Events

Specifically today, I'm talking about chipped credit cards, which the rest of the world has had for years longer than we have, and they're a lot less annoying. Bloomberg's Ben Steverman explains why: It's an awkward and irritating experience, and payment companies are aware of the problems. "Some places, it's seamless and beautiful," said Robert Martin, North American vice president of security solutions at Ingenico Group, the second-largest maker of payment terminals in the U.S. "Other places, not so...

...is now available. Don't worry, you haven't missed anything.

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2017 3 Jul 8:30pm sunset 05:21 20:30 15:09 16 Jul 5:30am sunrise 05:30 20:24 14:55 9 Aug 8pm sunset 05:53 19:59 14:06 16 Aug 6am sunrise 06:00 19:50 13:49 29 Aug 7:30pm sunset 06:14 19:29 13:15 14 Sep 6:30am sunrise 06:30 19:02 12:31 15 Sep 7pm sunset 06:31 19:00 12:28 22 Sep Equinox, 15:02 CDT 06:39 18:48 12:09 25 Sep 12-hour...

In 30 years, this will be a much more interesting photograph:

Paul Krugman was inspired by his CUNY colleague Branko Mlianovic to think about our current partisan divide as a bloodless civil war: Branko – who knows something about Yugoslavia! – argues against the view that civil wars are caused by deep divisions between populations who don’t know each other. The causation, he argues, goes the other way: when a civil war begins for whatever reason, that’s when the lines between the groups are drawn, and what may have been minor, fairly benign differences become...

While I'm trying to figure out how to transfer one database to another, I'm putting these aside for later reading: Chicago Magazine thinks global warming could be worse for Illinois than previously thought. (But we're still going to do better than Florida.) Citylab reviews Sarah Williams Goldhagen's new book on the science behind appreciating architecture. Conservative (!) columnist Jennifer Rubin believes her party can no longer defend our national interests or our Constitution. Krugman once again...