Events

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow yesterday ruled that the Government may not bring a third vote on a motion that has been rejected by the House twice: 3.33pmMr Speaker The 24th edition of “Erskine May” states on page 397: “A motion or an amendment which is the same, in substance, as a question which has been decided during a session may not be brought forward again during that same session.” It goes on to state: “Attempts have been made to evade this rule by raising again, with verbal alterations...

My team have moved to a new space we've leased on a different floor of Chicago's Aon Center. This morning, this was my view: And now, one floor lower and facing the opposite direction, this is my view: I actually prefer the south view, but only marginally. In fact, I'll probably keep taking photos of the south view. But neither view sucks.

Yet another Chicago-based medical marijuana company has merged with an out-of-state company ahead of an expected legalization of recreational pot this summer: Chicago’s Cresco Labs on Monday unveiled a $120 million merger that allows it to expand into Florida, where analysts predict demand for medical marijuana will significantly grow in the coming years. By 2022, the market for medical pot could reach a whopping $1.7 billion, according to analysts’  projections. Under the agreement, Cresco will acquire...

Pilot and author James Fallows points out this Seattle Times article as a good explanation of how the Boeing-led safety process for the 737 MAX 8 airplane may have contributed to their recent accidents: The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes. Early on in certification of the 737 MAX, the FAA safety engineering team divided up the technical assessments that would...

Program included Vierne, Messe solennele, Duruflé, Requiem, Mozart, Vespere Solennes de Confessore, K339

On March 4th, the U.S. Supreme Court decided two cases that change how copyright infringement cases work in the U.S. In Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation v. Wall-Street.com, the Court held that a copyright owner must wait for the Copyright Office to accept or reject a registration application before the owner can sue for infringement: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who had not attended the oral argument because she was home recovering from surgery) delivered the court’s opinion. She analogized the...

Alexis Madrigal takes a look at criticisms of the World Wide Web from when it was new: Thirty years ago this week, the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web at CERN, the European scientific-research center. Suffice it to say, the idea took off. The web made it easy for everyday people to create and link together pages on what was then a small network. The programming language was simple, and publishing was as painless as uploading something to a server with a few tags in it. Just...

First, Bruce Schneier takes a look at Facebook's privacy shift: There is ample reason to question Zuckerberg's pronouncement: The company has made -- and broken -- many privacy promises over the years. And if you read his 3,000-word post carefully, Zuckerberg says nothing about changing Facebook's surveillance capitalism business model. All the post discusses is making private chats more central to the company, which seems to be a play for increased market dominance and to counter the Chinese company...