Hasta La Gadget!

The following article is provided by Rolling Stone.

By RYAN REED

Back in June, George Lucas announced plans to build a private museum in the Windy City, but he’s facing some political opposition from Chicago open space advocates, who claim his $1 billion, 95,000-square-foot design for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art would be in violation of city ordinances created to protect public space adjacent to Lake Michigan. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the advocates are threatening to file a lawsuit that would block the 70-year-old “Star Wars” creator from carrying out the build.

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The publication notes a variety of other opponents, including aldermen (who think the museum should be located downtown or in an economically disadvantaged area) and devoted Chicago Bears fans (who worry that losing two parking lots would interfere with their pre-game tailgating). But the city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, reportedly shrugged off the lawsuit at a recent press conference: “Our contribution is two parking lots,” he said, while noting the economic and employment benefits the build would bring.

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The facility – set to reside on lakefront real estate near football stadium Soldier Field – is set to include a variety of items from Lucas’ personal collection, including film memorabilia, visual effects examples created by Industrial Light and Magic and paintings by American artists like Norman Rockwell. The filmmaker is aiming to open the museum in 2018.

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Lucas’ original plan was to construct the facility in San Francisco (near the headquarters of Lucasfilm), but that proposal was rejected for interfering with the “historic character” of the area. However, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told THR that Lucas, whom he called “a perfect gentleman,” is welcome to move construction to L.A. if the Chicago plans fall through.

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“I am humbled to be joining such an extraordinary museum community and to be creating the museum in a city that has a long tradition of embracing the arts,” Lucas said last month in a statement announcing the Chicago build.

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It’s not normal to be so obsessed with food, but that’s what you have to have to be in this business–obsessed. It’s too difficult in too many ways to own a restaurant unless you possess a deep, undying passion for eating and feeding people. What’s hard about it? The hours, for one thing. They’re long, they’re nights, and they include weekends and holidays. Forget about regular dinners at home. Forget about being there for Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Christmas Eve. Those are busy, busy days. Working when most of the rest of the world is off at home is hard. And as hard as it is on you, it’s harder on your family. Because even though you don’t really want to work at night–you kind of do, and your family knows this.

Being passionate about something is like having a mistress you’re always half wanting to take off and be with, which hurts the people closest to you (not that I’ve had a mistress myself; I’m just speculating). A lot of passionate people–driven people–are hard to live with, and their families take the hit. Many of my restaurant friends have gotten divorced, including me. You have to find a strong significant other who understands the nature of the business. I didn’t get it right the first time, but luckily, I did the second.

Unless you love food and serving people, you’re not going to want to make the constant sacrifices, and if you don’t, you will not succeed at this business. It’s passion that sustains you through the long hours, the snowstorms, the recessions, the fear that you can’t make it, and if you have made it, the fear that you’ll lose it. I’m always advising people to find their passion, because despite all the hardships of this business, I don’t think of what I do every day as work; I think of it as fun. And if you’re really lucky, you’ll feel passionate about business as well as eating, because the numbers have to add up or you can’t serve the food you love.

Look at restaurants that have made it over a long period, and you’ll find that their owners are almost always men and women who think about food, eating, and business an unnatural amount of time. On the flip side, so many places go out of business because their owners don’t have their hearts and souls in it. I see it over and over again. I have to laugh when I hear that somebody wants to open a restaurant when they retire–as though it’s an easy thing to do when you don’t really have to work anymore. You can’t open a restaurant because you want to have a place where your friends can have drinks and dinner. Ever wonder what the story is behind those places that close before it seems they’ve even opened? Now you know.

If you’re thinking of starting a restaurant, you need to sit down and ask yourself: “Do I really have what it takes to succeed? Do I love food and making money enough to make these things my life?”

Businesses will suffer along with people and places this year if the El Nino event predicted by most climate models hits with its expected wicked strength.

El Nino is a warming of Pacific Ocean waters that exacerbates storms globally and can cause floods, droughts, famines and even civil unrest. The pattern is predicted to develop over the next few months, and can last more than a year. It arises every three to seven years. This year’s pattern is reported to be on par with the intense 1997 phenomenon.

Due to its intensity, El Nino threatens company supply chains, particularly in the food and beverage sector.

“Historically, El Niño events drive up the price of certain commodities,” reports Maplecroft, a London-based, global risk analytics firm. The firm has devised an El Nino scenario-based map that provides dramatic insight to the pattern’s devastating affects and highlights the world’s most vulnerable areas — areas that also happen to comprise the raw supply of commodities for businesses and many of our goods.

