Evanston, IL

Today was the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, and even though it's been raining pretty steadily on and off all day, they are anticipating a crown in attendance of approximately 10,000 people for the opening

The Illinois Holocaust Museum was built at a cost of approximately $45 million, and former President Bill Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel are featured speakers for the opening.

The opening has been sold out, and tents are set up in an adjacent field, with Disneyworld-style waiting lines to get into the museum. Many of the exhibits were created using items donated by local residents over the last dozen years.

As you can see by the image, the museum uses a lot of symbolism, starting on the "dark side" of the building, and exiting on the "light side"... although there are items of contemporary holocausts around the world on the light side as well. You can see on the front... two items that could represent columns (or smoke stacks?).

People who have been touched in some way by the Holocaust braved the weather and the lines in order to be here, and they were not disappointed.

There are exhibits which include a German railroad box car, of the type that carried many to concentration camps. Many survivors found themselves stopping in front of those cars, eyes wide, lips trembling as they relived horrible memories.

Hopefully, they'll find some healing here.

Earth Day is Wednesday of next week. I wanted to publish this prior to Earth Day, so that you'd have ample time to digest the information. Earth Day is a great idea, one day a year, to think about the impact that the human race is having on the planet, and hopefully pull us back from the brink of disaster. It's a great time to celebrate our planet and discuss serious environmental concerns.

It's also a time to pause and remember that, during the first Earth Day in 1970, some of the world's leading (and loudest) environmentalists were terrifying the public with horrific predictions of planet-wide doom. Predictions that, thankfully, were spectacularly wrong

The Washington Policy Center (WPC), a free-market think tank, tells us:

"MOST EARTH DAY PREDICTIONS TURNED OUT TO BE STUNNINGLY WRONG!"

In 1970, environmentalists said there would soon be a new ice age and massive deaths from air pollution. The New York Times foresaw the extinction of the human race. Widely-quoted biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted worldwide starvation by 1975.

"On this Earth Day 2009, new predictions will again be made about looming environmental disasters about to strike our planet. If past experience is any guide, most of these predictions are wrong. People concerned about our planet's future should be wary of statements from activists and other interested groups, so we stay focused on real environmental concerns, and don't waste time on fearsome predictions that will never happen."

Here are some examples from 1970, the year of the first Earth Day, gathered by the Washington Policy Center:

• "By 1985...air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by one half..." -- Life magazine, January 1970
Is it dark in here honey?? We have to get a lighter color dog, I can't see him in the yard.

• "...civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind..." -- biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.
Let's see.... 1970 plus 30 years should be 2000.... I think we've made it.

• By 1995, "...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct..." -- Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.
Serious prediction failure.

• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor "...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born..." -- Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.
A new iceage??? I thought we were complaining about Global Warming?? It's hard to be THAT wrong!

• The world will be "...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age..." -- Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.
Again, I ask you... Global Warming?? What?

• "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation..." -- biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.
He must be talking about American Idol, and Survivor.

• "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction..." -- The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.
Well, at least he hasn't been proven wrong yet... he's on the right track.

• "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make..." -- Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.
I thought I was feeling a bit hungry.

• "...air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone..." -- Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.
Again... he hasn't really be proven wrong, just yet.

Paul Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.
Okay... NOW he's been proven wrong!

• "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation..." -- Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.
Uh... pass the ketchup.

• "By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine..." -- Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.
I love it when they give you a specific date, by which, you can prove them wrong.

Some of this may seem laughable now (ya got that right!), but it was taken very seriously at the time. Had the nations of the world followed the prescriptions of these original Earth Day prophets of doom, it is possible that millions or even billions of people would have suffered and died.

Seven geeky guys leaning in closely over their laptops, studying the glow of their LCD screens might not seem to be an unusual occurance and any local coffee shop these days. But in this case, we're talking about Musicians, and they're practicing onstage at the Newberry Library in downtown Chicago for their performance Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Seating is first-come, first-served, with a 5:30 reception preceding the concert.

They call themselves "laptopists" and they're a brave new world muscian who make their Apple PowerBooks create soaring sounds and knee-slapping rhythms by typing alt-shift-control type commands into their laptops. They're not texting, nor tweeting, but creating music.

This is the Princeton Laptop Orchestra with a newfangled orchestra... er... of a kind... with hemispherical speakers, that imitate the sounds of traditional orchestra instruments. The laptopists manipulate computer-generated sounds and take "sampled" sounds from real life, voices, and other raw sounds to create music with a range from total electronic sound, to truly classical concertos.

Wireless networking is used instead of a baton-wielding conductor, and high-tech Apple notebooks take the place of cellos, woodwinds and Timpanis.

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk, for short) was started through a cross-disciplinary course at, where else... Princeton University, and was the first company of it's kind formed in 2005. The orchestra is the first of its kind — an experimental group that performs on laptop “instruments” invented specifically for the class. Students play their laptops with a new music language — known as ChucK — written by Princeton computer science doctoral student Ge Wang.

But there is one big drawback to such high-tech ensembles: The laptops tend to crash.

"It's the bane of our existence," said Daniel Trueman, co-founder of the group. "We've gotten very good at dealing with it so that most of the time nobody other than the player who crashes knows that it happened. And we've never been totally brought down."

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra performs at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St. Tickets are free, with seating on a first-come, first-served basis. A 5:30 p.m. reception precedes the concert.

Information comes directly from the MLS.

The number of homes in pre-foreclosure or foreclosure appears to be the focus of most people these days and for a number of reasons.

First, the shear number of homes in foreclosure is growing everyday.

In Cook County 20% of all active listings are either pre-foreclosure short sales or bank owned foreclosures.

According to Realty Tracs February 2009 report on Foreclosures.

Illinois is listed as the 7th largest in terms of the number of home foreclosures.