Events

With only a very small group to insure, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois is leaving the Obamacare exchange for small businesses: Calling all small businesses with a Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois plan through the Obamacare public health insurance exchange: Look out for an email this week informing you that the state's largest insurer is officially leaving the online marketplace. That leaves small employers looking for an exchange plan for 2018 with one option: downstate Health Alliance....

The science of modeling hurricane storm surges started here in Chicago after the seiche of 1954: When the surge hit Chicago, it hit a city that housed one of the world’s great meteorology departments, at the University of Chicago. One of its professors was the meteorologist George Platzman.... The meeting of those two freak concepts—real but rare deadly Great Lakes storm surges, and the bizarre possibility of an atomic bomb detonating in Lake Michigan—along with his computer-forecasting experiments, led...

Credit reporting agency Equifax reported last week that thieves had made off with 143 million customer records: According to a person familiar with the breach investigation, Equifax appears to have been targeted initially because the company keeps on file millions of active cards, belonging to people who pay $19.95 or more per month to have Equifax monitor their credit reports and alert them to potential fraud. The hack, which the company says took place in late July, put as many as 143 million...

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.