Events

Not sure what to make of this in the 21st century: Penis theft panic hits city KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft. Wow. From Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko: "[W]hen you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I...

That's what my flight instructor said when the weather looked breezy. Tomorrow's forecast calls for 52 km/h gusts, so I might stay on the ground. Another flight scheduled, another flight cancelled. Welcome to Chicago.

Via TPM, John McCain, trying to make a point, apparently thinks people won't pick lettuce for ten times the amount that actual lettuce-pickers get paid: Now, my friends, I'll offer anybody here $50 an hour if you'll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So -- OK? Sign up. OK. You sign up. You sign up, and you'll be there for the whole season, the whole season. OK? Not just one day. Because you can't do it, my friend. Fifty bucks an hour? Ten to twelve hours a day? That's not...

Yup. That was, in fact, an earthquake this morning. Update: Duh. Today's the anniversary of the Great San Francisco Quake 102 years ago. Holy meaningless coincidence, Batman!

Devotees of the ParkerCam will have noticed it has shown a lot of Parker's empty crate lately. This happens because I have discovered the miracle of the dog bus, whereby Urban Out Sitters delivers Parker right to his crate (complete with peeb-stuffed Kong) on days when it's iffy I'll be able to pick him up before 7pm. The bus usually gets him home around 4pm, in case you're a slave to the ParkerCam.

Just got very bad news from my dad: Reggie died this morning of lung cancer. He was 13.

I'm not usually personal in this blog, but a combination of things have occurred over the past 24 hours that feel pretty good. First, my apartment is done. Done, done, done. The last door was hung on the last doorframe, the last stick of furniture found a good home for itself, the last drop of paint splatted on the wall. Done. Second—and this is, I'm not kidding, front-page news in Chicago—the temperature hit 21°C today for the first time in six months (it was 27°C on October 21st). And finally, I...

Living in Chicago, air travelers have two easy options: American and United, both of whom have hubs here (United is headquartered here), and both of whom are two of the top-ten airlines worldwide using just about any measurement. Astute readers will already know both airlines (accidentally just typed "airliens"—Freudian?) have made news lately. American is just getting around to applying an airworthiness directive to its aging MD-80 fleet, and United just announced serious fare increases that American...

Via Calculated Risk, the story of Maricopa, Ariz., in which we find Greed, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, and Pride, but surprisingly little Wrath (and only a brief cameo by Lust): In the early 1990s, Maricopa was a small farming community with a population of about 600, mostly longtime farmers and Hispanic laborers, along with a few American Indians. Local businesses included a low-profile Nissan testing site and the state’s largest beef-cattle feed lots — industries that chose Maricopa because it was out of...

That's MSNBC's headline on a story that shows how insane people are. Not the woman who let her kid ride the subway—no, I was riding the subway in Chicago alone at about that age during a far more dangerous era—but the people who think she committed some kind of child abuse: "It's safe to go on the subway," [the boy's mother said in an interview]. "It's safe to be a kid. It's safe to ride your bike on the streets. We're like brainwashed because of all the stories we hear that it isn't safe. But those are...