Events

If you don't know Hyperbole and a Half, set aside an hour and read every one of Allie Brosh's posts. Since it's December, though, start with this one: By the time I was done reinventing her, Mary carried a cane, walked with an exaggerated limp and was completely covered in BandAids. She was also blind. I started reading the blog last night when I got home for dinner and finally stopped 90 minutes later because my face hurt from laughing.

We finally got our first measurable snowfall of the 2011-12 winter: It's official. We got our first measurable snow early this morning. O'Hare reported 13 mm of fresh snow. 2011 now ties 1948 as the year with the 5th latest first measurable snow for a winter season. We now join more than a third of the country with snow cover. The National Snow Analysis from the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center reports that as of yesterday, 37.3% of the US had snow cover with an average depth of 45...

It turns out Air France 447 may have crashed mainly mainly because of pilot error: Almost as soon as [the flying pilot, 32-year-old Pierre-Cédric] Bonin pulls up into a climb, the plane's computer reacts. A warning chime alerts the cockpit to the fact that they are leaving their programmed altitude. Then the stall warning sounds. This is a synthesized human voice that repeatedly calls out, "Stall!" in English, followed by a loud and intentionally annoying sound called a "cricket." A stall is a...

Finally. In Chicago, anyway. The farther north you go, the more likely your latest sunset is...earlier. I explained why this happens December 8th a few years ago. And yet, I feel the need to comment on it yet again...

Chicago might get measurable snowfall tonight, which would be the fourth-latest first fall in history and the first since April 18th: Though flurries have been observed within the city limits four times this month and seven times since the snow season began this year on Nov. 9, the only "measurable snow" which has fallen has been across the northern suburbs. That may change as a light-snow-generating disturbance swings across the metro area Thursday night. The system's approach will become more and more...

The Atlantic's Cities blog points an energy conservation problem caused by people having trouble with math: A significant – and seldom noticed – part of the solution lies with some fairly low-tech infrastructure: our houses, and the relationship they have to each other and where we want to go. A growing body of data has mapped the carbon footprint in sprawling suburbia of a single-family home, which is located nowhere near the grocery store, the job center or the shopping district. We can now compare...

Wow. I mean, rapists don't get that much time in jail. Maybe being from Illinois has made me less outraged by our stupid ex-governor's felonies than it should, but: 14 years? Here's the Trib: Standing next to a teary-eyed [wife] Patti, Blagojevich said they had to get home "to their babies" and explain "what all this means." Blagojevich will have to serve just under 12 years under federal rules that say defendants must complete 85 percent of their sentence. Blagojevich doesn’t have to report to federal...

I just stumbled upon an article from last March by Michael Lewis, in which he explains how thoroughly Irish banks screwed themselves: A single bank, Anglo Irish, which, two years before, the Irish government had claimed was merely suffering from a “liquidity problem,” faced losses of up to 34 billion euros. To get some sense of how “34 billion euros” sounds to Irish ears, an American thinking in dollars needs to multiply it by roughly one hundred: $3.4 trillion. And that was for a single bank. As the...

Apparently they came from China: While the descent of dogs from wolves through domestication is non-controversial in genetics, determining the region in the world where this occurred has been more of a question. Earlier studies had suggested a Middle Eastern origin for dogs. A new study focusing on the lineage of the Y-chromosome indicates that dogs originated somewhere in eastern Asia, south of the Yangtze River.

The Economist's Gulliver blog looks at JetBlue's new landing slots and concludes it may not work for them long-term: JETBLUE, the low-cost American carrier, won an auction last week for the right to operate eight additional round-trips from both Washington's Ronald Reagan airport (DCA) and New York's LaGuardia airport (LGA), essentially doubling its presence at both sites. JetBlue bid $72m for the slots, over $26m more than its rival Southwest. The deal is widely seen as part of JetBlue's recent effort...