Thoughts on a day that seemed cooler earlier
Walking to work is an easy way to hit my step goal before lunch. It's 6.75 km and 8,500 steps. At just over an hour, it takes only about 20 minutes longer than the bus or 30 minutes longer than the...
View ArticleNot looking good in Houston
Hurricane Harvey has dropped so much rain on Houston that two 1930s-era dams have been overwhelmed for the first time in history:The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers confirmed Tuesday morning that water...
View ArticleHow wet is Houston?
Via WGN-TV, the fourth-largest city in the U.S. has received more rain in the last week than Chicago receives in an average year. Chicago's average annual precipitation is 910 mm. Since last Friday,...
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The Fortune Teller
I first visited New York in July 1984, stopping by the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the 25th. I took a photograph of Georges de La Tour's "The Fortune Teller," painted sometime between 1620 and...
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Scotland (first 7D photos)
I promised to post photos from Scotland once I had a chance to go through all 800 or so from my 7D, and today, I had a (short) chance.First: the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, where we had...
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Amazon and Whole Foods
One week after Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods Market, what have we learned? Mainly that Amazon is great at marketing:Amazon-owned Whole Foods wasted no time in reducing prices on certain food items...
View ArticleCheers for the humble disposal
A 1990s study by New York City showed that in-sink garbage disposals punch above their weight in environmental benefits. So why are they so rare in the city? Misconceptions, apparently:The city...
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Cornstalk Hotel
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...
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Feels like I've been here before
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,...
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The Mindset List, class of 2021
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...
View ArticleReplicating climate change denial papers
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...
View ArticleExistence proofs and military robots
Via Bruce Schneier, an essay on how the fact that something appears in nature means it can exist, and what this means for military robots:In each of the [Planet Earth II] documentary’s profiles of...
View ArticleHave a Zima with your Zestimate
On Tuesday, a Federal judge in Chicago dismissed with prejudice a case against Zillow that alleged its "Zestimates" made houses harder to sell:In the suit, first filed in May, Glenview homeowner and...
View ArticleThoughts on a day that seemed cooler earlier
Walking to work is an easy way to hit my step goal before lunch. It's 6.75 km and 8,500 steps. At just over an hour, it takes only about 20 minutes longer than the bus or 30 minutes longer than the...
View ArticleNot looking good in Houston
Hurricane Harvey has dropped so much rain on Houston that two 1930s-era dams have been overwhelmed for the first time in history:The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers confirmed Tuesday morning that water...
View ArticleSoftware frustrations
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...
View ArticlePredictable and sad
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...
View ArticleChange to Illinois small business insurance
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...
View ArticleStatistical sins: smoking v. e-cigratettes
Deeply Trivial finds evidence for why there is little evidence about the safety of e-cigarettes:[T]he statistical sin here isn't really something the researchers have done (or didn't do). It's an...
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