Basic Info on Chicago

I guess there are only 2.8 million people in Chicago now. It used to be over 3 million, but we have been losing people. I knew that was going on, but I had no idea how much we had lost. The Chicagoland area has 9.5 million people. The way populution is counted makes the size of US cities seem different when compared to each other. Like I was saying about LA, if we counted the sprawl of the city the same way we would probably be around 7 million. It is just a density thing and geography of the cities that deceive interpretation.

I guess Chicago only became a city in 1833, which is amazing for me to find out how much of the city has been built in such a short amount of time. Most of it has been built since the 50's actually. There are a few photos from the 40's I found that show most of downtown being train yards. It seems almost impossible that the majority of the city has been built in just 50-60 or so. In just like 4 generations we've killed off and pushed out all of the native people. I'm sure most of the country's timeline is similar. Can you imagine us going to Europe from the US and in just 4 generations have Europe completely rebuilt and void of its current people? Incredible.

In 1833 we got rid of all the natives (Ottawa, Potawatami, Ojibwe, Miami, Fox, and Sauk) thru a treaty that displaced them. The name Chicago comes from the word Shikaakwa as the French perceived it. Which is the word for "wild onion" in Miami-Illinois (language). I was always told Chicago meant skunk because it was smelly. Maybe the onion thing is mistranslated on Wikipedia. If I find out otherwise I'll let you know. I mean they both can referencing smell.


I might come back to more of the early history later on, but I'm going to jump ahead. Chicago was built up quickly because of Lake Michigan and our relative position on the US map. The city grew because we could grow the food they were eating in the east and raise the pigs and cows and then ship it all to New York. It was also a hub for everything out west coming back to New York. Because of that we got our financial district, the Mercantile where all the commodities are exchanged. We obviously still use it today. We are still the hub of the country too. Then it was railroads which is why downtown was all railway yards in the 40s and today O'Hare is the second busiest airport in the world. We run so much shit thru the city we built a second international airport that is extremely busy too: Midway.

The Chicago fire wiped out 1/3 of the entire city in 1871 including the entire business/financial district. That fire was actually good for the city because instead of naturally growing to that size from the 200 people who started the first trading post, they could plan the entire downtown area to best function with the new population. During reconstruction (ours not the Civil War), we developed and completed the worlds first sky scraper in 1885, using steel for the first time. It is just a mile or so north of those people that died in the fire last week.


Then the "Heymarket Massacre" happened in 1886 when people were out supporting labor and someone threw a bomb at the police. I'm telling you that it is a very bad idea to fuck with the people of Chicago. It always has been. We've always been anti-business when it comes to social welfare. This is literally where the labor vs. big business started. THIS riot over 100 years ago started this struggle and we are still fighting today. Just last year after the election when the economy crashed a company that makes windows just put up signs when people were at work saying the were now out of business and they weren't to come back anymore. I don't know if you remember hearing about this, but none of the workers left work. They then started working in shifts to occupy the building and protect the company from liquidating the machines and inventory. They had that building conquered for a week or two before I think Dick Durbin came in and tried to get Bank of America to extend a new loan to the company. I know they are working now, but I think they build green stuff now. Anyhow, the point is, Chicago is a fucking nightmare for corporations.

Click here to see one of the memorials we built celebrating the labor position. The city literally sided and celebrated the strikers and made statues of a martyr. Then in the 1990's the city made the actual site where the event happened a city landmark. In the 90's the city was still siding with labor.


Then the most significant things that followed were the World's Fair and Prohibition, but they both get their own posts. We also developed the nuclear bomb at Chicago University (where Michelle Obama worked) in our role in the Manhattan Project. This is where we learned how to make a nuclear reaction and where the first one in the world was created. The photo above is the library at University of Chicago.

