Events

The Chicago Tribune has a lengthy article about the Chicago Lakefront path, and its many hazards: Ideally, pedestrians and runners stay to the right of each lane near the perimeter or on the soft, gravel-covered shoulder. Faster traffic—cyclists and in-line skaters—travel on the inside, closer to the yellow line. During these summer evenings, the minefield emerges, and each group blames the others. Sunbathing near the Ohio Street Beach, in-line skater Roger Mroczek turns and points at a child crossing...

Only Turkey lags behind the U.S. in the proportion of people who believe the well-established fact that humans decended from apes: Religious fundamentalism, bitter partisan politics and poor science education have all contributed to this denial of evolution in the US, says Jon Miller of Michigan State University in East Lansing, who conducted the survey with his colleagues. "The US is the only country in which [the teaching of evolution] has been politicised," he says. "Republicans have clearly adopted...

I'm actually enjoying the International Astronomical Union's discussions about what, actually, is a planet: The part of "IAU Resolution 5 for GA-XXVI" that describes the planet definition, states: "A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet." Member of the Planet Definition Committee...

I wonder what spammers are actually thinking almost as much as I wonder why they bother me. I've had a blog-spam problem for about three weeks now targeting my referral logs. Spammers with robots use robots that act like people browsing the blog, but they appear to come from gambling sites so that the site URLs show up in the system logs. Some blogs' referral logs are searched by Google and other sites, so the theory here is that the referral spam will generate a lot of inbound links into their sites...

Chicago Tribune transportation reporter Jon Hilkevich channels Cecil Adams: The actual answer is fuzzy, depending on the location, the time of day, vehicle traffic volumes, when the walk button is activated—and luck too. Many pedestrians refuse to press walk buttons due to suspicions they are a trick or a placebo concocted by the traffic gods to keep walkers calm while breathing fumes from tailpipes as they wait for green lights at busy street corners. Steve Travia, IDOT's bureau chief of traffic for...

The hypothesis that the Bush Administration (891 days, 3 hours and 50 minutes left) pumps up the volume on terrorism close to an election just got more evidence: NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States. A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least...

On a day like this, when I'm slogging into the wind on Lawrence through heavy traffic and stopping...every...two...blocks for red lights, I just want to finish the ride. But then lately, even my bad rides end up surprising me. Today I did 80 km (50 mi) in unpleasant conditions and still finished in 3:11, more than a minute faster than my best 80 km time. Next weekend: 120 km (75 mi), which, should I complete it, will be the longest I've ever ridden in one day.

If you don't mind downloading 25 Mb, you can see the short video I took of the cicada who attached herself to my screen while I was working yesterday. To get the full experience turn your speakers up to 11. Those things are ridiculously loud. They start to come out in Northern Illinois mid-June, and by mid-August they're everywhere. Then, suddenly, around Labor Day, they disappear for another year. Someone has a cicada blog you might want to check out, if you're into cicadas. By the way, Chicagoland...

Pop something.

It's not every day that I set five personal records (PRs). This morning I rode 40 km (24.9 mi) in 1:29:19, beating my old PR (set Tuesday) by 2:29. The other PRs are in my expanded PR table on braverman.org. I attribute my increasing performance this season to three things: first, plain and simple, I'm riding more: 17.3 km (10.7 mi) per day on average (including days off) against 14.6 km (9.1 mi) the previous three seasons. Here's what I've done since June 13th: The little blue dots go against the...