Events

A pile of Gulf moisture has arrived in Chicago making the otherwise-comfortable 22°C feel like a sauna. I'm using the day to do some planning for my next trip (11 days, 22 hours!) and move (28 days, 22 hours!), client work, and taking Parker to an interview of sorts at a new daycare facility. Yes, an interview: he has to play with the other dogs for two hours so they can decide whether to allow him to come back. I hope he passes. Results from that, as well as a probably thunderstorm (unrelated), later...

I went to the NPR show's taping last night: The show will be broadcast tomorrow. It's going to be hi-larious.

South Africa Airlines will no longer transport your trophies: Shooting a marvel of nature and shipping its carcass home seems an odd practice to many. But business is roaring. An estimated 1,000 captive lions are shot dead by mostly American and European tourists on South African ranches annually. That's nearly double the number of wild lions felled across the entire continent. Killing beasts in fenced-off, private property is easier than gunning them down on their own turf. It's also much cheaper...

Fortunately, I have a couple of long flights coming up in two weeks. Unfortunately, not all of this will be relevant then: Mike Huckabee's entry into the presidential race may mean the Christian right is deteriorating. Bourbon's popularity, and the longevity of oak trees, is a problem. Did Jeb Bush trigger an Iraq War watershed? The Southern Regional Climate Center has a new climate tool that I'm going to play with...someday. Only one more Mad Men episode. I'm sad. ICYMI: Upgrading to Windows 10 will be...

After Moody's cut our credit rating this week, people are starting to compare Chicago with Detroit: here are five reasons, now more than ever, that suggest Chicago is akin to Detroit—or, by some measures, even worse. Or, as Illinois Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner put it last month: “Chicago is in deep, deep yogurt.” BIG, SCARY NUMBERS: Chicago's unfunded liability from four pension funds is $20 billion and growing, hitting every city resident with an obligation of about $7,400. Detroit's, whose population...

It surprised no one at all that Moody's cut Chicago's credit rating to junk yesterday: Chicago today became the first victim of the Illinois Supreme Court's ruling on pensions, as Moody's Investors Service reduced the city's credit rating to junk bond status. In a statement that specifically cited the court's May 8 decision overturning cuts in state pensions, the credit rating agency said the city's options now “have narrowed considerably.” The downgrade is a blow to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who during the...

Via reader SHL, the Beatles' Abbey Road "You Never Give Me Your Money" sequence vocal tracks only:

First, because NASA's reputation is such that climate-change deniers have difficulty refuting the agency, Republicans in Congress are trying to get NASA out of the discussion: As has been widely reported, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee recently approved a bill that would cut at least $300 million from NASA's earth-science budget. This comes after the head of the Senate committee overseeing NASA claimed the agency should stop doing earth-science and focus only on space exploration....

The Chicago Tribune has a graphic this morning showing that tree pollen counts are the highest they've been in Chicago in 120 years of record keeping. Also, yesterday we hit 2,300 mold spores per cubic meter—a new record—breaking the previous record of 2,200 on...Friday. Feeling congested much?

It's just past 9am on Monday and already I'm reduced to this kind of blog post. Tomorrow I may have some more time to read these things: Cranky Flier analyzes Malaysia Airlines' struggles. Microsoft is building subsea fibre cables between the U.S. and Europe and Asia. TPM explains exactly what Jade Helm 15 really is. Missed Microsoft Ignite this year? Here's the Channel 9 page. We're starting to set up JetBrains TeamCity to handle our continuous integration needs. Explain, however, why the user manual...