Events

I spent an hour and a half this morning dealing with an engine failure light on my car. Since I just got it back from having a repair done yesterday, the warning light ("Engine malfunction! Get to a dealer!") did not make me happy. It turned out, the repair had completed a job started on a sensor wire previously by...rodents. And apparently, I'm not alone: NBC 5 Responds found consumers nationwide who say they’ve experienced rodent-damages wires in several carmaker brands. It’s a problem so widespread...

Even though there are about 58 hours left in the year, I still have work to do. Meanwhile, a few things to read have crossed my RSS feeds: Maybe I should retire to Ecuador? 538.com lists the best and worst data stories of the year. Will President Obama violate previous norms of office to weigh in on the Trump administration's egregious violations of previous norms? One can hope. What's Brexit going to do to London, and vice-versa? OK, back to work.

From the Intertubes: Paul Krugman, "Greed Springs Eternal." What happened to O'Hare Terminal 4? Imagine how much New York's Hell's Kitchen stank in the 1860s. Deeply Trivial has a lot to say about Carrie Fisher's untimely death. 538.org rounds up their 11 favorite stories of 2016 (that they didn't write). There are a bunch of improvements (and fare increases) coming to Chicago's transit network next year. I'll also have some blog entries in January. December seems to have been pretty light.

I didn't spend a lot of time blogging this weekend. Once I have a chance to go through the photos I took in London, I'll post some. (Probably Thursday.)

Yesterday's flight to London took only 6 hours, 37 minutes from wheels-up to landing. That is, in fact, the fastest I've ever gotten from O'Hare to Heathrow, by 8 minutes. I am impressed.

High above the North Atlantic, our hero reads the articles he downloaded before take-off: Releasing to Production the day before a holdiay weekend? No. Just, no. OMFG no. American Airlines just won a lawsuit started by US Airways that opens up competition in airfare consolidation—maybe. Bear with it, because this one article explains a lot of what's wrong with competition in any endeavor today. (I'll find a link to the Economist print article I just read on this topic when I land.) The Washington Post...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the Lake View neighborhood of Chicago has some epic binge drinking: The data looked at the 500 largest cities in the country, split into more than 28,000 smaller areas. Large swaths of Lake View ranked in the top 1 percent for binge drinking nationally in 2014, the most recent year data were available. The CDC estimates that in some parts of Lake View, more than a third of residents are engaged in binge drinking, which is defined as more than five...

So: Hillary Clinton officially won 2.9 million votes over Trump, making her the most popular losing candidate ever. What's this about a supervolcano in Italy? Christmas Day in Chicago will be unusually warm. I won't be here, but when I get back, my car will be out of its snowdrift (I hope). OK, traveling tomorrow, reports as circumstances warrant.

Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley died 20 December 1976: Daley was 74 years old, in his 21st year as Mayor of Chicago.  He’d been having chest pains over the weekend, and had made an appointment with his doctor. That’s where he was now. The doctor had examined Daley. You have to be admitted to the hospital immediately, he’d told Daley.  The mayor had phoned one of his sons.  Then, while the doctor was busy making hospital arrangements, the mayor had collapsed. At 3:50 p.m., the mayor was dead. So...

Krugman's column from yesterday—the day Donald Trump was actually elected our next President—echoes a concern I've had for years: I couldn’t help noticing the contemporary resonances of some Roman history — specifically, the tale of how the Roman Republic fell. Here’s what I learned: Republican institutions don’t protect against tyranny when powerful people start defying political norms. And tyranny, when it comes, can flourish even while maintaining a republican facade. Famously, on paper the...