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On March 20, Illinoisans go to the polls in what’s likely to be the most nationally watched primary in our state for many years (thank Mitt for his incompetence).
I’m running to become the 1st Ward Democratic committeeman to make the 1st Ward whole again. I will continue to be alderman of the ward (like 29 of my 50 council colleagues). In a previous blog I did my best to explain the purpose of this opaque position, which you can read here.
Over the last few weeks, my volunteers have been knocking on doors to advocate for my election to this position and, just like everyone else, I have some nice adjectives — accountability, accessibility, transparency and independence — to describe my campaign. These are more than just adjectives to

Travelers to Washington, D.C.’s famous National Cherry Blossom Festival may be disappointed this year due to the exceedingly warm climate in the D.C. area and across most of the continental United States, in which late winter temperatures have been running 20 to more than 40 degrees F above normal.
Cherry blossoms at or near peak bloom in Washington, D.C.’s Tidal Basin, March 18, 2012. Photo: Michael Halpern
The festival is scheduled to run from March 20 to April 27, but the trees are expected to reach peak bloom in the next day or two, and the blossoms may be off the trees entirely by the time most tourists are normally expected to arrive. Peak bloom is defined as the day on which 70 percent of the blossoms of the Yoshino cherry trees that surround the Tidal Basin are

I’ve always been a meat and potatoes guy. Growing up, I never ate salads or vegetables with my meals. I just ate burgers, tacos and roast, always with a side of mashed potatoes, French fries or mac and cheese.
And I kept doing that as an adult — until I was diagnosed with prostate cancer at age 35.
My doctors and nutritionist told me to remove red meat from my diet, and I have, though for someone who grew up eating it two to three times a day, that was a challenge.
A recent major medical study from the Harvard School of Public Health supports why my doctors insisted I give up red meat. In the study, eating red meat appeared to increase the risk of premature death

On March 14, Krystal Ball appeared on The Dylan Ratigan Show, soapbox in tow, for her segment known as the ‘Daily Rant.’ She began by waxing poetic about the sacrifices of our great civil rights leaders and how we can all make a difference before — with the utmost sincerity — asserting that compulsory voting is the solution to our problem of voter apathy. But, by focusing on the wrong word of that sentence — “vote”, Ms. Ball is entirely missing the point, the point being the word “freedom.”
The fact of the matter is that compulsory voting is a denial of the freedom of millions of people in this country, the freedom not to participate. Now, I’m not only speaking to the freedom of the oft-controversial “conscientious objector.” I’m talking about my

Nets fans should have known it was too good to be true. A franchise littered with lowlights and saddled with one of the league’s most apathetic fan bases suddenly becoming a prime destination for the best players in the world? Crazy, right?
We’ve heard whispers for months that Dwight Howard was planning to jump ship from Orlando to the New Jersey Nets, joining stud point guard Deron Williams. On the court, the move would have made little sense for Howard, but supposedly the allure of the Nets 2012-2013 move to Brooklyn had hooked the league’s best center. With Howard’s announcement Thursday that he’s staying in Orlando for another year, Magic fans are ecstatic, David Stern breathed for the first time in weeks and the hapless Nets are left at the altar again.
You can put lipstick on a pig but the pig still can’t jump

Renowned for his 1990s tenure as the Managing Director of SAMBA (or the Saudi American Bank as it was once known), Shaukat Aziz probably felt right at home during his participation as a panellist at the 12th annual Jeddah Economic Forum (JEF).
The former Prime Minister of Pakistan and veteran Citibank executive talked at the “Beyond BRICs: Seeking Economic Growth in an Era of Debt” session, which was held on the first day of the event that took place at the Jeddah Hilton March 3-6.
(Shaukat Aziz among the panellists at BRICS session – photo credit: Jeddah Economic Forum)
Following a successful financial career serving as a board member of several Citibank subsidiaries (which what SAMBA used to partially be until 2003), Aziz became Finance Minister of Pakistan in November 1999 under President Pervez Musharraf.
On 27 August 2004, Aziz was elected Prime Minister and remained in his post till November 2007.
Aziz’s strong point has always been the economy; he was initially called in as an advisor to help bring the country out of debt; during his tenure, Pakistan saw an impressive — albeit short-lived — period of economic growth.
However, it was during his tenure as well that Pakistan began feeling the repercussions of the 9/11 attacks, the war on terror and the US-led offensive against neighboring

Alright. I’ve had it. I’m baffled by the amount of negative press surfacing from Invisible Children’s #Kony2012 campaign. The film, directed by Jason Russell, parallels the trials of raising his son in an imperfect world juxtaposed with the horrors faced by other four-year olds in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.
The campaign, set out to “Make Kony Famous,” succeeded with flying

