Events

Via Bruce Schneier, Tech Republic tells the story of the women who worked at Bletchley Park during World War II: Because [Alan] Turing's individual achievements were so momentous, it's sometimes forgotten that more than 10,000 other people worked at the Government Code and Cypher School, of whom more than two-thirds were female. These servicewomen played a pivotal role in an operation that decrypted millions of German messages and which is credited with significantly shortening the war. The...

Among the browser windows I have open are these: An AI is getting inspirational posters horribly wrong...or is it? An 80-year-old woman wanted good luck on her flight from Shanghai to Guangzhou threw coins in one of the engines, causing a 5-hour delay and $140,000 in damage. Crain's looks at census data in an interactive feature on Chicago's wealth divides. Republicans still refuse to acknowledge that the goal of their Obamacare repeal efforts is to get millions of people off government-backed health...

Navies and naval strategy fascinate me. For 4,950 of the last 5,000 years, if you wanted to project military power fast and hard, you sent your navy. But even during the great naval battles of World War II, engineers had developed missiles and airplanes that could destroy just about any naval vessel anywhere, except (crucially) submarines. Today, the U.S. Carrier Strike Group, with its 7,000 sailors and aviators supporting the largest military ships ever built, can put 90 deadly aircraft within striking...

I've meant to write about this for a while. Economist William Baumol died on May 4th. Among other things he worked on, what interested me most in the Economist's obituary of him was his work on cost disease. From the Economist: Mr Baumol will be remembered best for his cost disease. Its origin was unlikely: a commission to help those promoting the arts understand the financial struggles that cultural organisations faced. A report co-written with William Bowen closed with a simple but striking...

Josh Marshall points to Dana Bash's remarks yesterday as an example of how many journalists miss (or misrepresent) the point in the health-care debate: Current Republican ideology...posits that it is simply not the responsibility or place of government, certainly not the federal government, to make sure everyone has health care coverage. You can agree or disagree with that premise. But it’s not hard to understand and it is not indefensible. Very few of us think the government should step in if someone...

Following up on last week, Ask the Pilot weighs in on exactly why the heat in Phoenix is grounding airplanes: Extreme heat affects planes in a few different ways. First, there are aerodynamic repercussions. Hotter air is less dense than cooler air, so a wing produces less lift. This is compounded by reduced engine output. Jet engines don’t like low-density air either, and don’t perform as well in hot weather. Together, this means higher takeoff and landing speeds — which, in turn, increases the amount...

Dug through more Pride photos. Here's Mayor Emanuel: And U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth: Not to mention, this message to pretty much all politicians from the Star Wars part of the parade:

Yesterday was our annual Pride Parade, with perfect spring-like weather and about 150 participating groups. I have 834 photos to go through, so it'll take a while to get through them. Here's the first, of Grand Marshall Lea DeLaria:

Red wing blackbirds continue to menace people in Lincoln Park: "Red-winged blackbirds are protecting their nests, and they can be pretty mean about it," said Kate Golemblewski, spokeswoman for the Field Museum. "They don't get aggressive until they are well into the breeding season and have a nest to protect. They are highly territorial, aggressive to almost anything that comes too close, especially things that are bigger than they are and that they see as a threat, including hawks, crows, cats and...

Sears, which CEO Eddie Lampert has very nearly murdered, will have only one retail store left in its home town Chicago this fall: Sears Holdings Corp. is closing 20 more stores, including a Sears in Chicago's Galewood neighborhood, in mid-September. Those closings — including 18 Sears and two Kmart stores — follow 150 stores Hoffman Estates-based Sears shuttered in the first quarter of this year and another 66 expected to close by early September. The latest 20 are among the 235 locations Sears sold to...