Events

The Earth has global cool periods periodically, the last one ending around 10,000 years ago, which gave us humans the push we needed to invent complex civilizations. Even though global temperatures were higher about 8,000 years ago than they are today, they were dropping gradually until about 200 years ago. (Any guesses why?) In short, we're due for another glaciation. But it looks like that won't happen: [S]cientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found that the relation of...

This means I have some time to digest this over the weekend: Temperatures in Chicago rose 25°C, from -18°C to 6°C, from Wednesday evening to yesterday evening. They're forecast to plummet tonight. Yay Chicago. The Chicago Tribune has a decent history of Captain George Streeter, who "discovered" what is now the Streeterville neighborhood. Astronomers have discovered a supernova that was 50 times brighter than our galaxy. The Atlantic said last night's Republican debate had "Trump's Finest Moment." Not...

Zach Weinersmith has abridged the Bible "Beyond the Point of Usefulness." And he has given this work a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC license, which lets me post it right here for you (281 k, PDF). Enjoy. Excerpts: Genesis: God made everything, but humans keep screwing it up; some Jews move to Egypt, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Amos: Amos becomes, like, the 14,000th prophet to note that Israel is making God mad and when you make God mad things go bad. Acts: Finding the market for Jewish...

Too many interesting things to read today. I've got some time between work and Bel Canto to get through them: An astronomer thinks he knows the origin of the Wow! signal. A Chicagoist writer has crunched the numbers on Restaurant Week. Crain's looks at the new Illinois Cloud Tax and its effects on tech startups. Krugman shows, one more time, how much better things are now than at the beginning of Obama's presidency. Hanselman describes WallabyJS, a new JavaScript test runner. Jetbrains has developed a...

After watching the state of the union address, my party (small sense) decided to watch The American President. In the first ten minutes, we watched agog as we realized that none of the principal political arguments in the U.S. have changed since 1995.

...a report from the Executive to the Legislature required by Article II, section 3. Everyone is following along, yes? 9:11pm: First applause line: "I'm going to try to make it a little shorter." 9:15pm: My companion: "Fear!" Me: "No, that's Feinstein." 9:18pm: Oh, dear. Third "fear" of the speech. Might not make it... 9:21pm: "Anyone who says America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction." 9:29pm: "There is red tape that can be cut." Bi-partisan applause, for different reasons. 9:32pm: "When the...