Appropriate for the Olympics season is this very interesting piece from Scientific American, “Magic Blood and Carbon-Fiber Legs at the Brave New Olympics,” in which Daid Epstein addresses some of the same questions I considered in “Cheating is the American way” way back in 2012. Epstein’s answers? He doesn’t have any, any more than I did. In […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Bouncing back
Today’s trampoline parks are safer than those of yesteryear. PHOTO BY IRFAN KHAN/TNS The wonderful thing about getting older is watching people falling for the same cons their grandparents did. The Philippines invasion became Vietnam became Iraq. Trump is Buchanan again, who was Perot again, who was Wallace, and so it goes, all the way […]
Posted inOpinion
Yabba Dabba Doo-ing it
The updated Prairie Capital Convention Center, soon to be renamed for the Bank of Springfield. We learned July 18 that the directors of the Prairie Capital Convention Center approved the sale of naming rights to the building to the Bank of Springfield. Mike Coffey Jr., chairman of the board that oversees the center, told the […]
Posted inOpinion
Revising a revision
The Illinois Executive Mansion as depicted on a postcard from the 1920s. IMAGE COURTESY OF ILLINOIS DIGITAL ARCHIVES You know how it is. You repaint the living room, and suddenly the furniture looks shabby. So you replace that, which makes the carpet look worn. Over on Jackson Street, they finally fixed the leaky roof on […]
Posted inOpinion
Why Mencken matters
Paula Marantz Cohen of Drexel University hold argues in the online magazine The Smart Set why long-dead writer/critic/commentator H.L. Mencken remains as relevant as ever. She recalls HLM on the influence of the press. Substitute “media” for “newspaper.” . In America it is the newspaper that is [its reader’s] boss. From it he gets support […]
Posted inOpinion
Stout fellows, continued
In “The burdens of office” I recalled my inglorious tenure as president of Springfield High School’s Interact (a combination of “international” and “action”) Club in the 1960s. Two or three things might be said. In the rush to make deadline, I left out something important. I wrote how membership in the club was supposed to […]
Posted inOpinion
Ill spent
In “Wasted,” I lamented the fact that the Illinois public has so little basis on which to judge the merit in that perennial complaint that our tax money is being wasted by grasping public employees, bumbling bureaucrats, and corrupt pols. I suspect that the very first letter to the very first editor of the very […]
Posted inOpinion
Churchly people
For those on the evangelical right who are dismayed that there is not enough God in the Donald Trump campaign, I offer this on the GOP convention from the always interesting Tyler Cowen: They are not saying what they are saying, in fact they are saying “the world is going to hell, and many of […]
Posted inOpinion
More name-calling
We learned on July 18 that the directors of the Prairie Capital Convention Center approved the sale of naming rights to the building to the Bank of Springfield for $150,000 per year for 10 years. The “facility” during that period will be known as — drum roll, please — the Bank of Springfield Center. The public […]
Posted inOpinion
The burdens of office
I know that my life makes you nervousBut I tell you that I can’t live in serviceLike the doctor born for a purpose— The Clash/”Rudie Can’t Fail” Critical though I feel obliged to be of their decisions, at one level I feel a deep empathy with Misters Madigan, Emanuel and Rauner. I too have known […]
Posted inOpinion
Wasted
Gov. Bruce Rauner PHOTO BY BRIAN CASSELLA/TNS An old rule of thumb among business owners holds that half of all the money they spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is no one knows which half. The question of waste in government spending is much easier for most taxpayers to answer: government “waste” is any […]
Posted inOpinion
Everybody join in
You know how some songs seem just right for the moment? Charles H. Chamberlain and Archibald Johnston’s isn’t. The state of Illinois made their “Illinois” the official state song in 1925, but it wasn’t right for that moment, harking as it did not to the Jazz Age but to the immediate post-Civil War era. As […]