For example, El Niño typically causes dryer conditions in Indonesia, reducing hydroelectric power and limiting Nickel production. In India, El Niño conditions may already be contributing to a weak monsoon, with 90 percent of the country receiving deficient rainfall in June. As a result, the sowing of key crops, such as rice, corn, soybeans and cotton, has been delayed and the potential negative impact on crop yields could impede the newly elected government’s efforts to limit inflation and revive economic growth.

Nickel, by the way, is a key component in stainless steel, which is used to make everything from your laptop to your fridge, never mind its key use for water infrastructure because of its anti-corrosive properties.

In any event, considering that nearly two-thirds of small businesses do not have any emergency preparedness plan in place, according to a survey by the Ad Council, and considering that the Standard and Poor’s rating agency may begin downgrading publicly traded corporations that do not have a climate change plan in place (a la S&P’s initiative with sovereign nations), this year’s El Nino, if it does come to fruition as expected, will no doubt become a wake-up call for the business community.

The Obama administration’s most recent climate change initiatives aimed at safeguarding electricity grids and improving plans for floods, coastal erosion, landslides, and droughts, among other measures, are prescient calls to action. They are not about climate change in the future, they are about the climate now.

Preparedness is crucial to climate survival — not only for us, for businesses, too.

In an interview with HuffPost Live on Wednesday, author Marja Mills, who this week published The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee, responded to Harper Lee’s statement claiming Mills misrepresented her relationship with Lee in the book. “I can tell you my experiences,” Mills said in reply. “They were clear, they were engaged, and they were just wonderfully generous with their time.”

Mills’ book caused a stir in the publishing world, as it came with an apparent stamp of approval and full cooperation from the famously journalist-allergic Lee, who hasn’t given an interview since 1964. Lee’s firm refusal to give interviews for the past 50 years leaves reporters occasionally grasping at straws; in one absurd instance, The Mail on Sunday touted a conversation with Lee that contained nothing but Lee brightly brushing off the reporter in favor of going to feed ducks. Lee’s participation in a biography would be unprecedented.

However, Lee has repeatedly denied involvement in or authorization of the book, first in 2011, after news of the book’s upcoming publication was released, and again this week. Lee released a statement the day of the book’s publication, saying:

Miss Mills befriended my elderly sister, Alice. It did not take long to discover Marja’s true mission; another book about Harper Lee. I was hurt, angry and saddened, but not surprised. I immediately cut off all contact with Miss Mills, leaving town whenever she headed this way. […] Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.

Penguin Press, which published The Mockingbird Next Door, issued a statement indicating that they stand behind the book. Penguin also released a letter from Mills reaffirming her account and citing the support of Harper Lee’s sister, Alice, and a close friend of Lee’s, who both attest to the friendship that developed between Mills and the Lee sisters:

I can only speak to the truth, that Nelle Harper Lee and Alice F. Lee were aware I was writing this book and my friendship with both of them continued during and after my time in Monroeville. The stories they shared with me that I recount in the book speak for themselves. The written letter I have from Alice Lee, which she sent May 2011 in response to the original letter issued in Nelle’s name, makes clear that Nelle Harper Lee and Alice gave me their blessing. […] In addition, Nelle’s good friend, Tom Butts, who I had the pleasure of getting to know during the course of writing this book and who remains a friend to this day, is also on the record in support of my work.

In her appearance on HuffPost Live, Mills again emphasized the “long and trusting relationship” she recalls having with the Lees: “By the time I rented the house next door, and, again, with both of their blessings and encouragement, I had known them three years.”

On his show, Real Time, Maher has been calling on viewers to nominate and vote for the worst members of Congress for his #FlipADistrict Campaign. Once a “winner” is chosen on September 12th, Maher plans to throw that member of Congress into the national spotlight and help oust them from office.

Earlier this year, we at StudentDebtCrisis.org nominated Representative John Kline for Bill Maher’s #FlipADistrict campaign. In May, Maher announced that due to our Twitter campaign, Representative John Kline shot from number 75 on the list of worst members of Congress, to the number one spot. Since then, Kline has remained in the top spot, and last week, Maher announced on his show, Real Time, that Kline has advanced to the ‘Flippable Four’ of the #FlipADistrict Campaign. 

It restores my faith in people that the candidate that garnered the most votes in the first round, the round of sixteen, is truly one of the most deserving to take a f*cking hike. From Minnesota’s Second District, give a nice Real Time welcome to Congressman John Kline, the first one of our final four! Now he is not the most outrageous or quoteworthy, he’s just a down-the-line rightwing asshole. The kind of guy who when people say, “Why doesn’t anything get done anymore?” This guy! And ones just like him, that’s why!

Help us #FlipADistrict and #FireKline by tweeting and voting today! 

BIG #RealTime news: our new website http://t.co/7Fwn87xDZ3 is now live, starring top vote-getter Minnesota’s @repjohnkline! #RealTime

— The Real Timers (@RealTimers) July 12, 2014