September 3, 2014

by Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

I consider this column exploratory. I am not an economist, and I have much more to learn about income inequality. Indeed, I welcome your comments, which I will use as a basis for a subsequent column (jnowlan3@gmail.com).
But I know something is going on. I need only look at my hometown of Toulon in central-western Illinois.
When I was a boy in the 1950s, older boys would graduate from high school and take jobs “on the line” at Caterpillar in Peoria and Deere in Moline, and earn more than their college-educated school teacher sisters.
Most families felt they were of the middle class. Read More

August 27, 2014

by John Golden
NP Columnist

Unless you have been salt mining in the middle of the Danakil Desert for the last month, you most likely already know that the accomplished comedian Robin Williams took his own life recently. For years, he had had great success, prodding us into laughter with his spontaneous, high-energy approach to comedy, but the gifted actor finally succumbed to his personal demons and build-up of mental scar tissue. To me, his self-induced demise was so abrupt and tragic that it seemed almost Shakespearian.

Obviously, I did not know the late Robin Williams personally, but oddly his sudden passing caused me a substantial level of emotional turmoil anyway. After I had heard the terrible news, I suddenly found myself stumbling through a mourning process that was much more powerful than I would have expected. The shock lasted for a few days, as I spent many moments pondering and sorting through the variety of feelings that had been abruptly conjured up inside my silly little brain. Read More

August 20, 2014

by William C Bailey
Professor, School of Agriculture, Western Illinois University

Let’s be honest, while an excellent university, not many world records are made at Western Illinois University. But that changed recently when a member of the School of Agriculture’s faculty and Good Hope, Illinois resident Associate Professor Mark Hoge, sold a pig (Yorkshire boar to be exact) for a staggering $270,000 – a world record price, according to the National Swine Registry. Assuming the pig weighed 280 pounds when sold, that pencils out to be about $60 an ounce, very comparable to the price of some caviar.  The price of a prime filet mignon is about $30 an ounce.  And the price of the hamburger purchased from a fast food establishment is about 50 cents an ounce. Read More

August 20, 2014

by Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

We cannot let investment in our strong transportation infrastructure go the way of state pensions, putting it off until tomorrow—until it’s too late.

Our transportation system is the jewel in the state’s somewhat tarnished crown.

We have 2,300 miles of interstate highways, more than any states but California and Texas. Six interstates radiate into Chicagoland and three into metro-East St. Louis. Read More

August 13, 2014

by Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

The official insect of our state is endangered, at least here in Illinois. The numbers of the glorious monarch butterfly have declined sharply in recent years throughout the Midwest and at the overwintering sites in central Mexico.

Should we care? What can be done about it, if anything?

Twenty years ago, when I walked the Rock Island Trail northwest of Peoria, I would come upon profusions of the orange butterflies with their striking black and white markings.

Yet this past weekend, on a prairie walk at Jubilee College in Peoria County, my associates and I saw but one monarch, and we all noted how scarce they had become.

A subtropical species, the monarch butterfly ventures north from Mexico each spring in search of its larval (caterpillar stage) host, the milkweed. Two or three generations of the insect later, the monarch arrives in the Midwest. Read More