“As of February 2012, the [United Auto Workers] trust holds a 41.5 percent stake in Chrysler and a 10.3 percent stake in General Motors,” according to Politifact.com. Eventually, the trust will own 39 percent of General Motors and 55 percent in Chrysler once the trust is fully funded. Given this ownership stake, was the government bailout of the auto manufacturer’s a giveaway to unions by the Obama administration, as many conservatives argue?
As background, unions made significant concessions in the years prior to and during the bailout to restore the auto manufacturers to profitability. Eye care coverage and dental coverage were lost and significant wage reductions were conceded as well, “including lower wages for new hires who now make about half the $29 that longtime union workers make.” (As of last year, the wages of new hires were increased to $17 an hour.) Instead of guaranteed annual raises, the unions now get profit sharing, which means they get nothing in unprofitable and lean

Growing up in the entertainment industry, I’ve had a lot of people tell me I’m not good enough. When I was young, I was teased mercilessly by my classmates for being a redhead. I wasn’t particularly well coordinated either, which made me a bit of a liability in P.E. My dad left when I was about 14, to start over with a new

Hamid Karzai recently called the brave and selfless members of the United States military ‘demons’ who were guilty of perhaps ’500′ atrocities against the people of the Afghanistan.
One would have thought that the American Commander-in-Chief would swiftly denounce this stunning act of ingratitude by reminding him that nearly 2000 American troops have given their lives for the freedom of the Afghan people. They are angels of mercy, not demons. But in remaining silent President Obama not only missed an opportunity to defend the honor of our brave men and women in uniform, but also missed an opportunity to remind Muslims the world over of the beautiful tenets of their faith that would never brook such shameful

“Never trust a pretty girl with an ugly secret” goes the tag line to ABC Family’s breakaway hit Pretty Little Liars. It sets up viewers to expect a certain kind of now-familiar teen trope: pretty people doing terrible things in nice clothes. What it doesn’t prime viewers for is the subtle feminism that runs through the show.
I know what you’re thinking, gentle reader: “Charles what now?!” (My goal of shoehorning a 30 Rock quote into every situation is now complete.) It may be hard to imagine that a show about four girls haunted by their murdered friend, and perhaps her murderer, is ripe ground for empowerment. While the girls might be terrorized by the mysterious ‘A’, however, they never lose their sense of agency.
The premise of the show is thus: A year after their friend Alison (Sasha Pieterse) is murdered, four friends are reunited after they start receiving mysterious, threatening texts from ‘A.’ The girls each have their own distinctive personalities, including strengths and

I was looking at a bunch of beautiful string beans that had been waiting patiently for me to decide what to do with them, and I got a weird craving for Nicoise salad. But that day, for that dinner, a salad was already in the works, and an appetizer was needed, so that craving translated itself into a one-step removed thought of tonnato sauce, usually served with cold, sliced veal in a classic Italian dish, which I hoped would kind of turn the green beans into a Nicoise-ey side dish, all on their own. Tonnato sauce is a mayonnaise-based sauce with canned tuna, often flavored with anchovies, super flavorful, quite rich and pleasingly retro. So, the whole tuna-green bean thing just was going to happen a different

Admit it: there’s been a night when you’ve looked up into a sky ablaze with stars and wondered whether there is any life beyond planet Earth, and even whether some of it might be gazing back at you. This happened to me for the first time long ago, as a little girl, walking along the deserted and dark beaches of Manasota Key, FL holding onto my father’s hand. It seemed obvious that on other planets circling some of those distant stars, some other young creature, similarly attached to its parent, must see our Sun in its night sky and wonder too.
Because I got a degree in engineering physics and another one in astrophysics, and particularly because I learned early how to master the art of programming a PDP-8/S computer in octal, I got very, very

On the 13th of April in the year 2029 the 350-meter Asteroid “Apophis” will pass between the Earth and moon
My first blog about NASA turning to commercial providers for launch vehicles seems to have opened an interesting debate. Why do we spend any money on human exploration of space? Now and always, every tax dollar we collect and spend should be measured by the benefit we gain from that expenditure. I do not claim that every dollar we spend on human spaceflight is well spent. Far from

One-pot meals are the gastronomical equivalent of the friend that everyone likes to have around — they’re pleasant, flexible, low-key and great with crowds. So we’re serving up seven versatile dinners that can all be prepared in a single pot. From hearty beef stews and spicy jambalaya to some lighter kale-based fare, here are a variety of tastes to awaken your palate, brought to you by the spirited home cooks’ community at Food52.
Delicious, impressive meals without a sink full of cookware to scrub down after the fact?
Sounds like a one-pot wonder to us.
Browse through hundreds of our one-pot recipes here.
When we need more easy weeknight meals, we know we can count on dinner always being fuss-free when Jenny’s in the Kitchen.
Got a burning food-related question? Turn to the Food52 Hotline for help.
Secret Ingredient Beef Stew
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This savory, rich stew may be named after one secret ingredient, but it’s because of a complex mix of components that it succeeds so

