Events

Diane will understand why Wired editor Jonah Lehrer keeps his crappy GPS. Not because her GPS is crappy, but because "Jack" talks to her: I have a complicated relationship with my GPS unit. On the one hand, it rarely works. Here's what happened the last time I turned it on. First, there was a five minute delay while it searched for the satellite signal. Then, it couldn't find the street I was searching for. Then, it found the street but lost the satellite signal. Then, it regained the signal but sent me...

That's what the WGN Weather Blog calls the circle around a dome of hot air stretching from Texas to the Atlantic: Yesterday this combination brought the second heavy squall line across Chicago that pinned me down at my client offices. The one last Friday had 75 km/h winds that punched out windows at Willis Tower, a few blocks away. Last night's encouraged the city to turn on the civil defense sirens: The National Weather Service said funnel clouds were spotted in the leading edge of the storms, but...

As I checked email for one last time before going to bed, I found out who won the Republican primary in North Carolina's 13th district, in which I've spent considerable time this year. Meet Bill Randall, who will challenge incumbent Representative Brad Miller (D) on November 2nd: As Talking Points Memo said last week, "But surprisingly, as oil poured into the gulf and Obama threw resources and rhetoric at the problem, the 'it's all a giant conspiracy' theory didn't catch on." Perhaps when people talk...

This morning I finally opened up the pre-reading packets for Term 5, and discovered that going to Boston on August 21st may have been the better choice academically. Final exams are due August 30th, not September 6th as I'd originally thought, so taking 36 hours out of the weekend of August 28th would have been colossally stupid. The flipside of that, however, is I actually get a long weekend for Labor Day. So it works out.

Via Beth Filar Williams, a new documentary on the environmental damage caused by single-use bottles of water—30m of them per day: "We want to drink the purest water we can. So why would you put that water into a substance that has the potential to leak chemicals into the water?" It's worth a look. Watch the trailer.

The Vice President on BP:

Three things encourage me to resume the 30-Park Geas this season. First, I haven't seen a baseball game in almost a year; second, three weeks from now I'll be done with all the CCMBA travel; and third, American Airlines is running a triple-miles promotion this summer from Chicago to New York and Boston. So: my options are Boston on August 21st or New York on August 28th. Boston would cost $40 more for the airfare; New York would cost about that much more for a hotel room. (And no, I wouldn't stay in...

Yesterday was Parker's 4th birthday, but being in a different city I couldn't immediately get a photo of him. Fortunately we have the Intertubes, and Diane was able to provide one:

Today is Parker's: it's his 4th birthday. Happy birthday puppy!

After a Strategy exam, Finance exam, Strategy team paper, project estimate for work, and...well, that's really all I did the last four days, come to think of it...I'm more or less back. Herewith a quorum of things I noticed but didn't have time to note: The Washington Post reported yesterday that MC 900 Ft. Jesus—sorry, I meant an actual 30 m statue of Jesus—got struck by lightning Monday night and burned to the ground. Signpost to Armageddon? Probably not, but it has an element of Apocalyptic whimsy to...