Events

A meme is going around Facebook: change one letter of a musical's name to ruin it. Some of my favorites so far: On A Clear Day You Can Pee Forever Oklahomo Big Liver Legally Blande The Wound of Music Babes in Farms Sweeney Toad One musician friend posted this on his wall and got over 200 responses.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said yesterday that Hurricane Irma caused "enormous devastation," leaving the island without gas or electricity: Most communications with the outside world are being conducted via the military, he said, adding that there was “no clarity” on victims. The Dutch navy, which has two ships stationed off the coast of the island, tweeted images gathered by helicopter showing damaged houses, hotels and boats. French authorities have counted at least eight dead on the French side...

I'm on the Board of Directors for the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, and information technology is my portfolio. Under that aegis, I'm in the process of taking all of our donor and membership spreadsheets and stuffing them into a new Neon CRM setup. So far, it's going well, and it's going to make the organization a lot more effective at managing membership, events, and donations. That said, in the last 24 hours I've logged five bug reports, including one of the most frustrating user experience (UX) bugs...

I've visited St Martin/Sint Maarten twice, once in 2009 and again in 2014. It's unclear when I or anyone will spend a vacation there in future, because this morning the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic smashed directly into the island. At 8:43 AST, the Guardian posted these videos. Twitter user Kurt Siegelin posted this video at 9:12 AST. As of 9:30 AST, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb also said that government buildings on the island of Saint Martin - the most sturdy built...

A new paper in the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology tries to replicate the most-referenced papers in the 3% minority that find alternate explanations for human-caused global warming. Turns out, the deniers are still looking for their Galileo: This new study was authored by Rasmus Benestad, myself (Dana Nuccitelli), Stephan Lewandowsky, Katharine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland, and John Cook. Benestad (who did the lion’s share of the work for this paper) created a tool using the R...

Today is my birthday, which makes this year's Beloit College Mindset List even harder to read: Students heading into their first year of college this year are mostly 18 and were born in 1999. 2. They are the last class to be born in the 1900s, the last of the Millennials --  enter next year, on cue, Generation Z! 11. The Panama Canal has always belonged to Panama and Macau has been part of China. 12. It is doubtful that they have ever used or heard the high-pitched whine of a dial-up modem. 16. They are...

I'll just levee where I foundee.

Jackson Square, New Orleans, where it's currently 32°C:

Yesterday I posted a photo of the hotel I'm staying in. Apparently it caught my eye on my first trip to New Orleans, in December 2003: Also, I didn't really take a lot of photos on the 2003 trip, presumably because the camera (a 1.8 Megapixel Nikon E2100) had limited storage.

I'm taking a couple of days to shadow some friends in New Orleans. It's a nice end to summer: while Chicago already feels like early autumn, here it'll get up to 32°C in a couple of hours. My hotel is historic, and really cute: Updates as events warrant. Brunch first.