Events

I'm traveling this weekend for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, so posting will be sparse. We don't have WiFi but we do have topography:

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...