Events

One of the biggest perks of being a CTO is that I get to roll out really fun initiatives every so often. Our CEO has a Microsoft Surface 2, and he's had such success with it that we decided to make it our official laptop replacement. I made one moderately-annoying error in rolling out Surface Pro 3 tablets to seven people who were waiting for laptops: I failed to give the less-technical users guidance on how to set up user accounts. We're fixing it, but we still have some confusion around the idea that...

Under international treaties, German flag carrier Lufthansa could face huge compensation claims after one of its pilots apparently intentionally crashed an A320 into the Alps on Tuesday: Under a treaty governing deaths and injuries aboard international flights, airlines are required to compensate relatives of victims for proven damages of up to a limit currently set at about $157,000 — regardless of what caused the crash. To avoid liability, a carrier has to prove that the crash wasn't due to...

One of my Canadian friends has a friend who made a shrimp cannon. No kidding:

Sigh. I just don't have the slacker skills required to read these things during the work day: Pilot/Journalist James Fallows has thoughts on the apparent mass murder by a Germanwings pilot on Tuesday. The Economist has thoughts on how the strong dollar affects tourism in both directions across the Atlantic. (Hint: I'm not sad I'm going to Italy in seven weeks.) Our local NPR affiliate investigates Chicago's rabbit infestation, currently at about 30 rodents per hectare (which is about 12 per acre)....

Yah, Utah, for finding yet one more way to take us back to the 19th Century: In 2011, the European Union banned the export of lethal injection drugs to the United States in an effort to save America from itself. The reasoning behind the embargo was queasily naïve: Without the drugs, European legislators reasoned, American officials would be at a loss to carry out executions, and the practice would perhaps come to an end. Though the ban did slow the rate of American executions, it now seems Europe’s...

With meetings and a new developer on the team occupying almost all my time today, I've put these things aside for the half-hour I have at 6:30 to read them: If you look at data, you see Democrats have created more jobs than Republicans, no matter what people say about Saint Ronald. Microsoft has released a major update to Azure. There's even a slick video about it. Ted Cruz is going all-in with the white male vote. Mazel tov. Who doesn't like the Daily WTF? New York's 7th Avenue Subway extension is late...

The northern hemisphere's first full day of astronomical spring was Saturday. Yesterday, this is what it looked like in Chicago: And here's this morning: And, more than likely, it'll be sunny and warm on Wednesday. The snow on the ground this afternoon should be gone by then. Chicago weather certainly builds character.

Excellent take-down of one of my least favorite historical figures by Bruce Levine: Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian...

Retail genetic-research company 23 And Me analyzed the genetics of the blue dress phenomenon: For one, there was no clear genetic association with seeing either a blue and black dress versus seeing white and gold one, according to Fah Sathirapongsasuti, PhD, a computational biologist here at 23andMe. That doesn’t mean there is no association, it just means that we didn’t find one that met our threshold for a strong association. We did see a small effect size for a genetic variant in the gene ANO6. While...

The French abbey Mont-Saint-Michel was completely cut off from land yesterday as once-in-a-century tides flowed into the English Channel: Tens of thousands of curious visitors have crowded historic Mont Saint-Michel and other beauty spots along the French coastline with the promise of a ‘tide of the century’, but it may not have lived up to everyone's expectations. Anticipating a wall of water that could equal the height of a four-storey building, tourists and locals staked out positions around the...