Sorry that I am getting out of order here. Chicago was a city in the North in the Civil War. I am going off the timeline in Wikipedia and there is no mention of it there. One of the places slaves went in the underground railroad was Chicago. It was called the great migration if you are a history buff. The underground railroad has less relevance in the city since they didn't have to hide here, but when I was living in Indianapolis I found out quickly that it was a giant deal there. Even where I live now there is a mansion called Wolfe Mansion and it is completely land locked, but has a widow's walk (I'm going to assume if you live on the coast you know what that is). In high school we all thought this place was haunted and the story was the man who build it used to sit up there and shoot slaves as they ran across his property. So the south side of Chicago became the black part of town and it still is today. Back to Michelle Obama, but her relatives are the people we are talking about. They likely had to escape the south this way.


During the civil war Chicago had Camp Douglas: The Civil War's Guantanamo. In 1862 we had established a camp for prisoners the north took from the confederacy and put them on the same spot of land that we built the University of Chicago on to develop the bomb and give Michelle Obama a job. Over 7,000 confederates died at the hands of Chicago. Most were attributed to disease because of our primitive pluming and stuff but several were "unaccounted for." Wikipedia says 1500 but in all honesty I've heard less. We sold their bodys, threw some in Lake Michigan, and threw the rest in the ground without a coffin. It is the largest mass grave in the western hemisphere..... Filled with traitor racist assholes.



The wikipedia article also does not list the World's Fair of 1893, which is a very big deal that is getting it's own post with tons of photos. It was the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival and Chicago stole the event from New York with dirty politics. We built hundreds of building and built a completely new city that was just incredibly magnificent. I mean really, this was on par with the great architecture in old world Europe. I think only one building still stands. It was called the White City where our best serial killer really did a number. He was an architect who help build the buildings and had secret rooms no one knew about and he killed all sorts of people, most of whom never went missing right away, because they were all tourists. There is a great book about it called The Devil in the White City. The photo above is the only surviving building, I believe.

The fair was after the industrial boom and was THE display of American Exceptionalism. It was our responsibility to show off to the world, because this is when we took the #1 spot in power. If you are a history buff than you know all about the late 1800's and the rise of big business and wealth in America. Chicago was America's phoenix that rose out of the ashes and became the leader in business, technology, and accomplishment. Wait till you see these photos... Do not look any of this up before my post, if you don't know about it already. You'll wish we still had this campus. This next part is from memory and I'm not seeing it in this text, but I'm pretty sure that it was the first display of electricity and we went with Tesla on alternating current instead of Edison's direct current..... I could be wrong, but I will have it right when I write the dedicated post. I'll also go into the politics too, because from what I know this was when we started building the reputation for corruption, although it has been going on for even longer.

My Chicago

I was born and raised in Chicago until I was about 11/12, then my family moved across the border into Indiana. At this point I was going to school during the week and still living in Chicago while my parents worked. My Grandma and Aunt lived down the street in Wicker Park and I had to stay there every weekend until I was 16 basically. After that I had a car and just stayed and did teenage crap with my friends from school. My parents have always worked in the city and my dad owned a hardware store in Boystown/Lakeview if you've heard of either it's names. The city recognizes it both ways and it is has welcome to Boystown signs wrapped in rainbow ribbon.
I was living in a town just 2 cities over the border from Chicago. We were like the same distance as in the movie Ferris Beuller, just in a different direction. We used to ditch school all the time and go to the city too. That is how I first saw and met No Doubt. Right now I am about 15 miles further away. Until about January of this year I used to go to the city about 3 times a week because that is where my best friend lives and just to hang out. In 2002/2003 when I left the area my entire family left the city and moved to the east coast. Every single aunt, uncle, cousins left within a 6 month period, so now I that I'm back to the area, I have a lot less to go there for.

I thought I'd show a few pictures I could find on the internet from where I grew up Wicker Park. I've tried to embed them where they relate. This is also where've they've filmed several movies like the movie titled Wicker Park with Josh Harnett. When I was little they were filming Goodfellas and they used our street. It was really special when I was little because it was total magic to see all the cars off our street, the streets cleaned and fixed up, trucked in snow and all the old-timey cars parked on our street. My grandma would drink coffee with Robert Stack because she had met him on set and I was so scared of him. I didn't really understand fame/celebrity or anything at this point (I was 7 or 8) I only knew him as the voice to "Unsolved Mysteries." I would say that 1/3 of all movies shot in Chicago use 'the old neighborhood.'