On the anniversary of my man Biggie’s transformation (R.I.P Notorious B.I.G), “South by Southwest” kicked off its 26th yearly festival, executing its agenda perfectly. Celebrities of all walks of life marched with no name too big, nor color code unheard from. The melting pot of music, film and interactive conferencing was ripe and in full speed. Right upon my arrival, I realized that in some ways we have all been to the Promised

What’s cuter than a cupcake? Duh. A rainbow cupcake, silly. Rainbow cakes have been all the rage these days — and with good reason. They’re super gorgeous and super

I’m with those who lament the sad reality of young lives ruined in the aftermath of Tyler Clementi’s suicide and the conviction of his roommate, Dharun Ravi, who spied on Clementi with a webcam. And I don’t want to see Ravi deported, nor getting a ten-year prison term, the maximum sentence for his crimes.
But the bottom line is: Ravi was offered a plea deal in which he would have avoided jail time as well as deportation. Instead, he and his legal team put faith in what they thought was a homophobic judicial system, one that would slough off hate crimes against gays — as it had so many times in the past — and once again validate the “gay panic” defense, which in this case was dressed up as the “teen prank” defense.
But it didn’t work. The jury did exactly as it was instructed to do, looking at the law and the 15 counts and returning with a guilty verdict on all of

Last Friday, March 16, President Barack Obama may have quietly placed the United States on a war preparedness footing, perhaps in anticipation of an outbreak of war between Israel, the West, and Iran. A newly-propounded Executive Order, titled “National Defense Resources Preparedness,” renews and updates the president’s power to take control of all civil energy supplies, including oil and natural gas, control and restrict all civil transportation, which is almost 97 percent dependent upon oil; and even provides the option to re-enable a draft in order to achieve both the military and non-military demands of the country, according to a simple reading of the text. The Executive Order was published on the White House website.
The timing of the Order — with little fanfare — could not be explained. Opinions among the very first bloggers on the purpose of the unexpected Executive Order run the gamut from the confused to the

It’s a small world, as Walt Disney told us. And we’re all hungry. I was thinking of this last week in Anaheim, where 60,000 of us converged. We weren’t all going to the Magic Kingdom but to Natural Products Expo West, all of us eager to influence what you

In the spring, as winter turns its corner, it will be a new year. Iranian New Year, Nowruz — meaning “New Day” — takes place tonight, on the vernal equinox, and it is the most important holiday of the year for those who celebrate it. But this year, some are trying to overshadow Nowruz with the ugly sounds of war.
And it is different this time than all those other years of threats and sashaying political

Yet another American symphony orchestra has suspended operations. The Napa Valley Symphony recently announced that it was laying off its entire staff and ceasing performances for the foreseeable future. In a statement to the local newspaper, the Symphony’s chairman stated, “The board of the Napa Valley Symphony Association voted to suspend all operations and to explore the wisdom of dissolving. I expect a decision within the month–there’s too much that’s

From the 1970s until recently, Congress allowed and encouraged a great deal of financial market deregulation — allowing big banks to become larger, to expand their scope, and to take on more risks. This legislative agenda was largely bipartisan, up to and including the effective repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act at the end of the 1990s. After due legislative consideration, the way was cleared for megabanks to combine commercial and investment banking on a complex global scale. The scene was set for the 2008 financial crisis — and the awful recession from which we are only now beginning to emerge.
With the so-called JOBS bill, on which the Senate is due to vote Tuesday, Congress is about to make the same kind of mistake again — this time abandoning much of the 1930s-era securities legislation that both served investors well and helped make the US one of the best places in the world to raise

Did you wake up this morning enthused with a “Thank-God-It’s-Monday!” attitude? If not, perhaps it was more like, “Here we go again,” as though you were putting on a cold, wet boot. The cold, wet boot crowd may not have even awakened, and instead are just sleepwalking through the day. For some, it’s so bad that the “night of the living dead” seems more like an apt description.
If you’re stuck in the rut of the humdrum, then perhaps you recognize that “a rut is just a coffin with the ends kicked out.” We all know people at work who retired years ago and still show up every day to punch that clock one more time. Are you living this form of Groundhog Day?
What prevents you from living life with “Thank God It’s Monday” enthusiasm, not just on Monday but every day for that matter? Perhaps the problem lies less in what you are doing on your job and more in what you are doing inside the confines of your own head while you go through your day.
Are You Choosing to Die a Little Every Day?
Just about all of us have had the experience of working in environments where our contributions are either unappreciated or, worse yet, not even