Events

Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, is 38: On this day in 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world’s first baby to be conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) is born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, to parents Lesley and Peter Brown. The healthy baby was delivered shortly before midnight by caesarean section and weighed in at five pounds, 12 ounces. Before giving birth to Louise, Lesley Brown had suffered years of infertility due to blocked fallopian tubes. In November...

For some reason—and rest assured I will ask, because I'm really curious—we're flying at an unusually low altitude right now (7800 m—officially FL240), and dodging clouds. I'll post the FlightAware track at some point so you can see the waltz we've just danced over central Colorado. I know future generations will look back on my glee about posting a blog entry from an airplane whose geo-tag is derived from looking at my mobile phone's GPS feature, but allow me this moment. Look where we are. Look where...

So far Chicago has had a milder-than-normal summer, with only a couple of over-32°C days and a lot of rain. Given our greenhouse gas emissions, that will change: The NASA climate projections offer a detailed view of future temperature and precipitation patterns around the world at a 15.5 mile (25 kilometer) resolution, covering the time period from 1950 to 2100. The 11-terabyte dataset provided daily records and estimates of maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation over the entire globe....

Purchased 2015-05-27. Started in Phoenix

Tomorrow afternoon I'm flying to Phoenix to visit Park #26. Fortunately, Chase Field is air-conditioned, because the forecast calls for 38°C at game time after a high temperature of 41°C earlier in the day. Photos and a frank assessment of the weather conditions to follow this weekend.

Jeff Skilling at the Chicago Tribune updates us on the equatorial Pacific: The current El Nino comes together against a backdrop of warming oceans and oceans which are growing more acidic as they observe mass quantities of CO2 produced through the burning of fossil fuels and the release of CO2 into the atmosphere this produces. More on the rate at which the planet’s oceans are warming here. It’s estimated that the warming which has taken place in the world’s oceans since 1990 is the equivalent of having...