope-mobiles are going electric) 4. Brandon Johnson... Anyone. We need an AI photo of Johnson/Ahab mix up. I look forward to what you get. Our 'collaborating" mayor responding with "I actually don't think much of it (letter from principals) I don't think much about it at all" pretty much sums up his actions and process. IF there is a budget by year end - let's determine which late in the day date, slow news day will it be announced. 4. Neil It's not Johnson's fault. It's (insert name). This is a family man to his black family. You are just holding him to an arbitrary standard that none other has dealt with. (Never mind - I guess with this in place we won't hear from the mayor the rest of his term) 5. Sportsmanship - hopefully it is something to rebound. Leading up to Ohio/MI many sports gurus felt Ohio players and fans were on edge. Yes they have a shot at a National Championship but they were more focused on not messing up against MI - who they were favored to beat by 19 pts. The coach and players played to not lose vs to win. They lost. Even if they win the championship - it's a lost season.