Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Carl from Chicago 
Recently Libya has been in the news as protests rise against their long-time strongman. In all the news pictures that I see, however, one question keeps popping up in my mind – “Where’s Tobruk?” If you are thinking the same thing maybe you grew up on Avalon Hill games, too. I think that there is a 2-1 attack coming with a 1 in 6 chance of elimination (now that is for the real diehards).
You can’t get more descriptive or to the point than “Salted Rings”.
A bit tongue in cheek but over at LITGM we have a bit of a live-blog of Snowpocalypse 2011 (can you copyright that the way Pat Riley supposedly did “three-peat”?) as it hits Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. Gary in Indiana just yawns I guess they have been hit by a ton of storms already this year and Dan in Madison is used to bone-chilling weather but the fact that the college is closed means that it is a “designated drinking day” (can I patent that?) for students.
Here in Chicago it was pretty much a Snowpocalypse and your intrepid reporter went out for a beer at a local tavern and saw “Thunder Snow” for the first time. Catch it here.
When I was growing up a friend of mine had parents who were very aware of architecture and design. They lived in a Walter Burley Griffin house and had a swivel chair that I was always fascinated by with a matching ottoman.
Of course it is an Eames Chair and ottoman by Herman Miller. These chairs are typically around $4000 each and never really go on sale.
I recently did sit and swivel for a bit in one at Room and Board. It is a very comfortable and cool chair.
But alas this is clearly a WANT and not a NEED. I recently spent less than $100 for a leather office chair at Office Depot that works fine; it replaces a hideous one that I had bought for about $40 maybe 10 years ago. The Eames chair and ottoman would also take up a lot of space in our condo which works against it, as well.
I admire the fact that Herman Miller is able to sell this chair for such a high price and avoid discounting. I even started looking a bit on ebay but it wasn’t much cheaper there although it is very interesting that they sell chairs back to the 1970s and can cite the official number from the manufacturer as reference.
Maybe someday…
The situation in the middle east today with people rising up against autocratic regimes is moving quickly and I have been following this through a variety of sources. One that I have been watching is Al Jazerra English because their journalists seem to be in the middle of the action and I am looking for facts less than commentary or opinion (I can do that myself).
In parallel I found interesting an article of how Egyptian civilians should protest riot police. This guide came from the Atlantic and it is a 26 page article with how to dress, use spray paint on the vision slits of armored vehicles, and use a pot lid to shield yourself from billy clubs.
Throughout all of this it is obvious how dangerous it is to be an unarmed civilian that is trying to protest (peacefully or not) against armed riot police and government thugs that are armed with riot police tools (tear gas, shields & billy clubs) as well as deadly weapons (guns). Basically you are trading the lives of the protesters against the willingness of the government to kill you; if the government maintains its nerves, thousands can be beaten or die (see how the protests were extinguished in Iran, for example).
In parallel, Al Jazeera ran an opinion piece (which, to their credit, they said was the opinion of the writer and not necessarily theirs) called “Shoot first, ask questions never” which blames the NRA for gun violence in the United States and ends with the following paragraph:
The NRA’s 30+ years of extremism is probably best summed up by their current president Wayne LaPierre. Recently he remarked that “those with the guns make the rules”. Perhaps he mistakenly read a copy of the Robespierre’s Constitution, but in the one the Founding Fathers created for this country, their quaint view was that ballots and not bullets would accomplish that feat.
Of all the journalistic outlets that could understand the concept that “those with guns make the rules” you’d think that Al Jazeera would at least concede that point. The reason that the Arab people have to stand up to riot police unarmed is because guns and weaponry are illegal for the general populace so that the state and their actors (the riot police and the secret police) can act with impunity. The only time that things change in the Arab world is when those with BIGGER guns (the army) come and don’t support the riot police and secret police thugs; and then there is a change of power.