Events

It was on this day in 1933 that Prohibition ended. Shortly afterward, marijuana was criminalized, in no small part because the alcohol lobby has always been more powerful, and in the 1930s popularly associated with a different ethnic group, than the marijuana proponents. I was going to provide links to scholarship to support this point, but there isn't a lot of it out on the Web right now. Even the relatively de-politicized National Institutes of Health and the Journal of the AMA have a dearth of...

We got about 10 cm (4 in.) of snow last night, so this morning Anne and I went out to shovel.

It was on this day in 1818 that my native Illinois became the 21st of the United States. Tangential question: Why does the History Channel put this tidbit in the Old West category?

Anne and I attended the taping last night of Wait Wait — Don't Tell Me!, the NPR News Quiz. It airs Saturday. If you don't listen to the show, tune in, and find out how to get Aerosmith and Kenny G to play the same gig, among other things. Note: You may have seen this post earlier. In a continuation (recurrence?) of earlier problems, Das Blog ate the post about an hour after it went up. Grr.

From the National Hurricane Center just a few minutes ago: ...EPSILON BECOMES YET ANOTHER HURRICANE IN THE RECORD BREAKING 2005 ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON... Epsilon, the 26th named storm in the Atlantic this year, is now its 14th hurricane. See the complete public advisory. Hurricane season ended Wednesday. Apparently Mother Nature didn't get the memo. Update, 20:53 UTC: Forecaster Stewart at the NHC added this comment to the latest Hurricane Epsilon discussion: GOING BACK TO 1851... HISTORICAL RECORDS...

North Carolina executed the 1,000th person since the U.S. reinstated capital punishment in 1976, putting us 1,000 ahead of our friends and allies in the contest to become the most barbarous democracy on earth. I don't have time at the moment to go over the problems with the death penalty, except to note that the Jeanine Nicarico case is back in the newspapers in Chicago. The man most likely responsible for Nicarico's murder is finally on trial for it 20 years after a man who couldn't possibly have...

...that Rosa Parks was jailed for not giving up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala. Thanks to eagle-eyed attorney Angela Riccetti for a correction to this item.

New Scientist is reporting this hour on findings published today in the journal Nature, showing a 30% reduction in warm-water flows in the Atlantic Gulf Stream. This is a long-predicted effect of global warming, similar to changes in the flow that may have caused the so-called "mini ice-age" of the 14th and 15th centuries—and the major ice age of 110,000 years ago. Not to be alarmist or anything, but this news is the climatic equivalent of seeing fifteen "for sale" signs on your block. It shows that...

I just got a voice message from the National Republican Campaign Committee, asking for survey input. As a matter of fact, I do have some ideas for the 2006 campaign... Heh.