I think you understand where I'm coming from and how my life has sort of been a satellite that has revolved around the city forever. Until I've kind of went into this depression spell. Everyone from my family is from and grew up in Chicago and honestly I did too. I just slept in Indiana until I started moving around after graduation. I've travelled a lot and lived in a bunch of different cities and there is something different about this city. It is the most ideal city in the country and by far the best place to live, despite some of the downsides. Chicago is the best city in the country and all these posts are going to show what has helped shape it to be that way.

If I had to describe some of the other cities that might be contenders I would call New York rude and dirty, Miami flamboyant and it is just fake in a neon way, LA is a fake in a plastic way and doesn't count as a major city. LA is the equivalent to "Chicagoland". This is a term used to describe the outter laying areas where people live and work in the city and the suburbs. Outside the official border of Chicago there are millions and millions of people who live in an area that is built like LA. They are mostly low rises, strip malls, and residential areas. There is no metro area in LA and no sense of community like we have here. Chicago has a social pulse that moves and provides life from the heart, which would be basically the events going on downtown. I guess the traffic would be the lub-dub.

I approached this as the idea of explaining the art we have in Chicago and talent that rises thru the ranks because of it. There are extremely unique things that go on here that shape a different kind of celebrity on the national stage. When ever you see a Chicago actor/musician they are always genuine, extremely talented, honest, and not into celebrity culture. They are all in it for the art. When I started to try to get examples together it required me to look up stuff about where they come from, their work, and the things they credit to their success. This lead to me looking more and more stuff up about why our talent is so different: our atmosphere fosters true talent and rejects convention. I've found out that Chicago has always been incredibly liberal with social issues, doing the right thing, and celebrating everything with friends. Chicagoans hate bullshit of any sort. They are relatively more anti-corporate, anti-hate, and anti-celebrity. I think it is because we are removed from the New York and LA entertainment factories and all come from blue collar backgrounds. We care about each other and work to make bad things better.

This ended up leading into the Art subject, so I am going to do that post first. I'm going to brag about the people and scenes that are in Chicago and show them talking about it in interviews and stuff. I have only limited knowledge on jazz in the city, but I've been to a lot of rooms in the city that used to be Jazz Rooms - so the history has to be rich. I'm more aware of the blues side because it is in your face here. I'll probably most talk about the past 20 years since that has been my experience.

Chicago - Introduction

This poster represents how I feel about my city and is a decent representation of how most people my age (in or around the city) feel about it too. There are several posters but this one has always been my favorite. In fact about 2 years ago I was serving at an Uno's Pizzeria (I am not endorsing their business) and they decorate the inside of their dining area with photos, posters, paintings, and actual garbage from Chicago - like all the chain restaurants nailed garbage to the wall. The franchise owner had decided to update the bar area and was selling various things that they were going to throw away. I had offered 100 dollars for the framed reprint they had, but was outbid. I think I may spring for an even better one after this is written.

I'm going to approach this project as a conversation. While all the events and facts will be completely factual, I'm going to take advantage of the complete liberty we have here and present the information as if Chicago were a fictional city. That way I don't have to worry about presenting something that may be common knowledge. So before you start reading, wipe your mind of everything you know about the Second City.

There are a few things I want to share about the casual research I've been doing and the exact relationship I have with the city and unfortunately that is all I plan on sharing today. After this introduction, I am going to do a few things around my house then post about my personal relationship with the city. The reason I am doing this is to both buy time to research some more and to start a more detailed dialog with Kerry about the direction I should take. I have already shared 4 photos I had found and that is all I plan on sharing until after the project is done. When it is over I will share all of the resources I used because you will likely want to at least spend a few hours looking thru some of the photos.

