Events

I said before lunch I wouldn't post barring catastrophe. This may qualify: Over the weekend in California, a storm system dropped to a barometric pressure of 945.2 mB, making it the strongest storm to affect the Pacific Northwest on record. For perspective, this is equivalent to the central pressure you would see with a strong hurricane. For Sacramento, the stats are even more startling. Sacramento picked up 5.44 inches of rain Sunday, making it their wettest day in history (or any calendar month)....

My day started before dawn waiting (unsuccessfully) for Cassie to pee in a howling rain storm, and will end late tonight after our penultimate rehearsal before our November 7th concert. So unless something truly catastrophic happens, no real post today. Tomorrow I'll have something about the book I just finished.

A collection of weather phenomena off the west coast of North America, including a bomb cyclone, will give northern California record rainfall over the next day and a half: Amid an exceptional drought that has wrought havoc on California for years, a Level 5 out of 5 atmospheric river is soaking the region, dumping double-digit rainfall totals and up to six feet of mountain snow. This heavy precipitation will help ease the drought but produce dangerous mudslides and debris flows in areas recently...

If you've enjoyed (or at least attempted) Tuesday's and Wednesday's pieces of this quiz from William Bart at the University of Minnesota, you get to finish it now: 21. All ashes are not poplars. All locusts are ashes. Therefore: (A) All locusts are not ashes (B) All ashes are poplars (C) All locusts are poplars (D) Some ashes are poplars (E) Some locusts are not ashes (F) All locusts are not poplars 22. If yeast rises then caustic potash is present and if mold growsthen limewater is present. Either...

Cassie and I both love these crystal-clear autumn days in Chicago, though as far as I know she spent her first two autumns in Tennessee. Does Nashville have crisp fall mornings? I don't know for sure, and Cassie won't say. I meant to highlight these stories yesterday but got into the deep flow of refactoring: People who adopted dogs during the pandemic have discovered that dogs cost money. No kidding. Also, living alone costs more than living with a partner, even though singles have more social contacts...

The Tribune yesterday reported that local breweries have started producing more lagers as people get tired of IPAs: Lager accounts for most of the beer sold in the world — including the 16 biggest-selling brands in the United States — but it has rarely been a recipe for success for craft breweries, which often default to ratcheting up experimentation, flavor and intensity. Lager, by contrast, tends to be approachable and predictable. Think Miller Lite. Michelob Ultra. Modelo Especial. While tropically...

I was pretty busy today, with most of my brain trying to figure out how to re-architect something that I didn't realize needed it until recently. So a few things piled up in my inbox: David Corn is reporting that US Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has basically halted his party's own progress to, well, progress, threatened to leave the Democratic Party if he didn't get his way. Part of the President's agenda includes starting to build a 320 km/h rail line from New York to Boston that includes a tunnel...

Had fun yesterday? Try these next 10: 11. All dace are platy. Some dace are cod. Therefore: (A) All cod are not platy (B) Some cod are not platy (C) Some cod are platy (D) All platy are dace (E) All dace are not cod (F) Some dace are not cod 12. Some skinks are plastrons. All turtles are not skinks. Therefore: (A) All skinks are not plastrons (B) Some turtles are skinks (C) All turtles are plastrons (D) Some turtles are not plastrons (E) Some skinks are not plastrons (F) All skinks are turtles 13. If...

I found this quiz in a (virtual) pile of things from my first year at university. Have fun! Answers and more questions tomorrow. (The answers may surprise you, unless you really dig in to the logic.) 1. Either auxins are proteins or petioles grow on auxins. If auxins areproteins then petioles grow on auxins. Therefore: (A) Petioles grow on auxins (B) Either auxins are not proteins or petioles do not grow on auxins (C) If petioles grow on auxins then auxins are proteins (D) Auxins are not proteins (E)...

While swatting away my 4th "your car's extended warranty is about to expire" call today (including one in Spanish), I consoled myself reading about new ideas on how to reduce the environmental impact of brewing beer: From start to finish, making alcoholic beverages asks a lot from the environment. It takes about 20 gallons of water to produce a single eight-ounce serving of beer and 30 gallons per five-ounce serving of wine. Then there’s the glass and aluminum production for alcohol containers, the...