Elysabeth Alfano: Tony Tasset, Giant Chicago Eye Sculptor

Chicagos Bus Tracker: Taking the Guesswork Out of Waiting for the Bus
One of the encouraging trends for American transit riders, in an otherwise bleak landscape of service cuts and fare hikes, is the growing number of agencies experimenting with ways to bring better information to their customers. Last summer Streetfilms explored how open transit data is helping to make riding the bus or the train more convenient in several cities. Today's follow-up looks at how better transit data is benefiting riders in Chicago. The Chicago Transit Authority's "Bus Tra...

Oscar-winner Fellowes takes seat in House of Lords
He created the grand houses of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, and now Julian Fellowes has a place in an even grander one — Britain's House of Lords. The Academy Award-winning screenwriter was inducted into Parliament's unelected upper chamber Thursday as Lord Fellowes of West Stafford. Fellowes wore red, white and gold ermine robes while he swore allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II. He will sit in the Lords as a member of the Conservative Party. A Veteran chronicler of Britain's upper crust,...

America's Worst Governor
I thought for sure this title would easily go to Jerry Brown in California, but I think it will probably be won going away by former RINO Lincoln Chaffee in Rhode Island When Talk Radio hosts use harshly divisive language, "The advertisers should shut them down," Governor Lincoln Chafee said this morning. Chafee said the solution to the vitriolic Rhetoric -- which some have linked to the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords over the weekend -- is for people to stop paying for it, including ...

5 Quick Questions: Jeff Brown, Senior Correspondent, PBS NewsHour
5QQ caught up with Jeff Brown while he was On Assignment for PBS NewsHour in Haiti, producing a five-part series on how the country is doing a year after the massive Earthquake. Brown’s been part of the NewsHour family for twenty years, as correspondent and a co-anchor of PBS’s nightly newscast-a program that he describes as a “niche” product serving a savvy and loyal audience. The Emmy Award winner writes NewsHour’s arts and culture blog and proving his uber-...

PBS Ombudsman Knocks Network For Skipping Tucson Shooting Story Until Monday Night
How big does a story have to be for PBS to cover it on a weekend? Apparently bigger than the Shooting Spree in Tucson that killed six and left a member of Congress critically wounded. As PBS’s Ombudsman, Michael Getler writes, ” if you are a devoted follower of the news and of PBS, when horrific stories such as the one that unfolded in Tucson last Saturday, Jan. 8, you must go to the big three broadcast networks or cable for coverage. The PBS NewsHour will get around to it on Monday...

Tech Reporter Nerds Out On TV
New York Times technology reporter David Pogue is not afraid to be a nerd on camera, as he's proved with many a cheesy video gadget review. He does voices. He'll put costumes on. He'll enthusiastically deliver the most painful puns. A Pogue gadget review is a production. Rember the iPhone Music Video? He's equally geeky and lovable as host of the new PBS miniseries "Making Stuff: Stronger, Smaller, Cleaner, Smarter," premeiring next week. "We're like the Starsky and Hutch of science nerds!" he...

Top Picks: Easy decorating, 'Birds of the Gods,' and 'Colstrip Montana'
An iTunes app for wall art, birds of paradise in a PBS special 'Birds of the Gods,' 'Colstrip Montana,' a book that changed landscape photography, and more recommendations....

Radio Theater
Get ready to suspend your disbelief. One of the most resilient acts in theatrical history has returned to the D.C. stage: the We’re Going To Defund Public Broadcasting show. Every time this play gets revived, the director alters the story slightly to reflect recent events. This time the performers are riffing on National Public Radio’s October decision to fire Juan Williams after the commentator told Bill O’Reilly he gets nervous when he sees airline passengers in “Muslim garb.”

On PBS, New Yorker Editor Equates Obama 'Freezing Out' Fox News with Building a Civil Discourse
On Tuesday night's Charlie Rose show on PBS, New Yorker editor (and former Washington Post reporter) David Remnick equated Team Obama's attempt to demonize and "freeze out" Fox News Channel with a campaign to create Civil Discourse. Demonizing equals civility? CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think that the president had an opportunity that he did not seize in order to make a real contribution to the civil discourse that we`re talking about and to exhibit those things that he spoke about a...

Snowy Wednesday Afternoon Reads
Here are the latest additions to my Instapaper: • Can Europe Be Saved? (NYT Magazine) • Solving the second-lien sticking point (FT Alphaville) • Goldman Vows to Be More Open About Its Business (Dealbook) • 10 Things I Learned Working With Jim Cramer (James Altucher) • US Banks Reporting Phantom Income on $1.4 Trillion Delinquent Mortgages (Forbes) • Fisher Says Fed Can’t Cure U.S. ‘Fiscal Pathology’ (Bloomberg) • How to Avoid the New Year’s

Teaspoons for Sesame Street!
...and all the other great programming that comes from U.S. public media. Congressman Doug Lamborne (R-Ukiddinme???) has introduced Legislation to defund PBS and NPR because slashing their annual $430 million in funding is a totally great way to solve the $14 Trillion Debt. What's left out of every angry contemptuous Speech are the tiny damn stations that serve places like Native American reservations, or very poor areas, or the stations that are literally the only source of arts and music progr...

On PBS, New Yorker Editor Equates Obama 'Freezing Out' Fox News with Building a Civil Discourse
On Tuesday night's Charlie Rose show on PBS, New Yorker editor (and former Washington Post reporter) David Remnick equated Team Obama's attempt to demonize and "freeze out" Fox News Channel with a campaign to create Civil Discourse. Demonizing equals civility? CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think that the president had an opportunity that he did not seize in order to make a real contribution to the civil discourse that we`re talking about and to exhibit those things that he spoke about a...