There is no plan written out for the subjects I am going to write about or how it is all going to be organized. This is winging it completely because.... well, I'm writing it for pleasure. This is a conversation between friends and I get to tell you about something I love. - I've never had a captive audience like this so that may explain my enthusiasm.- I really would like some input before I begin though. What are the things you know about, but are interested in getting more details on? Some stuff, I may have a personal relationship to, so please share. These are some of the things I plan on writing about:

1. My experience and my family's experience in the city. Some emotional stuff that has come up form this project too.
2. How the city formed, why, how it grew, and its relationship with the rest of the country.
3. Race, poverty, wealth and corruption (Obama actually fits in here too)
4. Organized Crime (extension of the previous category)
5. Democratic Convention
6. World's Fair
7. Art, Music, and general talent. (where this whole thing grew from)
8. Civil War
9. Serial Killers
10. Marshal Fields
11. Hull House
12. Fire

There are other things I want to write about, but I either can't remember on the fly (perhaps I should organize it) or I can't figure out if it fits into a larger category. Can you think of something, possibly huge, that I am forgetting about? Is there anything at all that you specifically are interested in? I plan on using as many photos and videos as possible too, just to let you know.

Kerry

Thank you so much for encouraging me to write about Chicago more. I am feeling extremely ill, like some kind of superbug got in me and took me from perfectly ok to feeling like I am going to die when I fall asleep. Anyhow, I'm kind of researching the city a bit and i wanted to include a couple things from chicago history that i know about, and I'm learning crazy stuff that is I knew had to of existed and stuff, but you just don't think about. For example, I'm looking at the indian boundary lines right now. Interesting stuff like that. I am having these weird emotions looking at some of these old photos too. I found an actual photo taken from the Chicago fire too. I think when I figure out how I am going to organize this stuff, it will be very interesting.

Thank you. I would have never run across this information with your nudge.

Global Warming

This kind of works me up a tad. The good thing is that it shows people how warming can cause more snow and seemingly colder conditions. If it wasn't for a commenter on DU I wouldn't have even noticed, because this is common knowledge here. What bothers me is how they are so quick to tack this to global warming. The lakes have NEVER froze at the same time on an annual basis. There are too many variables to attribute it to one cause so quickly.

He says even seasoned meteorologists are taking note..... THAT IS THEIR FUCKING JOB! If this is absolutely and positively the result of global warming perhaps you should put on at least one of these meteorologists to make that claim and back it up with data. When did anchors become weather experts? It is stuff like this that eats away at the credibility of the actual movement on climate change. I promise, no one in a snow belt is even the slightest bit surprised. I just wrote on this blog like 2 days ago that we can get a couple of feet of snow in a matter of like 7-8 hours. This is the exact thing I was talking about - down to the details. It wouldn't even surprise us if it was a severe storm with wicked lightning and thunder, but I'll bet every reporter would went mental.

What would be abnormal? More than 4 ft in a day. That happens once every 20 years or so. If you are looking for unprecidented we'd be talking like 6+ feet in a day. I think they got that in the late 60's in Chicago proper though. I'm not sure about out east. This is a non-event. The people are prepared for this, they deal with it like 10 times a year, and to prove it look at their salt reserves and number of snow removers employed. In fact, this is good for their economy.

I think I'm in a bad mood today. I'm just tired of these guys being so news-Y lately. If you are going to claim something like this, do it thru an expert. At least have an intern fact check or make a phone call to the city.

Commentary on Technology

Yesterday when I first found out about the Norway Spiral, I got obsessive about finding out everything I could. I think it was due to the insanely beautiful photos and mesmerizing videos and total lack of information that fueled my motivation. - I sound like Sarah Palin there using an adjective before every noun.- We know what happened now and the novelty has worn off already, but when you sit back and think about the event and how it played out versus the news story, things are interesting in a different way.

