Events

My first website, braverman.org, debuted in New York on 16 August 1997. We didn't have things called "blogs" back then, but over the course of about four years I posted jokes, stories, and poetry—almost all of it submitted by other people—two or three times per week. It was kind of blog-like, except I had to add actual Classic ASP pages to the site until I figured out a way to automate it in May 1998. I'm going to start re-posting the archives, with their original time stamps... Here are the first ones...

First, a Boeing 787 caught fire at Heathrow this afternoon; fortunately, no one was aboard: Video footage showed the plane surrounded by foam used to quell the flames. The airport said in a statement that it was an on-board internal fire, but didn’t offer more details. It said the plane was empty, parked in a remote area and there were no reported injuries. All flights in and out were temporarily suspended Friday afternoon -- a standard procedure if fire crews are called out. Ethiopian Airlines said...

The New York Times on Tuesday lamented the state's decline: In January, after the election of Pat McCrory as governor, Republicans took control of both the executive and legislative branches for the first time since Reconstruction. Since then, state government has become a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress in public education, tax policy, racial equality in the courtroom and access to the ballot. The cruelest decision by lawmakers went into effect last week: ending federal unemployment...

Because the world will end if 99-year-old Wrigley Field retains any of its historic character, at least according to its current owner, the Ricketts family have pushed the Landmarks Commission to approve an ugly Jumbotron in left field. It may get approved today: At the strong urging of Mayor Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Commission on Landmarks is expected to approve the team's plans for a 6,000-square-foot electronic sign in left field and a smaller non-electronic sign in right. [M]ultiple sources...

Via Sullivan:

Yesterday I noted with some concern that a latter-day Pinkertons-like army had appeared outside a mine in Wisconsin. Josh Marshall follows up: When a fishy paramilitary firm run out of a Real Estate Agency in Scottsdale, Arizona shows up in the North Woods of Wisconsin to protect some mining equipment with a slew guards sporting Death Squad chic, that’s, I have to say, a story I want to know more about. But there’s more to it than just the gonzo freakishness of the story. It’s stories like this, I...

Remember the Pinkertons? Well, to add to the trend of turning back the clock to the 1880s, we can now add Pinkertons with automatic rifles guarding a Wisconsin mine from environmentalists: There’s been a battle royal up in Wisconsin over an effort to establish a big iron mining operation near Lake Superior, to be owned and operated by a company called Gogebic Taconite. The Republican legislature approved the mine in March over environmentalists’ objections. Some protests have been staged since the...

It seems that some insurance companies have decided armed schools are too risky to cover: But already, EMC Insurance Companies, the liability insurance provider for about 90 percent of Kansas school districts, has sent a letter to its agents saying that schools permitting employees to carry concealed handguns would be declined coverage. “We are making this underwriting decision simply to protect the financial security of our company,” the letter said. Jenny Emery, head of the Association of Governmental...

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2013 2 Jul 8:30pm sunset 05:20 20:30 15:09 16 Jul 5:30am sunrise 05:30 20:24 14:53 9 Aug 8pm sunset 05:53 19:59 14:06 16 Aug 6am sunrise 06:00 19:49 13:49 29 Aug 7:30pm sunset 06:14 19:29 13:15 14 Sep 6:30am sunrise 06:30 19:02 12:31 15 Sep 7pm sunset 06:31 19:00 12:28 22 Sep Equinox, 15:44 CDT 06:39 18:48 12:09 25 Sep 12-hour...

Yesterday, an Asiana 777 crashed on approach to San Francisco airport: Two people were killed and 49 seriously hurt when Flight 214 crashed at 11:27 a.m. But the rest of the 307 passengers and crew members escaped either unscathed or with lesser injuries, Doug Yakel, an SFO spokesman, said at an evening news conference. The plane came to rest on the side of Runway 28L, one of four runways at SFO, said Lynn Lunsford, a spokeswoman with the Federal Aviation Administration. The jetliner appeared to hit...