News Net New public art installation aims to make everyone think they’re tripping balls

Since sifting through dull newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful news can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the significant reports that were overlooked throughout the weekend. Here are some things to think about as the workweek begins.

• Multimedia artist Jessica Stockholder wants to make Chicagoans think they’re tripping balls. The Chicago Loop Alliance announced Thursday that its next public art installation will be a project by Stockholder called “Color Jam.” Stockholder essentially says she wants to “fill an intersection with color.” The installation will be unveiled in June.

• In an effort to garner more federal funding, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration is refuting the 2010 census count for Chicago. Each resident counted earns the city around $1,200 a year.

• Pro-life deja vu? Rep. Thomas Morrison (R-Palatine) and other Republican state legislators are attempting to push a new anti-abortion bill that would impose stricter operation standards on state health care centers that perform abortions. The peculiarity, however, is that the lawmakers are using the Illinois House Agriculture Committee as a platform to do so. You know, the committee designed to deal with farms and the environment. Makes sense right? Interestingly enough, a similar bill flew through the same committee last year before being narrowly defeated by the House. The notoriously conservative Agriculture And Conservation Committee will once again hear the bill Feb. 21 and will more than likely move it forward. When asked whether he requested that such a bill would be pushed through a completely irrelevant committee, Morrison reportedly said he “just [didn’t] want to answer that question.”

• The Reader has everything you’d ever want to know about the upcoming and inevitably glorious shit storm that will come to Chicago in the form of the Nato/G8 Summits.

• In the wake of a disastrous holiday shopping season for the company, Sears laid off 100 workers at its headquarters near Chicago Thursday. This comes two months after the state forked over some juicy tax credits in order to keep the company’s HQ in Illinois. Gov. Quinn’s office claimed the job losses would have been much worse had a deal not been struck.

• A Cook County judge either has a lot of legitimate medical issues or is completely full of shit. The Sun-Times reported Judge Vanessa A. Hopkins has missed 206 days of work in the last year alone. The report comes after Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans received a letter from Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke that inquired as to the extended absences of 20 of the 411 judges in the Circuit Court system.

• A Joliet man stayed in a motel room with his dead girlfriend’s corpse for almost two days, drinking vodka he bought with her debit card before deciding to call for an ambulance.

• The Chicago News Cooperative will reportedly end operations Feb. 26. The non-profit public interest journalism organization which contributed a mini-section of Chicago news twice weekly to The New York Times, reportedly ran into problems with the IRS. The cooperative’s website will also likely shut down soon.

• A doctor at Children’s Memorial Hospital wants to help develop a clinic for transgender children.

• A Chicago Public Schools teacher has filed a federal lawsuit against the district after being suspended without pay for five days for using the “n-word.” The 48-year-old teacher, Lincoln Brown, claims he used the word during a “teachable moment” in the context of the book Huckleberry Finn. The school principal apparently walked in on the class as Brown uttered the word.

• A historic Wilmette residence with ties to Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph Schindler could be demolished by a new owner.

• On the heels of his return to public performance, The Reader contemplates what lies ahead for reclusive indie-rock messiah Jeff Mangum.