When I first saw these photos it was about 6 am CST and when you look at Google Trends this was when "Norway Spiral" had only doubled as a search from what ever came up for a search before this happened. At the time only the site I found it at (which I don't even remember), Daily Mail, and the Examiner had anything posted about what happened. By about 12 or 1 pm the keyword combination was labelled a "Fiery Search," which was 1 level short of being viral. I can't figure out how to get to the graphs there anymore, so this is all from memory. It is likely off a bit. At this time, the only non-blog publications even mentioning that something happened were tabloid type places and Discover Magazine.

Google has a real-time section on searches that updates continuously in your results when someone is posting about those key words in blogs, twitter, youtube, and as news-y sources publish something. I had never noticed it before but on this search it was scrolling so fast you almost couldn't click on a link shown because it moved a notch lower so quickly. This is how I initially followed the story. Then when the more popular blogs and sites were posting links to the tabloids, like at Digg, the comment sections were a colossal help. You had hundreds of people commenting, the majority useless but entertaining, but some of them were written by people who were experienced in something relative. There were also people from Norway translating news stories written in their language (I'm still not sure what it is called). That is how I found out it was likely really a rocket. Before that I knew it was being labelled as a rocket, but official sources said they had no idea. They just said that was their best guess.

A person from within Norway had sent me a link in their language thru Google Translate. Which had some information comparable to what Rachel had reported on in her show: A transmission from the Russian Military picked up by ham radio type people from before the event occurred. Unfortunately I was up for 2 days at that point so I am having a hard time remembering exactly what it was that I read. I'm not sure of the time zones but I would guess that about 12 hours after something happened in the Arctic fucking Circle, I had seen about 100 high definition photographs and probably 10-15 videos of an event that lasted for only 2 minutes. Reminder: I'm on the other side of planet.

If this had happened 15 years ago, I still would not have seen a photo or even heard about this yet. Now, it only takes an estimated 12 hours to hear about it, have 100 high def photos, a few handful of videos, and to actually speak to someone from within the state it happened. Granted this occurred in a wealthy country - I'll bet fucked up stuff like this happens in Iraq/Afghanistan all the time and we never hear about it. Two things come to mind for me at this point: we really are becoming a global community and technology has advanced faster than I think we even realize.

I have 4 cameras and 2 video recording devises within 50 feet of me at most times. Those are the only cameras with in that space that I own, not including other people or security. If I have 1-2 minutes, whatever happens around me that I notice has the possibility of being recorded by like 2 or even 3 sources if I wanted. Whatever was going on would have to be extreme for me to even use one device. I am only stating what is possible. Then within 20 minutes I could have videos and photos of what just happened up on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, this blog, AmericaBlog, YouTube, and Flickr as well as emails sent to any publication/group in the entire world. Then I could start making phone calls.

To make this all a little more extreme, the devises I have on my person at any given time all have cameras as a secondary function. So even if I don't plan on recording something, I always have the ability. I have my cellphone, my ipod touch (strictly for my vehicle), 2 laptops with built in web cams, 1 actual webcam, a regular digital camera, and a dv camera. If I didn't have a laptop on me (never happens) I could still use my phone or ipod to send the pictures or video wherever I wanted.

Now it is time to conclude these thoughts. If something happens for more than 2 minutes in a good fraction of the world, we will not only hear about it, but have a selection of documents to view about it within the day. Then in another good portion of the planet where the internet is not so abundant we will still get the story within a week or two. This is all discombobulating, really. It also pushes UFO stories into a new light, because if it doesn't have like 5-10 different recordings and it is in an average city it isn't real. The Norway Spiral was in or near the Arctic Circle. I would mention that a UFO was spotted at O'Hare airport and reported by corporations and quite a few people in the middle of day, a few years ago, and nothing has been released. O'Hare is one of the busiest airports in the world. So either my ideas don't hold water or the world has changed that much in an even shorter amount of time than I presented. We are living in crazy times.

