Events

Apparently all that junk DNA in your cells isn't junk after all: Now scientists have discovered a vital clue to unraveling these riddles. The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as “junk” but that turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave. The discovery, considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough, has enormous implications for human health because many complex...

Seriously: Within the bottle, a postcard written in June 1914 by Captain CH Brown of the Glasgow School of Navigation promised the finder a reward of 6 pence. It had been part of a scientific experiment in which 1,890 such bottles were released, in a bid to chart currents around Scotland. Even odder, the person who found this 98-year-old message worked on the same boat as a man who found a 93-year-old message back in 2006. The bottles were part of an early-20th-century research project to map Scotland's...

We're doing some very cool things at 10th Magnitude. Here's my boss, CEO Alex Brown, explaining: Notice, by the way, how often I have mentioned an employer on this blog. I'd discuss the company more right now, but I have to get back to writing some pretty cool Azure code...

Just when you thought it was September, along comes more hot weather. Chicago officially hit 32°C for the 46th time this year, putting us one away from tying the record number of days above that temperature in recorded Chicago history. Can we please have autumn now?

I've just finished Jane Jacobs' foundational work on urban planning. I first came across the book in 2010, started reading it in May, then put it down and picked it up a few times. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published 51 years ago, Jacobs demolished the philosophy of urban planning that had prevailed since the 1920s. The Cabrini Green housing projects, massively disruptive road-building like the Dan Ryan and Congress Expressways, and a way of top-down analysis that looked at...

Beloit College's Mindset List has me thinking: what will future lists look like? Some ideas: The 2024 List The Class of 2024 were born in 2002. They never saw Captain Kangaroo or Mr. Rogers on live TV. The World Trade Center has never existed. There has always been an American military presence in Afghanistan. Monica Lewinsky means as much to them as Christine Keeler meant to their parents. The 2034 List The Class of 2034 were born in 2012. Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, John Hughes, and Brittany Murphy...

Clearing out the ballast: Despite the initial forecasts, Hurricane Isaac's remnants missed Chicago. Beloit College, just outside Rockford, Ill., has published its Class of 2016 Mindset. Since 1998 they've published a list of facts about the way incoming first-years think. This year's list includes "Women have always piloted war planes and space shuttles" and "A bit of the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, has always existed in space." The Economist's Gulliver blog bemoans Tampa's and...

August marked Chicago's 11 straight month of above-normal temperatures: [A] string of warmer than normal readings never before observed here. Meteorological summer itself is to finish as the third-warmest in 142 years of weather records here. Not surprisingly, the season’s been a sunnier than usual one producing 76% of its possible sun—more than summer’s usual 66% here. The Climate Prediction Center forecasts an above-normal autumn as well. Good thing the election is about empty chairs at empty tables...

Parker came home with me six years ago today. Here he is a few minutes ago, wondering why we were outside but not walking anywhere: And, of course, here he his six years ago:

Federal judge Peter Economus ruled today that a Republican law to curtail in-person early voting, in which people can vote in Ohio up until the Monday before election day, was unconstitutional: The law had made an exception allowing for in-person early voting over that final weekend for military personnel, voters who fell under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voter Act, or UOCAVA. Supporters of the law said that eliminating early voting over those final three days could hurt those voters...