Events

This weekend's weather forecast in Chicago predicts the coolest weekend since May 12, 14 weeks ago. Through Sunday temperatures should be 3°C below normal (days in the low 20s, lows in the low teens), with sunny skies and cool northeast breezes. September, in other words. The Tribune points out: Only 6 of past 142 years have produced Aug. 18 overnight lows cooler than those expected by Saturday morning. Not only will daytime readings be cooler than typical for mid August, nighttime lows will be cooler...

From the Atlantic, an explanation of how dogs dry themselves: A dog can shake roughly 70 percent of the water from its fur in four seconds. Nearly three quarters of the moisture in the time it took you to read that last paragraph. Pretty amazing stuff. But that champion efficacy raises more questions than it answers. First, why does it work so well? How long does it take your socks to dry a comparable amount if you get them wet? How are they generating all that force? Second, many mammals are capable of...

A friend of mine, who lives in a sea of Tea Partiers, sent me this question today: How would you refute/debate/argue against the following opinion: "I think it's [Paul Ryan as Romney's VP choice] a good choice because I sincerely hope the collective national attention and focus will be on the fact that we are on the verge of becoming the next Greece. And that the only hope of prosperity for our children is massive cuts in government spending and entitlement reform. I'd even be in favor of raising taxes...

From the annals of "why didn't I think of that?", an app that keeps track of where you've been so you can go somewhere else instead: [Art student Tom] Loois’s final project ended up being a smartphone app called BlankWays, which charts your progress through the city, noting which paths you’ve come down before and suggesting itineraries to cover new ground. The app indicates and measures which parts of the city you’ve traveled, and which you haven't. Loois isn’t the first person to meticulously chart his...

Via Sullivan, Gotye has assembled a "YouTube orchestra" of people covering his song "Somebody That I Used To Know:" Says Mashable's Neha Prakash: Looks like even Gotye knows his song, “Somebody That I Used to Know,” is an overplayed, viral sensation that has spawned an entire genre of YouTube covers. So the singer decided to acknowledge the hundreds of piano-playing, harp-plucking, and guitar-strumming fans who paid tribute to the catchy tune. Gotye explained: "All audio and video in Somebodies is from...

The WGN Weather Blog reported this weekend that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation has turned warm in the past couple of months, and is getting warmer. The Climate Prediction Center started noticing in July: Nearly all of the dynamical models favor the onset of El Niño beginning in July - September 2012 (Fig. 6). As in previous months, several statistical models predict ENSO-neutral conditions through the remainder of the year, but the average statistical forecast of Niño-3.4 increased compared to last...

I got back home last night after spending a week in cool, California coastal weather. Apparently I brought some of it with me: The return of sunshine this weekend is to send temperatures higher. It's a change which will be noticed given the fact it follows the first back to back below-normal days in over 6 weeks. Saturday's predicted 26°C high represents a 3°C increase from Friday's 24°C reading—and Sunday's 29°C tacks another 2°C on the day's peak reading. But, while warm and eminently comfortable, the...

Via Robert Wright, National Journal's Jim Tankersley thinks choosing Ryan makes this a contest for the middle class against the poor: Poor and middle-class workers tolerate fewer attacks on the rich in America than in other developed nations; most of them still believe that if they work hard enough, they’ve got a shot to get rich, too. Still, it’s tough to win a class war squarely on the side of the wealthy. Aspirational voters don’t like the possibility that government policy is rigged to help the rich...

It just never gets old:

Yesterday I showed Alfonso Soriano stealing third. Here's the result: Man, those were great seats. $80 at Petco; $251 at Wrigley; $450 at New Yankee. My last one this morning is the last one I took of Petco Park: Now if only the Cubs had won...