Here is the video about information about the O'Hare UFO that echoes what I've written and would be worth watching if you are interested in what I've said. A news broadcaster was being recorded by the news camera when they were off air and he is interviewing someone about what happened. Basically this is internal footage that was never meant to be released, but someone took it anyways. This is off topic, but how sad is it that you get more information from this than the official broadcast? That could be a whole different post.

Oh Canada!

Our neighbors to the north seem like such a benign country. Universal heath care and no death penalty. A parliamentary government with, from what I can tell, fraud free elections. They don’t invade countries for fake reasons. Heck, even the Canadian Royal Mounties don’t appear threatening in any way.

My image of them was shattered when not long ago Canadian border guards detained Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. I was stunned and apparently so was Amy. Grilled about what her planned talk at the Vancouver Library was to be about, she was finally asked if she was going to speak about the Olympics. She thought they meant Obama’s attempt to score them for Chicago but was told they were talking about the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. She told them she had no plans to speak about that. Not believing her the guards rifled through her and her companions belongings and two of their three lap tops.

They were finally let in with documents stapled to their passports stating they had to leave Canada within two days and had to check in with the border agency prior to leaving. Once in Canada and at her speaking event Amy discovered there has been a crackdown on things anti Olympic. Protesters and activists have been identified as the number one security threat to the games.

From forcing the homeless into shelters away from the sensitive eyes of the world to infiltrating anti Olympic groups Canadian authorities are gearing up. Activists are contacted by authorities for posting anti Olympic posters. There are concerns about the private security forces being hired to police the event. Vancouver police have even acquired a crowd control devise.

I am disturbed and dismayed when a country that I considered “one of the good ones” behaves in this matter. If this is what happens when a city is awarded the Olympics I’m glad Chicago didn’t get it. Sorry Joseph…….

The Good, The Strange, and The Just Plain Ugly

Although I am not a big fan of Christmas I love the trees. I love the smell and the lights at night. My favorite part of the holiday is getting out the decorations from my childhood. Our family made decorations every year so when I pull them out it is a trip down memory lane. I put my tree up late and keep it up through New Years so it really is a Holiday Tree.
Scroll through these great photos to see trees from around the world. Some of them are goofy and some are incredible. It's worth the time.
If I didn't have my decorations from my childhood I don't think I would have a tree. Christmas has been so polluted I get more sick of the commercial aspect of it every year. The stores just can't wait to start pounding us over the heads with it. Having said that I must admit a guilty secret. I will go to the mall one time and one time only during this time to watch the kids visit Santa. It always makes me tear up. I don't know why.

Room 101

I feel confident that the regulars on this blog have either read or watched "1984." This is where my room 101 is.

They have still not gotten into the room that started the whole thing. How effing crazy is that?! The photo I used is of streeterville. It is hard to explain or even show in pictures, but you have to be standing on the street to appreciate the area correctly, just like New York.

The thing is, and this adds to why it is my room 101, you have to be RICH (capital letters) to live there. It is basically the area in and around North Michigan Avenue (the Chicago of the movies). Water Tower Place (Oprah) and the Handcock (Chris Farley) are a part of it, and all the area inbetween and along the Chicago River is considered Streeterville. Some would argue just north of here too, but that is River North. The cheapest 1 bedroom place you could probably get is likely around 1.5 to 2.0 in this economy and your place would be on the first 10 floors somewhere. To be living large like these people in the article your apartment is worth at least 7 million. I'm not joking when I say this, because knew a Firestone for a night, these people in the fire have to call the lobby to see if it is raining or snowing. Now if I had arrived and had this much money, where my life was all taken care of and I was concentrated on living it, my biggest fear would be dying in some fucked up fire that is too high to be put out. I'd die in this fire or above it.

The odds are against me ever getting around this much money again, but I thought I'd share with you my biggest fear: Watching my life burn before my eyes and then suffocating to death afterwards or burning to death. Terrifying! Oh yeah I thought I would share the temperature with you, it is 1 degree right now at 6 am. That is why the people were in the lobby of their own building.

