Events

Sunday morning, after Saturday's snowstorm: Last night, making mini turkey pot pies for tomorrow: That's all from scratch. Inside a rosemary-sage crust, from the bottom we've got turkey, pinot noir-reduction gravy, stuffing with organic Italian sausage, and cranberry sauce made with cranberries, orange, honey, and a secret ingredient that makes them amazing. I think I'm going to gain three kilos this weekend.

A couple of articles floated through my awareness today: Vladimir Putin has gone so far into the language of paranoia around today's shoot-down that one starts to get nervous. (Richard Hofstadter should be required reading.) Josh Marshall, ever the optimist, says it can still get worse. Bruce Schneier is nervous, too, about the policy repercussions from the Paris attacks. News flash: Donald Trump is a racist liar who sounds a lot like George Wallace and Ted Cruz Joseph McCarthy. IFLS outlines what...

This video shows the point-of-view of an engineer on the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railroad in 1945. From Linden Street in Wilmette on up to Waukegan, none of these tracks exists anymore; it's now the North Shore Trail, which I've ridden and walked on for most of my life. Check it out:

By one measure, Chicago is the Craft Beer Capital of the U.S.: Craft brewers in the Chicago area occupy an estimated 1.6 million square feet of commercial real estate, more than any other metro area in the country, according to a report from Seattle-based brokerage Colliers International. The area also has the second-most craft breweries with 144, behind only Portland, Ore.'s 196. And craft beer—defined as being made by small, independent brewers—is still growing here. Just four U.S. markets have more...

For the last couple of days, I've missed my 10,000-step goal by 100 to 500 steps. This is why: Yesterday Chicago got its biggest November snowfall in 120 years; today it's well below freezing. Walking is treacherous at best for bipeds and uncomfortable for quadrupeds. So today might also be a miss. I haven't missed three days in a row since March 5th-7th—when, not coincidentally, we had a miserable, snowy week. Winter is hard on fitness.

I might follow this map. Explanation: Community beer and brewery review site RateBeer puts out a list every year of the top 100 breweries in the world, “according to reviews taken last year and weighted by performance within and outside of style, balanced by indicators of depth.” From this year's list, 72 of the breweries are based in the United States. Randal Olson found a pretty good solution using genetic algorithms and the Google Maps API. He computed an optimal road trip to visit a historical...