Events

It's 12°C (54°F) in Chicago right now. Fifteen degrees (25°F) above normal is great in January. I may have to open a window...or go outside...things we don't normally do around here mid-winter.

The Chicago Tribune had several stories of interest this morning. Meterologist Tom Skilling noticed more daylight, possibly because he reads my blog. Unfortunately, he got the number of minutes more daylight a little wrong, because he only looked at half the equation, and even still didn't subtract correctly. First, the difference between 4:23 and 4:50 is 27 minutes, not 28; second, sunrises got later before getting earlier, so we actually have 9 hours 35 minutes of daylight now, which is 26 minutes...

The President today appointed Nicole Nason head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, apparently to reward her for her good work lobbying against the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This is like appointing Al Capone to run the Women's Christian Temperance Union, or Mike Brown to run, well, anything. This is another in the President's long history of appointing people totally unsuited for their jobs, but unsuited in a particular, deliberate way. The appointments guarantee...

The Washington Post reports that the Republicans are now proposing restrictions on lobbying. This news comes shortly after Charlie Pace threw his "last" package of horse into the fire. Some lawmakers say GOP leaders are blaming lobbyists rather than examining the legislative processes that have invited corruption, such as the proliferation of home-district pork-barrel projects that have become prime ways to reward campaign supporters. So, let's review: The majority party, that set up a lobbying program...

"There are SBA loans for this. And I understand for some the word SBA means Slow Bureaucratic Paperwork. I hear it loud and clear."—George W. Bush Reported in today's Doonesbury Daily Dose.

Former Vice President Gore's address to the Liberty Coalition yesterday is worth reading. He draws a direct line between the authoritarian mindset and incompetence. This is not a casual relationship; the executive's power grab encourages incompetence and lessens our security. Says Gore: In the words of George Orwell, "We are all capable," he said, "of believing things which we know to be untrue and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right."...

Ah, this is more like it. Chicago in January: Windy, snowy, drizzly, and just above freezing. Yum.

I got all excited that the Roberts Court had upheld Gonzalez v. Oregon, until I realized the Chief Justice was in the minority with Justices Scalia and, you will be surprised to know, Thomas. Rehnquist would have voted with the majority, I think, so this signals Roberts may not be the Warren some of us were naively hoping for. I'll have more salient analysis shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court publishes the opinion online. For now, I'll just have to go on the Associated Press report, which appearsto...

The Inner Drive Extensible Architecture™ contains a very useful namespace called Quantitative that contains classes and interfaces to use in measuring things. Essentially, there is a trio of interfaces, IQuantity, IUnit, and IPhenomenon, that allow you to create and convert any kind of measurements. The principal implementation of IQuantity is the Numeric structure. To convert feet to meters, you do this: IQuantity feet = new Numeric(100, new Foot()); IQuantity meters = quantity.ConvertTo(new Meter())...

Peter Dreier, professor of politics and director of the urban and environmental policy program at Occidental College in Los Angeles, writes in today's L.A. Times that the paper should revive its history of reporting on labor issues: Up until the 1980s, most major newspapers, including The Times, had a regular labor reporter. Today, few papers, The Times among them, have even one reporter exclusively assigned to cover labor. That may be a consequence—even a cause—of declining union membership. But The...