Events

My demo site, Weather Now, has a feature showing weather extremes for the world. Northwest Canada right now is having unusually cold weather. What's the connection? The Calgary Herald published a story about the website yesterday and syndicated it across Canada. Jenna McMurray of the Calgary Sun also picked up the story, and called me for a quick interview. As a result, Weather Now went from a daily average 4,000 page views up to a server-smashing 337,000 yesterday. It seems traffic has tapered off a...

Via Fallows, talented musicians Pomplamoose have scored a Hyndai ad: Just a back-of-the-envelope estimate here, but I'd say that ad will pay for groceries for the next couple of years.

With fewer than 21 days until the end of school forever (or at least until I get the loans paid off), I've spent all my non-work time thinking about entrepreneurship management, emerging market strategy, technology strategy, and environmental economics. Between them I have three papers and one pricing project to complete. The first paper is almost done, pending comments from one of my sources. I'd go celebrate but I have the other three assignments, you see. Someday, I'll look back upon this time, laugh...

Via TPM, this Duke project is cool: This animated interpretation accentuates certain phenomena: the breadth and duration of support for Roosevelt, the shift from a Democratic to a Republican South, the move from an ostensibly east-west division to the contemporary coasts-versus-heartland division, and the stability of the latter. More broadly, this video is a reminder that what constitutes “politics as usual” is always in flux, shifting sometimes abruptly. The landscape of American politics is...

Via Sullivan, the Pew Research Center recently published an alarming survey of Americans' grasp of current events: Nearly eight-in-ten (77%) say correctly that the federal budget deficit is larger than it was in the 1990s and 64% know that in recent years the United States has bought more foreign goods than it has sold overseas. As in recent knowledge surveys, about half (53%) estimate the current unemployment rate at about 10%. But the public continues to struggle with questions about the Troubled...

Added 2008-07-10

Kindle; Mason, Ohio

Because they write things that would never get past a typically-craven American news editor, like this: Substantial rivals for [Rahm] Emanuel['s mayoral candidacy] are surprisingly few. Jesse Jackson junior, a congressman, says he will not run. He has been criticised for ties to a blonde and to Rod Blagojevich, the disgraced ex-governor, thankfully in separate incidents.