A Break Through in the War on Drugs

DEA Recruits Lil Wayne To Use Up All Drugs In Mexico

I admit I don't know who Lil Wayne is but he sounds like an American hero sacrificing himself for something greater than he is.

Norway Spiral

Have you guys seen this? This weird light spiral was spinning in the sky above norway and there are a bunch of pictures and 1 video that I've seen so far from it. It is fucking the scariest thing I've ever seen. The picture look weird and fake right? The video is scary as shit.

Here is an article with more pictures and the video. Check it out. Seriously, this actually scares me. I don't buy that it was russian, what ever it is. I'm sure more info will come thru-out the day.

UPDATE: So I've been trying so hard to get real news on this. Those photos were taken by a photographer for the state run news channel in Norway and they claim that they are not photoshopped. I had his name, but I didn't think to save it. I am continually putting links in the comment I have below by using the edit button. So far the most reputable thing I've seen say anything about this (in english) is Discover Magazine. The story didn't even break on the internet until 9am according to Google trends. My guess is that the lag in reporting has to do with the language barrier and the whole world calling people in Norway at once.

The story is officially viral, so it will be huge later on. It is jumping around in the top 10 searches in english on Google. There are literally hundreds of videos now so I'm not going to post them anymore. If I had to guess as to why the tabloids are the only ones running with this story, is because the traditional media is afraid to run stuff with out confirmation on a number of things. I've been obsessed with this for hours now. At this point the story is 5 hours old. I just want someone at the AP to at least mention the internet chatter. You know that there is some high quality video somewhere because this lasted for over 2 minutes.

If this isn't updated later, I've fallen asleep and will be gone for a long time.


I just found this video of something very similar that happened in China in April 2009.


This is a translated article where Russia says it was a failed missile in response to the missile shield. Obama is giong there tomorrow to pick up his peace prize. Then they say that they cannot confirm at the end of the article.

Last Update: I'm dying of tiredness and soarness. This story is dead I think. It was a missile. I don't really understand how that happened, but I've accepted that it has. It is either the Russians wanting to make damn sure Obama knows they are testing shit despite the shield (did we cancel that order?) or they are extremely fucking incompetent. If this was supposed to be top secret, it could go down in history as the biggest fail in state secrets ever. The whole fucking world is going to know about this by the end of the day. I really wanted a science win. Oh well.

Incarceration in the US

To see the large version with all the juicy stats click here.

Great Gift Idea

Weed: 420 Things You Didn't Know (or Remember) About Cannabis, by I.M. Stoned
With ready access to B.C. Bud and more stores that sell paraphernalia -no, really, it's for tobacco!-than is to be expected in a town the size of Bellingham, Washington, this is the perfect gift for that sleepy-eyed stoner in your life. Within, you'll find out not only how to make a bong out of a piece of fruit, but you'll also glean the truth about reefer-related urban legends (no, there is no 420 police code and, yes, American citizens used to be able to pay taxes with hemp), find out why lighting up causes the munchies, research the best stoner celluloid out there, discover what celebrites have been outed as ganja-philes (Jack Black, Cameron Diaz, Carrie Fisher, and Barbara Streisand are mentioned) and peruse a travel guide for a cannabis trip. It's heady stuff, but may help you get through the holidaze.

Vermicomposting

aka worm composting. I read an article that makes it sound so easy. Get two medium sized garbage cans. Cut the bottoms out. Stick the cans into the ground. The picture from the article shows the cans buried about 2/3 of the way into the ground. Slowly fill the first can with shredded newspaper (not glossy) and your food scraps. Fruit, vegtables, coffee grounds/filter, egg shells and nothing else. Google "red wigglers" and you'll find places to buy the specific types of worms that prefer to eat kitchen scraps.

Keep the lids on the cans and check them every few days to make sure your worms are happy and not waterlogged or too dry. When one bin get full, transfer some of the material on top - plus worms -to the other. Then use the finished compost in the first bin.

Sounds easy. Let me know if you give it a try.