Chicago Crime

A couple of nights ago, we came home and found police buzzing up and down Bryn Mawr. The normal entrance to our parking lot was blocked off by police, so we went around the block to the back entrance. On the way, we were cut off and almost splattered by carloads of undercover cops. The way they were driving, I was sure Osama Bin Laden had been spotted at the Red Line stop.

We parked and walked down the alley. There was a black Chevy Malibu, and a single bicycle cop standing guard over it. We asked him what was up.
"The car is hot [as in stolen], and the occupant took off running when they pulled him over," he said.
"Wow. Welp. Good luck!"

We rode the lone working elevator upstairs, and looked down in the alley again from our apartment:
Several police cars (not shown) and cops were tearing the car apart. The ATV cops from the park later showed up too. If you look closely, you can see the childrens' red wagon that was in the trunk. They later pulled out a golf bag, and whole bunch of other crap. There were no less than 20 cops on the scene.

Now comes the part I want to get to the bottom of. I check in the paper the next day, and found this story.
They shot the guy! It happened about 3 miles due west of here -- the 12th police-related fatality this year. Apparently, a weapon was found in the car, but as with many of these police-related stories, I have a hard time learning about the details on the internet.

My usual standby is Chicago Crime. They usually run about a week behind, so there's no info on this shooting yet. But while I wait for this to be updated, I usually waste time looking at all kinds of other crimes in the city. For instance, dice games in parks can be found primarily in 3 regions of the city,and homicides cluster on the South and West sides. There's also still a market for crack in Chicago.

More to come...

day at the beach

Megan and Kevin are here for the weekend, and after debating for a while last night (over a forty of black kobra for the boys and classy baylies for the girls) we decided to go down to north beach and watch the Chicago's 50th Air and Water Show.

The beach was full of people, but we found a nice spot by the water, where we met our friend Sarah, and leaned back to watch the show.
It started with some small planes doing acrobatic maneuvers, flips and twists (these must have some professional names which the commentator said but i don't remember), buzzing really low above the water.
Soon after came fighter jets (of the type you see in top gun) - and i was speechless. they fly fast, they fly slow, they fly straight up - turn around and fall down, crazy stuff. i kept thinking how Assaf should have been there. i'll do my best to make him come next year!

here are a couple of pictures i took with my phone camera... should have brought cami. on the other hand, it's kinda hard to grasp the effect with a still camera. the sound doesn't come out just right ;)


Stealth Bomber


Super Hornet

later on, we moved to the beach across the street from us, and, for the first time here, did what everybody else seem to do there: grill!
we got a tiny little Weber grill the other day (it looks like a baby Weber), and Ben grilled some burgers, potatoes, onions and sweet corn that we imported from Michigan.

all in all, an awesome day, even without counting the late night margaritas and flan at the little mexican cafe :)

wordle

i processed my entire thesis through wordle, a cool website that does things like that. although the first attempt was sort of cool, the largest words ended up being 'et' and 'al'. but after removing all those, i got this:


i think it's awesome, you can really tell what my thesis is about just by word statistics. www.wordle.net

i sort of dropped off the face of the earth for a while, and was busy writing my phd thesis. now it's DONE!!

i'll be updating again soon.