Events

...the temperature goes from -20°C all the way to -16°C and you feel warmer. I'm going to San Francisco later this week—a place about which Mark Twain said "The coldest winter I ever experienced was a summer [there]"—and I'm looking forward to the weather.

Despite the snow covering Chicago for the past few days, winter officially began with the solstice this morning at 6:04. To celebrate, the weather changed overnight. I forgot what -21°C felt like until taking Parker out a few minutes ago. Even he wanted to go right back inside. In Chicago, we say our weather builds character. I'm starting to think, maybe I have enough. I forgot to mention the wind chill: -35°C with 34-knot winds. Yummy. Update: On our noon walk, poor Parker made it half a block before...

The best governor we have right now shall never surrender: Gov. Rod Blagojevich said today he "has done nothing wrong" and will not resign in the face of federal corruption charges. "I will fight. I will fight. I will fight until I take my last breath," he said. "And I'm not going to quit a job that people hired me to do because of false accusations and a political lynch mob." Blagojevich, however, did not get into the specifics of the political corruption charges he faces, saying he's "not going to...

Sad news from L.A.: Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and an actress whose longtime association with the "Star Trek" franchise included playing Nurse Christine Chapel in the original series, died early Thursday morning. She was 76. Roddenberry died at her home in Bel-Air after a battle with leukemia, said family spokesman Sean Rossall.

A British government study found that smarter Scottish soldiers were more likely to die than dumber ones in WWII: The 491 Scots who died and had taken IQ tests at age 11 achieved an average IQ score of 100.8. Several thousand survivors who had taken the same test - which was administered to all Scottish children born in 1921 – averaged 97.4. A previous study found a fall in intelligence among Scottish men after the war, and at the time Deary's team theorised that less intelligent men were more likely to...

Har: Just how much money do you think it would take to persuade Blagojevich to get the bleep out of the way? I'm serious. Big corporations do it all the time. They've got a screw-up executive in the way, and they need to make a change. To save time and trouble, they pay him to get lost. It could be worth a try. Would a year's salary do the trick? Probably not, but he'd have to give it serious thought. In all seriousness, I've often wondered how my life might be simpler were I sociopathic. The best...

Today's National Weather Service forecast: Today: A 40 percent chance of snow, mainly after 3pm. Cloudy, with a high near 28. Calm wind becoming southeast around 5 mph. Tonight: Snow and sleet, becoming all snow after midnight. The snow could be heavy at times. Temperature rising to around 31 by 4am. Breezy, with a east southeast wind 5 to 10 mph increasing to between 15 and 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Little or no snow accumulation expected. Friday: Snow and sleet, becoming all snow after...

Note to Blagojevich: Even Nixon resigned. Sheesh.

I've given up for the evening attempting to configure a recalcitrant firewall. To cheer up, I turn to Paul Krugman, who reminds us that a 0% Fed rate means we're in trouble: ZIRP! That's zero interest rate policy. And it has arrived. America has turned Japanese. This is the thing I’ve been afraid of ever since I realized that Japan really was in the dreaded, possibly mythical liquidity trap. ... Seriously, we are in very deep trouble. Getting out of this will require a lot of creativity, and maybe some...

Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan has started impeachment proceedings against Governor Blagojevich: Madigan, a veteran Southwest Side Chicago lawmaker and head of the Democratic Party of Illinois, announced the move against the state's first Democratic governor in more than a quarter century at a news conference at the State Capitol. "It is my intention to appoint a special committee to begin immediately an investigation into the governor's conduct in office and to undertake the preparatory work that...