Chicago -
By Project Farm via YouTube
“Drill bit sharpeners tested: Work Sharp Drill Doctor 750x, Chicago Electric (Harbor Freight), General Tools, Drill Master, Goodsmann, and Bosch. All sharpeners purchased on Amazon or at Harbor Freight. All twist drills tested for drilling performance once sharpened.”
Posted on March 31, 2020
By The Art Institute Of Chicago
“Explore the exhibition ‘El Greco: Ambition and Defiance’ with curator Rebecca Long and research associate Jena Carvana. Follow along as they lead you through the galleries and share some of the reasons El Greco and his work continue to fascinate us.”
Posted on March 28, 2020
By David Rutter
Public TV star Geoffrey Baer once explained to me, because I did not understand it, the circumlocution required of Evanston residents who believe they are Chicagoans.
They live on the north side of Howard Street, as did I once upon a time, which means they do not live in Chicago. That’s irrelevant, he said, and apparently that irrelevance extends to thousands of other people, too.
“I came to see that Chicago is not just a city; it’s a region,” Baer said with a completely straight face which is the television face of Chicago’s history. He grew up in Deerfield and lives on a quiet Evanston street.
Posted on March 24, 2020
By J.J. Tindall
Just as there would be no McDonald’s without Dick and Mac McDonald, even if Ray Kroc is credited with being the franchise’s founder, there would be no McDonald’s without Cock Robin. And in true villainesque fashion, Ray Kroc is Cock Robin’s father. Let’s start at the beginning and untangle this grease-splattered web.
Our story begins in what was then the quiet outpost of Naperville, where a man named Walter Fredenhagen owned the Naperville Creamery. After selling the milk route portion of his business to Borden’s, he switched his focus to ice cream. While he had several small shops in the area that bought his ice cream, they weren’t exactly timely with their payments. Walter decided to eliminate the middleman and sell his ice cream direct to customers himself, joining forces with boyhood friend Earl Prince.
Posted on March 23, 2020
By Lorraine Boissoneault/Undark
When conservation manager Lindsay Chadderton came to the United States from New Zealand to help monitor the movement of invasive species between the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes, everyone was buzzing about one particular intruder: Asian carp.
The moniker includes four fish imported from China starting in the 1960s – grass carp, black carp, silver carp and bighead carp. Together, they might be the posterchild for invasive species in the U.S.
Bighead and silver dominate large stretches of the Mississippi River, outcompeting many native fish. They breed quickly, eat voraciously, grow much larger than most native fish and, when startled, silver carp catapult out of the water. They are not just an ecological nightmare; they also pose a danger to recreational boaters and fishers. According to the United States Geological Survey, jumping Asian carp have seriously injured boaters, and water skiing on the Missouri River is “now considered exceedingly dangerous.” Scientists say these fish could wreak similar havoc in the Great Lakes.
Part of the problem with Asian carp is the difficulty catching them. When the fish number in the thousands and are actually jumping into boats, it’s easy enough. But things change on the very edge of their territory, where the fish are sparser. At low abundances, they evade nets, as well as the electrical currents biologists sometimes use to temporarily stun and catch the creatures.
Chadderton, who works at the nonprofit Nature Conservancy, and his colleagues, along with the Army Corps of Engineers and other government agencies, all wanted to know how far along the fish had actually traveled – what was the edge of their territory? Chadderton wondered: What if instead of catching the carp, biologists could find some other marker of their presence – something like environmental DNA, or eDNA? All organisms shed genetic material into the environment. In the case of fish, this happens via flaking scales, mucus and feces. Scientists could start by sampling the water and then analyzing it for the presence of the fishes’ genetic material.
Chadderton consulted his colleagues on the project, biologists Andrew Mahon, Chris Jerde and David Lodge. At the time, “there was literally one paper” that had used eDNA techniques to study small ponds in France, says Jerde. The Illinois River and the Chicago Area Waterway System are exponentially larger systems, he explains, so the group didn’t know what to expect. Would their samples be too dilute to capture any carp DNA?
Posted on March 21, 2020
By Chicago Indoor Garden
To Our Valued Customers,
Chicago Indoor Garden is recalling all products containing Red Clover sprouts. It has come to our attention, from the FDA, that our Red Clover sprouts were contaminated with E. coli 0103. This includes the following products that were distributed to Whole Foods throughout the Midwest; Coosemans Chicago Inc.; Battaglia Distributing; and Living Waters Farms:
Posted on March 17, 2020
By Carly Siuta
Carly Siuta is a former Chicagoan and dear friend of the Beachwood who recently returned to Shanghai to live and work for New York University’s campus there, where she earned her Licensed Master of Social Work. She sent out this e-mail on Friday and granted us permission to publish it – after all, she said, her mother in Wisconsin had already posted it to her church’s Facebook group.
Dear friends & fam,
While watching the news and talking with many of you over the past few days, I wanted to reach out again.
First, a brief update from here . . . things have stabilized and are moving in a positive direction. Life is returning to the streets, businesses and public spaces are reopening, and we just heard that some museums will be open again next week. I am back to the office two days per week. Everyone is still wearing masks while in public and there are body temperature checkpoints everywhere, but there is a distinct sense of hope and slow return to normalcy.
It’s hard for me to describe the emotions I feel as I watch the cycle of fear and anxiety just beginning in the U.S. and Europe. I have found that helplessness – in many forms and triggered by different things – has been one of the most difficult feelings to cope with throughout this whole ordeal. I feel like I am starting a new phase of helplessness, observing from a distance as my loved ones are impacted.
Posted on March 14, 2020
By Steve Rhodes
Like virtually the rest of the world, I have long thought that ketchup had been perfected, and the heavy public burden of Heinz was simply to maintain its integrity.
Its 57 varieties were actually just one, perfected, the universal idea of ketchup, as Malcolm Gladwell once famously posited.
I should’ve known better to fall for Gladwell, whose litany of errors and outright wrong conclusions has made him rich and famous. He was even wrong about ketchup.
I learned that firsthand because there is at least one ketchup, used in the right circumstances with the right food, that is – and this is hard to say – a better choice than our revered standard Heinz. And that ketchup is made right here in Chicago.
Posted on March 9, 2020
By White Claw
The wait is over!
White Claw Hard Seltzer introduces the highly-anticipated Flavor Collection No. 2, including three brand new flavors – Tangerine, Watermelon and Lemon!
The first flavors debuted by the brand in more than 16 months, each White Claw Hard Seltzer is meticulously crafted with uncompromising quality, hand-selected ingredients and curated specially with White Claw drinkers in mind. These flavors join one of the best-selling Hard Seltzer flavors, White Claw Mango, in an all-new 12-pack Variety Pack, available now at retailers nationwide.
Posted on March 6, 2020
