Time to rend the clothing and tear the hair. Click and Clack are retiring:
TOM: And with Car Talk celebrating its 25th anniversary on NPR this fall (35th year overall, including our local years at WBUR)…
RAY: …and my brother turning over the birthday odometer to 75, we’ve decided that it’s time to stop and smell the cappuccino.
TOM: So as of October, we’re not going to be recording any more new shows. That’s right, we’re retiring.
RAY: So, we can finally answer the question, if my brother retired, how would he know?
The show will continue indefinitely as an endless "best of" reel, which won't be the same.
Very sad. Inevitable, but sad.
The Atlantic's Max Fisher has a roundup:
Flipping through a few of the many English-language tourist guides provides a fascinating, if non-scientific and narrow, window into how people from the outside world perceive America, Americans, and the surprises and pitfalls of spending time here.
Of the many pieces of advice proffered, four of the most common are: eat with your fingers (sometimes), arrive on time (always), don't drink and drive (they take it seriously here!), and be careful about talking politics (unless you've got some time to spare). But they say more than that.
In many ways, the tour books say as much about the world as they do about the U.S., by highlighting the ways in which American practices and standards deviate. Anyone who's traveled widely, particularly in the developing world, will understand why these books are so emphatic about, for example, punctuality, personal space, and the unreliability of our trains.
All of them, of course, have sections on tipping. It's difficult to overstate how confusing that can be to foreign visitors.
It turns out, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva gets a little out-of-sorts because of it:
The moon’s own gravitational field was pulling more strongly one side of the Large Hadron Collider, every-so slightly deforming the tunnel through which the proton beams pass.
The deformation also changed as the Moon rose and fell in the night sky. In order to keep the proton beams on track, the operator at the LHC’s control center had to subtly alter the direction of the proton beams to accomodate the Moon’s pull, “every hour or two,” [Indiana University physics professor Dr. Pauline] Gagnon explained in an email to TPM.
The Daily Parker could not confirm reports that some of the near-light-speed protons were later seen running naked through the lab.
I've got a deadline, which didn't stop me reading these articles (but did stop me posting thoughts about them):
Back to the mines...
Because they improved downtown L.A. immensely:
In 1999, Los Angeles passed its Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, making it easier and cheaper for real estate developers to convert old offices to new housing. While the ordinance arguably jump-started the revitalization of downtown L.A., a key (though overlooked) element was pet-friendly policies in these newly converted lofts.
Walking dogs drove residents out of their homes and into the street at least twice each day. Elsewhere in Los Angeles, where single-family homes predominate, dog owners often have the luxury of sending Fido out to the yard to do his business. But downtown, dogs and their owners have become a crucial component of the rebounding neighborhood's culture.
Of course, if the office dog poops on the CEO's carpet, he'll still get fired.
Assuming the polls are correct, the contest in Wisconsin today will be close. Whatever the result, Scott Walker can hardly claim a mandate with somewhere around half the state wanting to take the unprecedented (for Wisconsin) step of yanking him from office. This is not trivial: voters have to overcome their natural disinclination to end a governor's term early, and then they have to select someone who lost an election just two years ago.
I look forward to the results.
Apparently it's more common than I thought to gag on raw tomatoes even while having no problem with tomato sauce:
People like me just lack certain key taste receptors, preventing us from appreciating the rich, sweet, meaty flavor of raw tomatoes that the rest of you are always rhapsodizing about. The problem is that tomatoes have something on the order of 400 volatile compounds and who knows which one of those (or combination thereof) might be responsible for the harsh reaction many of us experience in response to raw tomatoes?
Frankly, the scientific community has been sadly remiss in getting to the bottom of the mystery of why raw tomatoes make some of us gag, despite a few scattered flavor studies. But they’re hot on the case of cilantro, an even more polarizing herb. I love cilantro. To me, it tastes fresh and citrusy with just a tinge of an herbal edge to it. But to some people, it just tastes like soap. Or worse. They have as strong a visceral reaction to cilantro as I have to fresh raw tomatoes.
Of course, it could be the gloppy, lumpen nature of tomatoes that makes us gag, too. I'll stick with purée.
As feared, Chicago is experiencing a weekend of perfect weather. As a consequence, Parker and I just finished an hour-and-three-quarters walk that had to include time at Noethling Park (aka "Wiggly Field"). We're recovering for a moment before heading outside again for another one.
Regular updates will resume when the crisis concludes.
(Note: Ordinarily I would have linked to the Chicago Park District's official page on one of its parks, but apparently they forgot to pay the Internet bill, so at this writing their site dead-ends at Network Solutions. Nice work, guys.)
After logging the warmest spring and third-mildest winter in Chicago history, we have a huge likelihood of a warmer-than-normal summer. Yesterday, though, we had one of those perfect days Chicagoans can count on two hands every year: sunny, dry, and 24°C, the kind of day that Parker and I spend entirely outside.
It turns out, a relatively unusual weather pattern could give us more than a week of this sort of thing:
[C]omputer models indicate what is meteorologically-termed an upper-level "Omega Blocking" pattern will establish itself over the United States for the remainder of the workweek. With a trough of low pressure over the east and west coasts and a high pressure ridge over the central plains. This will establish an extensive low-level cool high pressure air mass over eastern Canada into the northeastern and north-central U.S. For Chicago, situated in the southwestern quadrant of the high pressure, it in turn means an extended period of east to southeasterly flow, relatively dry conditions and daily temperatures around normal levels, except cooler readings along the lakefront and beaches.
The official forecast calls for temperatures around 20°C (after 26°C today) and sunny skies through Saturday.
It's all very confusing to us here, all this nearly-perfect weather. We'll just have to muddle through...