Events

Via TPM, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) thinks he stumped Nobel laureate Stephen Chu: Barton: You’re our scientist. I have one simple question for you in the last six seconds. How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean? Chu: (laughs) This is a complicated story, but oil and gas is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geology, and in that time also the plates have moved around, and so, um, it’s the combination of where the sources of the oil and gas are– Barton: But, but...

That's the word the first commenter used to describe Paul Krugman's conclusion about the march to war: Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link. There's a word for this: it’s evil. If that's shrill, we need to re-examine the 2002 State of the Union address, don't we?

Via Daily Howler, Naomi Klein argues we should throw out Larry Summers: The criticisms of President Obama's chief economic adviser are well known. He's too close to Wall Street. And he's a frightful bully, of both people and countries. Still, we're told we shouldn't care about such minor infractions. Why? Because Summers is brilliant, and the world needs his big brain. And this brings us to a central and often overlooked cause of the global financial crisis: Brain Bubbles. This is the process wherein...

So, on a recommendation, I picked up a copy of Barbara Bleau's Forgotten Calculus, to brush up on the subject in advance of starting business school this fall. Only, I haven't forgotten calculus. No, my problem is, I never learned it in the first place.[1] So if anyone knows of a book called "Calculus You Never Learned In The First Place," please let me know. [1] I guess you could say I'm a bit behind the curve.

I announced Friday that I deployed a complete, ground-up rewrite of Weather Now, but it looks a lot like the old version. So what's really different? The differences between the versions go all the way down to the operating system. Version 3.1, which I launched in July 2007, ran on ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Server 2005, and a motley collection of sub-components I wrote from 1999 to 2004. The current version runs on ASP.NET 3.5, SQL Server 2008, and completely new components I re-wrote from first principles...

(Mudville is that $1.5 billion park just over the Harlem River in the Bronx.) The Yankees had a disappointing 2nd inning hosting the Indians yesterday as Cleveland set a new Major League record: A 37-minute top of the second at Yankee Stadium saw the Tribe put up 14 runs on 13 hits off right-handers Chien-Ming Wang and Anthony Claggett. The big inning, which set the Tribe on course for its eventual 22-4 victory, tied for the most productive inning in Indians history and set a record for the most...

1:15 pm, Chicago:

This, I think, says it all...almost: Sadly, this says the rest: They had to make a new sign this year, because the old one only went up to 99 years. Sigh.