Events

Bruce Schneier makes the case: We have no evidence that any of this surveillance makes us safer. NSA Director General Keith Alexander responded to these stories in June by claiming that he disrupted 54 terrorist plots. In October, he revised that number downward to 13, and then to "one or two." At this point, the only "plot" prevented was that of a San Diego man sending $8,500 to support a Somali militant group. We have been repeatedly told that these surveillance programs would have been able to stop...

Krugman outlines how the state of North Carolina cutting unemployment benefits has completely failed to encourage people back into the workforce: The idea behind cutting benefits is that we are “paying people to be unemployed”, and that tough love will force them to go out and create jobs. It’s never explained exactly how greater desperation on the part of the unemployed will, in fact, lead to higher overall employment. Still, you could imagine that an individual state might gain some competitive...

The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama Administration has dumped CGI Federal and hired...oh sweet baby dills, Accenture: Federal health officials are preparing to sign a 12-month contract worth roughly $90 million, probably early next week, with a different company, Accenture, after concluding that CGI has not been effective enough in fixing the intricate computer system underpinning the federal Web site, HealthCare.gov, the individual said. Accenture, which is one of the world’s largest...

Just 120 hours ago, a polar vortex wandered into the center of North America and froze us solid. Less than an hour ago, at 8:39am CST, the official temperature at O'Hare hit 0°C—27°C warmer than 9am Monday morning. It's also the first time the temperature has gotten up to freezing since December 29th. I've lived in Chicago for a long time, so I can say this graph is extraordinary (data from my demo at Weather Now: Of course, with 250 mm of heavy, wet snow on the ground, rain in the forecast, and...

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 .) Sunrises are just starting to get earlier, but today's (7:18 CST) is only a few seconds earlier than the latest sunrise of the year on January 3rd. Even though the sunrise times creep earlier by seconds every day, sunsets start to get noticeably later: 16:39 today, 7 minutes later in a week, 25 minutes later in three weeks. January is cold and dark, but (on average)...

Illinois State Climatologist Jim Angel has his annual review of the state's weather for last year. Some highlights: Based on the latest data, the statewide average temperature for 2013 in Illinois was 10.6°C (0.8°C below the 1981-2010 average). That is much cooler than 2012 when the statewide average temperature was 13.1°C. The statewide average precipitation for 2013 in Illinois was 1112 mm (91 mm above the 1981-2010 average). The precipitation for the two halves of 2013 were very different. The...

Earlier today, "smoking gun" emails between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's staffers showed pretty clearly that Christie's office engineered a three-day traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge just to punish Democratic Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich. The infraction? Not endorsing the governor in last year's election. Josh Marshall explains why this is bad for Christie's presidential hopes: [A]ll the Watergate villainy was really needless. He was already winning and on track to win big. For Nixon...

The temperature at O'Hare just reached -18°C for the first time since 11pm Sunday, 39 hours ago: This was pretty much as forecast. The updated forecast predicts continued warming through the weekend (click for full size): Perhaps by tomorrow, walking to the bus stop won't cause my eyelashes to freeze.

The temperature outside has gone up a whopping 0.9°C (to the tropical -23.6°C) since this morning. At O'Hare, it looks like the temperature bottomed out around 8am: Let's hope it continues to rise. I'm really curious what this graph will look like in three days.

Just now, at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters: (Compare with four years ago, when I bought the thermometer while sojourning in North Carolina.) The official temperature at O'Hare is -27°C, breaking the previous record of -25°C set in 1988. We might even break the record low maximum temperature—the coldest high temperature ever on this date—of -18°C set in 1912. I have not gone outside today, and until I take Parker out after he gets back from day care, I have not plans to do so. At least the...