“The first living thing to arrive at the scene of a crime is often the fly,” says UIC forensic entomologist Bernard Greenberg (UIC News, January 26). After deciding what species the fly is and how old its eggs or larvae are, he can determine such things as “time of death, movement of the body and the presence of drugs in the corpse.”
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Why Brad Wood’s Idful Studio in Wicker Park won’t be expanding anytime soon, as he explained it to Gwen Ihnat in Illinois Entertainer (February): “To do that I’d have to move or buy a building…. Bankers are probably my biggest obstacle to expansion. All Chicago banks can kiss my ass. Small businesses get nothing. They want such a heavy financial commitment from you. We’re working with stereotypes here. I have to deal with stereotypical bankers and they think they’re dealing with a stereotypical studio guy, like I’ve got a kilo of cocaine in my back pocket, cellular phone, Jag fresh off the lot bought with laundered drug money, and I work with a lot of long-haired Satan-worshiping musicians snorting heroin and cocaine in the studio.”
“The upper middle class has successfully turned the welfare state to its own ends,” writes Nancy Folbre, describing the thesis of Peter G. Peterson’s new book Facing Up in In These Times (February 7). “By his calculations, only about $1 out of every $8 of federal social spending goes to help poor families. Consider the home mortgage interest that individuals can deduct from their taxable income: theoretically, the deduction applies to everyone, but of course some can take better advantage of the opportunity than others. In 1994, this deduction cost the U.S. Treasury about $46 billion, about twice the amount spent on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); 80 percent of the benefits went to households with incomes over $50,000.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Carl Kock.
