Events

...these: An infographic series explaining Game of Thrones. How much Cliven Bundy benefited from the government. Yet another 5-4 Supreme Court decision, this one allowing prayers at public meetings. Aircraft traffic-avoidance software got confused when a U-2 spy plane flew over Los Angeles. Since arguing with creationists is pointless, how can we preserve science education in vulnerable regions? Julia Louis-Dreyfus, playing VP Selena Meyer, teams up with real VP Joe Biden in this introduction to the...

Apparently OCR software sometimes still has trouble interpreting older books: [A]s Sarah Wendell, editor of the Romance blog  Smart Bitches, Trashy Books noticed recently, something has gone awry. Because, in many old texts the scanner is reading the word ‘arms’ as ‘anus’ and replacing it as such in the digital edition. As you can imagine, you don’t want to be getting those two things mixed up. The resulting sentences are hilarious, turning tender scenes of passionate embrace into something much darker...

Via WGN's weather blog, here is the coolest climate visualizer I've seen: The site also has forecast maps and animation, climate information, and (of course) a blog.

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD reported this week that atmospheric carbon dioxide averaged more than 400 ppm in April, a new milestone: Every single daily carbon dioxide measurement in April 2014 was above 400 parts per million. That hasn’t happened in nearly a million years, and perhaps much longer. Climate scientists have proven that the rise in human-produced greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are “extremely likely” to be the dominant cause of global climate change. The likelihood...

Chicagoist graphically demonstrates why I don't want to live where I do anymore: The explanation: Chicago has several major douche vortexes. It’s important to map them out because many innocent people stumble onto them by accident. Recent Chicago transplants and tourists are the most common victims. They’re drawn in by some of the traps in the vortices, which range from hip bars to music venues, and then they find themselves stuck in a zombie-like horde of belligerent drunks. The douches are many. And...

The Inner Drive Extensible Architecture™ is about to get wider distribution. After 11 years of development, I think it's finally ready for wider distribution. And, who knows, maybe I'll make a couple of bucks. I've updated the pricing structure and the license agreement, and in the next week or so (after some additional testing), I'm going to release it to NuGet. That doesn't make it free; that makes it available. (Actually, I am making it free for development and testing, but I'm charging for...

Today is May Day, but it feels like mid-March. Instead of the normal 18°C for May 1st, we're going to get, if we're lukcy, 9°C, with some gray skies and drizzle to drive the point home. The WGN Weather Center has more: A sprinkly, damp chill hung over Chicago as April 2014 closed overnight. The month finished 0.2°C below normal—a fraction of the deficit that’s been recorded in a number of recent months. The shortfall, small as it is, means April goes down in the record books here as the 6th consecutive...

Today wasn't nearly as pretty:

If so, these are queued up: A piece about Wrigley Field's quirks. Two about how Oklahoma botched an execution yesterday, coinciding with the Economist (and I) wondering why America still has the death penalty. Chicago's city council will vote today on ride-sharing, with consequences to friends who Lyft and Uber. Via Bruce Schneier, an article about the Quantified Toilet hoax. Yes, there is such a thing. More later...

Here: House prices in my neighborhood are back to 2007 levels, almost. BASIC is 50 years old. GoGo Inflight shares fell 25% today on the news of AT&T's vaporware. After banning a book at the local school, irate religious fundamentalists called the cops when a student started giving the book away for free. More later.