Events

Major League Baseball is contemplating going straight to the Bad Place: Major League Baseball and its union have had substantive discussions in recent days over a series of proposals, among the most drastic proposed changes in years, that could bring significant rule changes to the sport in 2019 and beyond, according to two sources familiar with those talks. The discussions have included both on-field rule changes, pushed by Commissioner Rob Manfred, and proposals from the union to improve competitive...

At least by one metric, O'Hare has pipped Atlanta and gotten back to the top of the league table for total annual aviation operations: O’Hare saw 903,747 flights in 2018, up 4.2 percent compared with the previous year, while Atlanta hosted 895,502 flights, up 1.8 percent, the FAA said. Los Angeles, Dallas/Fort Worth and Denver were in third, fourth and fifth place, respectively. O’Hare also handled more than 83.4 million passengers last year, a 4.5 percent increase over 2017, according to the Chicago...

Oh, I love these stories. On today's Daily WTF, editor Remy Porter describes the world I grew up in, where dates were dates and 30 December 1899 ruled them all: If you wanted to set a landmark, you could pick any date, but a nice round number seems reasonable. Let's say, for example, January 1st, 1900. From there, it's easy to just add and subtract numbers of days to produce new dates. Oh, but you do have to think about leap years. Leap years are more complicated- a year is a leap year if it's divisible...

Chicago has 13 people running for Mayor right now, with early voting already open and the first round vote due on the 26th. If no candidate gets an outright majority, the top-two vote-getters will have a runoff election on April 2nd. Several local news agencies have rounded up the candidates and their responses to stock questions. Here are the ones I'm reading: WBEZ - Chicago Public Media Crain's Chicago Business Chicago Tribune There are also contested elections in several wards, including mine. I've...

A week ago at this hour, it was -17°C outside and we had 230 mm of snow on the ground. Then the Polar Vortex hit, followed quickly by the biggest warm-up in Chicago history: From 17:37 CST Tuesday the 29th until 23:51 Thursday the 31st, the temperature hung out below 0°F. But it had already started rising, from the near-record-low -30.6°C Wednesday morning until yesterday afternoon's near-record-high 10.6°C—a record-smashing total rise of Δ41°C. This was the view from my office Friday evening, when the...

Writing for Medium, Scott Lucas paints a dismal picture of Tinseltown after 50 more years of climate change: “With the exception of the highest elevations and a narrow swath very near the coast, where the increases are confined to a few days, land locations see 60–90 additional extremely hot days per year by the end of century,” one study concluded. Downtown Los Angeles could experience up to 54 days measuring 95 degrees or higher by 2100, a ninefold jump. By then, temperatures in Riverside could reach...

Not, I assure you, the Superb Owl: Every year about this time, internet searches for “Super Bowl” go way up. But so do searches for “Superb Owl,” as fast-typing fans put the space in the wrong place. It has been noticed. This year, a search for “Super Bowl” on Google gets you the teams, time and location of the game. A search for “Superb Owl” gets you the same, plus a little cartoon of an owl. Thursday night on “Jeopardy!” there was a Superb Owl category, with owl-related trivia. (Answer: The owl has...

The temperature started rising Thursday morning and, except for a little blip last night, keeps going up: The official temperature right now at O'Hare is 5°C—Δ36°C warmer than the low temperature Thursday morning. And wow, is it a slushy mess out there.

Just 72 hours ago, the official temperature in Chicago was -31°C. Right now, it's 0°C at O'Hare, the first time it's been above freezing since 11am Monday. Our 54-hour stretch of below-0°F temperatures was the 4th-longest such stretch. This has been an extraordinary few days, and it's just going to get weirder. Bonus: The Tribune has a collection of satellite photos from the European Space Agency of our polar vortex.

...will be to Bletchley Park: The National Museum of Computing is a must-see if you are ever in the UK. It was a short 30ish minute train ride up from London. We spent the whole afternoon there. There is a rebuild of the Colossus, the the world's first electronic computer. It had a single purpose: to help decipher the Lorenz-encrypted (Tunny) messages between Hitler and his generals during World War II. The Colossus Gallery housing the rebuild of Colossus tells that remarkable story. We saw...