Events

I found this quiz in a (virtual) pile of things from my first year at university. Have fun! Answers and more questions tomorrow. (The answers may surprise you, unless you really dig in to the logic.) 1. Either auxins are proteins or petioles grow on auxins. If auxins areproteins then petioles grow on auxins. Therefore: (A) Petioles grow on auxins (B) Either auxins are not proteins or petioles do not grow on auxins (C) If petioles grow on auxins then auxins are proteins (D) Auxins are not proteins (E)...

While swatting away my 4th "your car's extended warranty is about to expire" call today (including one in Spanish), I consoled myself reading about new ideas on how to reduce the environmental impact of brewing beer: From start to finish, making alcoholic beverages asks a lot from the environment. It takes about 20 gallons of water to produce a single eight-ounce serving of beer and 30 gallons per five-ounce serving of wine. Then there’s the glass and aluminum production for alcohol containers, the...

On this day in 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon completed their survey of the disputed Maryland-Pennsylvania border, which became even more contentious in 1780 when Pennsylvania aboolished slavery. A group of surveyors started re-surveying the border in 2019; I can't find out whether they finished. Meanwhile, 255 years later, politics is still mostly local: Our professional women's basketball team, the Chicago Sky, won the WNBA championship yesterday. Chicago's recently-retired Inspector General...

No, not the Harold Ramis character; the working cat at Empirical Brewery in Chicago, letting Cassie know who runs the joint:

671 days. The Apollo Chorus of Chicago last performed in public on 15 December 2019, 671 days ago. This morning we performed at the Chicago History Museum, outside, without masks, to an audience of about 100 people. It is absolutely wonderful to be performing again. The cool, sunny weather helped, too. And the decision not to wear tuxedos.

In June 1943, a group of white American MPs attacked a company of Black American soldiers in the town of Bamber Bridge, England (near Blackpool). The English took the side of the Black soldiers: During the war, American soldiers accounted for the vast majority of black people in Britain. Britain’s population was overwhelmingly white, most of the country almost entirely so. Black Britons numbered around eight thousand in total, and were clustered in London, Liverpool and a few other ports. For the...