Events

The Spirit of Stupidity: The next obsession, at least for passengers of Spirit Airlines, may be cramming items under airplane seats. The Florida discount carrier said Tuesday that it would charge customers as much as $45 each way to place bulky items in overhead bins, in an effort to get people on and off its planes faster. Other airlines will watch Spirit's experiment. Carry-on bags didn't become the primary source of luggage for passengers until carriers introduced fees for infrequent fliers and then...

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown requested the Queen dissolve Parliament today in advance of their May 6th general election: The formalities between the Prime Minister and monarch lasted 23 minutes. The details of their conversation will remain private but Mr Brown was to ask the Queen for a dissolution next Monday. He then returned to Downing Street to name the date on the steps of No 10. [Conservative Party leader David] Cameron was not in a mood to wait, starting his campaign appearance while Mr...

I think I can get used to having an association with a national champion team of some kind, which in my life hasn't happened since 1998: The Duke Blue Devils officially were the last team standing Monday night, the only team on the podium with the championship trophy in hand. Duke claimed its fourth NCAA championship but the first for any of its current players with a 61-59 victory over hometown favorite Butler in front of 70,000-plus fans at Lucas Oil Stadium. More: The Blue Devils won with defense....

This greeted me on my return to Raleigh today: This is from pine pollen, which forecasters predict will be miserable for a couple of weeks. It covers everything, all over, everywhere down here. Another view of my formerly-silver car: I wish those trees would stop having sex on my car.

A 7.2-magnitude earthquake rumbled through Baja California yesterday afternoon, killing one person directly and another indirectly: The quake struck about 6 miles below the earth's surface at 3:40 p.m. PT Sunday, about 110 miles east-southeast of Tijuana, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. After examining data, seismologists upgraded the size of Sunday's 25-second quake from a magnitude 6.9 to 7.2, according to Dr. Lucy Jones of Caltech. "This is the largest earthquake since the [7.3 magnitude]...

I've spent the day at the company office in downtown Chicago, 37 flights up a 60-story building. The wind outside is gusting to 67 km/h, so the building is swaying. While I've visited plenty of tall buildings, I haven't experienced this kind of wind while inside one in many years. The entire structure is creaking. It's most disconcerting.

And it's only April. The temperature in Chicago hit 28°C this afternoon, a new record: The mercury first reached 26.7°C at 12:49 p.m. and proceeded to 28.3°C just over an hour later at 1:53 p.m. breaking the previous record of 27.8°C set in 1946. The city's official high is likely to end up at 28.9°C--a reading 17°C above normal and more typical of June than early April. ... The normal high is 11.7°C. So, remember all those climate-change deniers who failed to understand that climate change theory...

I had planned to write about the smallest pre-reading box ever[1]. I had planned to write in Ubbi-Dubbi Pig Latin, a language spoken, as far as I know, by only one other person on earth. I had planned, in other words, not to have this come out: No, not that. The updated version: Pope Benedict, accused by victims' lawyers of being ultimately responsible for an alleged cover-up of sexual abuse of children by priests, cannot be called to testify at any trial because he has immunity as a head of state, a...

My new employer requires that I get an appropriate Microsoft certification by February 2012. This requires that I take six certification tests. I've started preparing, after not having bothered in four years. And, as I was in 2006, and 1999, and 1996, and 1993, the last times I jumped into the MCP Pit of Despair, I am unhappy. Why, pray, have I not bothered to get certified? Why only one test in the last 10 years? Because I really, honestly, truly, hate these exams. The last time I took one, I literally...

Sean Wilentz at The New Republic has a better explanation of the nullification nonsense this morning than I had yesterday: Now, as in the 1860s and 1960s, nullification and interposition are pseudo-constitutional notions taken up in the face of national defeat in democratic politics. Unable to prevail as a minority and frustrated to the point of despair, its militant advocates abandon the usual tools of democratic politics and redress, take refuge in a psychodrama of "liberty" versus "tyranny," and...