Oscar-winner Fellowes takes seat in House of Lords
LONDON - He created the grand houses of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, and now Julian Fellowes has a place in an even grander one — Britain's House of Lords. The Academy Award-winning screenwriter was inducted into Parliament's unelected upper chamber Thursday as Lord Fellowes of West Stafford. Fellowes wore red, white and gold ermine robes while he swore allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II. He will sit in the Lords as a member of the Conservative Party. A Veteran chronicler of Britain...

A public debate
The newly elected members of the 112th Congress are working from a conservative ideological playbook and talking a big game where Budget-cutting is concerned. Inevitably they will be tempted by a proverbial piece of low-hanging fruit, the $420 million annual appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “This is the most serious threat to Federal Funding that public broadcasting has ever faced,’’ says Mike Riksen, National Public Radio vice president for policy an...

The Pentagon's So-Called "Cuts"
Last week, Pentagon Budget "cuts" were in the headlines, often almost luridly so—"Pentagon Faces the Knife," "Pentagon to Cut Spending by $78 Billion, Reduce Troop Strength," "US Aims to Cut Defense Budget and Slash Troops." Responding to the mood of the moment in Washington ("the fiscal pressures the country is facing"), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen made those headlines by calling a...

PBS Launches iPhone App with Streaming Video
PBS recently launched a great new iPhone app (also available for iPad) that lets you watch full-length episodes, segments, and previews of upcoming shows. Many of PBS’s top programs are available, including Nova, Austin City Limits, Frontline, and PBS NewsHour, as well as original online programming from Nova ScienceNOW and Independent Lens. The PBS app also lets you check schedules, set reminders, and save bookmarks to favorite clips, and you can share videos through Twitter, Facebook, an...

Not a Parody: Jon Meacham Being Jon Meacham
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. Jon Meacham will brandish a Glock as he delivers an essay for “Need to Know on PBS,” airing tonight and again over the weekend nationally : “My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was nine, and a single-barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10. I have inherited many of my family’s guns, including a rifle made by my great, great, great grandfather, which I will preserve and give to my son. One of the central memories o...

I don't agree with the PBS Ombudsman, do you? (Am I wrong?)
I think the PBS Ombudsman needs to step back and give PBS Journalists and producers and executives a break.  Calling it "abdication of duty" is going overboard don't you think? If this were 1950...or even 1980...before the saturation of Cable News networks and the Internet, I would agree with the PBS Ombudsman and criticize the PBS decision not to carry the breaking news last weekend.   I would agree because people should have a right know, a right to be informed but they were....Fox,...

Pregnancy Policing
A bar in suburban Roselle could end up in a Legal Battle after forcing a woman to leave because she was eight months pregnant. Michelle Lee, a 29-year-old Chicago native now living in Denver, came into town for a baby shower last week and her friends talked her into a night out afterward, ABC News reports. Lee and her friends went to the Coach House in Roselle--about 30 miles northwest of Chicago--where she planned on drinking some water and having a slice of pizza, until a bouncer approached....

Pro-life icon Jill Stanek to speak in Shorewood on Sunday
Stanek will share her journey into the pro-life movement which began when she realized that the Hospital where she worked as a nurse was allowing infants born alive following attempted Abortions to die.  Her work eventually led her to national prominence and she was instrumental in exposing Barack Obama’s hypocrisy on the abortion issue during the 2008 election campaign. Since that time she has become a leading figure in the pro-life movement and was influential in leading the fight n...

Bill to Stump for Rahm
Politico reports: Bill Clinton will stump for Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday, despite warnings from some of Chicago’s top African-American Democrats that the former president should stay out of the city’s mayoral race. Clinton will host a rally for Emanuel at the Chicago Cultural Center, Emanuel’s camp announced late Thursday. After word came from Emanuel last month that Clinton would be campaigning for him at some point before the Feb. 22 primary, a handful of African-Americans also running fo

Chicago lawyer gets 5 years in $6.5M tax fraud
A Chicago lawyer convicted last year of Conspiracy to commit Tax Fraud and two counts of Tax Evasion in connection with the sale of tax shelters was sentenced Thursday to five years in Prison, the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan said today. John B. Ohle III, a Wilmette resident, was convicted in June after prosecutors proved he did not report $6.5 million in income in 2001 and 2002, according to the U.S. attorney's office. A fellow lawyer, William Bradley of Hammond, La., also was convicted ...

Higher prices will test consumers' taste for beef
Chicago (Reuters) - Lady GaGa's favorite Judas Priest burger will still cost $12 at Kuma's Corner as the trendy Chicago eatery is resisting raising prices even though the cost of making that burger has gone up. "You can't pass it on, not in times like this," Kuma's manager Frank DeBoss said of the higher beef prices, which recently rose 10 percent. The Chicago eatery, which is a favorite of the Grammy winning singer, is facing the same pressures as other restaurants around the country as they a...

Crook County Illinois: Fake State Rep Casts Deciding Vote to Raise Our Taxes
She didn't know anything about the bill. She never read it. She hadn't been given any cheat sheets, facts sheets, talking points, or mass emails on the bill. But in true, corrupt Chicago Fashion, she voted "yes" on it just as she was told to do by her corrupt party bosses. Even worse, she was only a "state rep" because someone told her to drive to the State Capitol for a week to "be" one. As Andy Shaw joked, Williams became the “somebody that somebody sent.”* It is business as usual ...

Date set for Clinton appearance with Emanuel
Former President Bill Clinton will make his long-awaited campaign stop for Chicago Mayoral Candidate Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday.  The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Clinton will attend a rally and Fundraiser for President Obama's former Chief of Staff at the Chicago Cultural Center next week. Emanuel also served Clinton as deputy chief of staff. Clinton has been warned by former mayoral Candidate, Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), and candidate former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) to stay out of ...