Events

Via Krugman, Ezra Klein reminds us of the differences between the President's and Romney's tax plans: Note that the Tax Policy Center could only conduct a partial analysis of Romney’s tax plan. That’s because Romney’s proposal itself is incomplete. He’s said that he wants to scrap various deductions in the tax code, particularly for high earners, in order to broaden the tax base. But he hasn’t offered any details about which deductions he’d scrap or how, so there wasn’t anything for the Tax Policy...

The aurora borealis could be visible as far south as Chicago, Belfast, and Seattle tonight and tomorrow: A significant event located on the Sun facing Earth took place on July 12. The effects of this event will begin to reach Earth early on the 14th of July GMT. Observers in North America should watch for aurora on the nights of the 14th and 15th local time. Depending on the configuration of the disturbance, auroras may be visible as far south as the middle tier of states. Activity may remain high also...

(Cross-posted to my company's blog.) If you’ve looked at Microsoft’s Azure pricing model, you’ve no doubt had some difficulty figuring out what makes the most economic sense. What size instances do I need? How many roles? How much storage? What will my monthly bill actually be? Since June 7th, Microsoft has had one price for an entry-level offering that is completely comprehensible: free. You can now run up to 10 web sites on a shared instance for free. (Well, you have to pay for data output over 165 MB...

Despite the obviousness of USAirways acquiring it as American Airlines' only hope for survival, apparently some AMR executives are having a Walter Mitty moment: A source familiar with the situation said AMR sees itself as an acquirer in potential mergers and at least five airlines -- US Airways Group Inc., JetBlue Airways Corp, Alaska Air Group, Republic Airways' Frontier Airlines, and Virgin America -- will be considered. American has faced mounting pressure from vocal members of its creditors...

Even though Chicago has had completely tolerable weather the last three days, June and the first few days of July took their toll. Since the beginning of meterological summer on June 1st, Chicago has had the hottest summer ever, with only 26% of normal rainfall: Its 24.7°C average temperatures is running 3.8°C above the long term (142-year) average and 2.9°C above the same period a year ago. Wednesday is to bring the metro area's 14th consecutive day of above normal temperatures. July's abundant...

I've just completed my fourth Windows Azure deployment this month, and this time, it's a non-trivial site. The Inner Drive Technology corporate website now lives up in the Cloud. Actually, it lives in two places: as an Azure Website for testing, and in Azure Cloud Services for production. All I have to do to complete the task is publish the "production" instance (I've successfully published the "staging" instance) and configure DNS. This deployment gave me the most trouble, mainly because it has a lot...

The south-side Chicago politician has been on "medical leave" and unavailable for a month: [U.S. Rep. Jesse] Jackson, 47, took a medical leave for "exhaustion" June 10, but his spokesman waited until June 25 to announce it. A new statement Thursday said Jackson long had grappled with "physical and emotional ailments" and needed extended in-patient treatment. But his office declined to specify his illness, where he is being treated or when he is expected to return. Jackson is running for re-election Nov....

Last week the California senate voted 21-16 vote to approve $8 bn in funding for a high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Naturally there will be some privateering and incompetence, because this is America: Until the end of last year, SNCF, the developer of one of the world's most successful high-speed rail systems, proposed that the state use competitive bidding to partner with it or another foreign operator rather than rely on construction engineers to design a sophisticated...

Before Saturday's game at Citi Field, I wandered around Flushing Meadows Corona Park, site of the 1939 World's Fair (and an alien spaceship crash in 1997): About two dozen kids played in the fountain and in the spray blown off it: (The post title comes by way of Aimee Mann.)

By Wednesday afternoon I'd migrated two Web sites from the loud and hot server rack in my home office to Microsoft Azure web sites. Then I popped off to New York for last night's game, and when I got back to my hotel room I encountered yet another reason I like the Cloud: I couldn't get to any of the sites back home. It turned out that a brief power failure had caused the firewall to reboot—I think a UPS didn't last as long as expected—and in the process it caused the Web server's network adapter to...