Events

It's finally happened. After 13 years, my cousin has gotten to the top of the Cubs season ticket waiting list. Only a year ago, he was 10,000 away from the top, but for some reason the list got radically shorter this season. He and I long ago made a pact to go in together. And today, we found out what that means. We have an appointment at Wrigley Field at 9am Saturday to pick seats. And to pay for them. We can skip the appointment, of course, but that means going to the back of the line—which now has...

Chicago's official weather station lived at Midway Airport from 1928 until 1958, when it moved up to O'Hare. As I mentioned yesterday, Chicago's record high temperature for December 3rd is 22°C. Yesterday's official temperature only got up to 21°C, so we didn't break the official record. A funny thing happened, however. Yesterday's temperature broke Midway's record, tying the official record set at O'Hare in 1970: The level of warmth observed across the Chicago area Monday ranked among the rarest of the...

Last month, United Airlines and the Star Alliance held a multi-day outing for some frequent fliers that included a couple legs on a 787: They were bankers, lawyers, programmers, film distributors, entrepreneurs and all-around aviation buffs or, as they lovingly call themselves, geeks. Most were men. All of them had signed up for a MegaDo, a retreat organized by and for travel fanatics who scour Web sites like Milepoint, particularly frequent fliers for whom it is a hobby to accrue miles and learn every...

Children and authoritarians tend to react to clear evidence against them by doubling down. The current Israeli government has continued the tradition: The Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to approve the construction of 3,000 new homes is widely seen as a response to the United Nations vote earlier this week that recognised a Palestinian bid to be a "non-member observer state". The US, with Israel, strongly opposed that move, while Britain abstained in the vote. But now both countries...

Yesterday it was 17°C; today, so far, it's 19°C. (The record temperature for December 3rd is 22°C, set in 1970.) But no, there's no global warming.

Geologist James Powell points out that the peer-review process keeps finding in favor of climate change: The most obvious criticsism—that this is an argumentum ad populum—only works if you misunderstand how science works. Every scientist has an implicit incentive to prove some other scientist wrong. You can make your career in science by showing that the received wisdom doesn't fit all the evidence. So the numbers in that pie chart have to raise eyebrows, even if the eyes under them have blinders on....

No, I don't mean "will we have to endure another six weeks of an election." I mean that Chicago today hit 17°C, not a record (22°C in 1982), but also more normal for mid-October than for the second day of meteorological winter. Tomorrow may be warmer. The Climate Prediction Center forecasts a warm December followed by more normal temperatures through March, so we might get a good Chicago winter anyway. Remember, though, that warm winters lead to warm summers (though not necessarily the reverse), so I...

I've just spent three hours debugging something caused by a single missing line in a configuration file. At 10th Magnitude, we've recently upgraded our framework and reference applications to the latest Windows Azure SDK. Since I'd already done it once, it didn't take too desperately long to create the new versions of our stuff. However, the fact that something works in an emulator does not mean it will actually work in production. So, last night, our CTO attempted to deploy the first application we...

Via Sullivan, a stunning and beautiful video comprising hundreds of still photos taken last fall:

A French appeals court has ruled that neither Continental nor mechanic John Taylor bears criminal responsibility for the 2000 Air France Concorde crash outside Paris: According to the original ruling, mechanic John Taylor fitted the wrong metal strip on a Continental DC-10. The piece ultimately fell off on the runway in Paris, puncturing the Concorde's tire. The burst tire sent bits of rubber flying, puncturing the fuel tanks, which started the fire that brought down the plane. On Thursday, Judge...