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.
One of my favorite newer bands is Metric. “Help I’m Alive” is one of their biggest songs.
I follow them on Facebook and recently they had a contest where you could remix this song, and could win a grand and a chance at some sort of record deal. The remixes are nothing short of amazing. Take a listen here if you are interested. I am blown away at how talented some of the people are that remixed this song.
Israel’s military and technology are world class but its official efforts to defend itself rhetorically against its enemies range from nonexistent to maddeningly inept. This interview of Melanie Phillips by an establishment journalist provides a good overview of the problem. That the case has to be made at all shows how deep the rot is. (Caroline Glick is also generally good on this topic.)
(Thanks to AA for sending the link to the interview.)
I live in the mountains east and north of Los Angeles. Last summer, when I bought my house, I ordered Direct TV for television service as the cable company wouldn’t even schedule an installation until the escrow closed. I had no complaints about the TV service until the first snowfall. I had no service for two days. I called Direct TV and was told that snow interferes with the signal (duh !) and there was nothing I could do. I had a satellite dish in New Hampshire in 1994 and 95 and never had this problem. The next time it happened I called and finally got to a technical advisor who told me there was such a thing as a dish heater but Direct TV had nothing to do with them. He did give the URL of several web sites where I could get more information. I found that I would have to install the heater myself and the dish is nearly 20 feet above my upper deck.
Last weekend, when we had more snow, Cindy was atop a seven foot ladder trying to reach the dish with a broom but with no luck. The angle of the dish, which catches more snow, makes it impossible to brush the dish off. It seems to be a pretty common problem and one would think that Direct TV would anticipate these problems in areas with substantial snowfall. Maybe they could supply the dish heaters as an option, especially when the dish is mounted so high. Then the technician could install both. The new dishes also seem to be of a deeper chord and the location may determine the angle of elevation to the satellite. New Hampshire is a higher latitude, as is Chicago, and that dish seemed to be flatter in my recollection.
Does anybody in Greater Chicago use these dishes and do they have problems like this ? I got nowhere with them, and am not about to try to install a heater on the dish, so I finally canceled and will have to pay a substantial early cancellation charge.
I was at the Friendly Tap and there was a band there with a guy singer and a girl singer singing this one and a bunch of people in the crowd were singing along and I’d never heard it before and I liked it and I asked the guitar player who it was and he told me and I wrote it down in the little notepad thing in my phone. And here it is. (The live version with the bar crowded and hot and the cold blowing in when the door opens and closes and people drinking and cheering and singing along and a few drinks already in me makes it way better than this video version. But this is still good and a lot better than nothing.)