Events

My last post ("Warmest May in 131 years") got some reaction on its cross-posting to Facebook: YK: 131 years is a drop in the ocean in geological time. Why is this drop so significant? Never seen any satisfactory answers to that question except maybe some looks of intimidation about how 'obvious' the answer was. Poor communication or maybe nothing compelling to communicate? The Daily Parker: The sharp rise in global temperatures over the past 150 years is unprecedented in the planet's history. Yes, the...

Remember all those climate-change deniers going on about snow this past winter? New data from NASA might change some minds: Especially warm temperatures—close to five degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above average—occur over most of the Arctic, including the northernmost reaches of North America, northwestern Greenland, and most of the northern coast of Eurasia. Unusually warm conditions also extend southward into Eastern Europe and Siberia. In Antarctica, warm conditions appear in some inland...

The longest tennis match in history has ended: When John Isner finally won the longest match in tennis history, he collapsed on the Wimbledon grass and then summoned one last burst of energy, springing to his feet to applaud along with the crowd. The American hit a backhand winner to win the last of the match’s 980 points, and he took the fifth set Thursday against Nicolas Mahut, 70-68. The first-round match took 11 hours, 5 minutes over three days, lasting so long it was suspended because of darkness —...

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...