Backfield in motion
That's American for the English idiom "penny in the air." And what a penny. More like a whole roll of them.Right now, the House of Commons are wrapping up debate on the Government's bill to prorogue...
View ArticleKicking the can down the road
The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal points out that while PG&E has some responsibility for California's wildfires, the real culprits are the voters and elected officials who have ignored routine...
View ArticleForty years ago today
On 4 November 1979, "students" stormed the American Embassy in Tehran:After a three-hour struggle, the students took hostages, including 62 Americans, and demanded the extradition of the deposed Shah...
View ArticleSir Lindsay Hoyle elected Speaker of the Commons
After a few rounds of voting, (now former) Labour MP the Rt Hon Sir Lindsay Hoyle has been elected the 158th Speaker of the House of Commons. As Harriet Harmon said in her speech just before the first...
View ArticleThings to read on my flight Friday
I realized this morning that I've missed almost the entire season of The Good Place because I don't seem to have enough time to watch TV. I also don't have enough time until Friday to read all of these...
View ArticleMust be lunchtime
Today's crop of articles:James Comey says the only law that matters in the impeachment proceedings is the one establishing the oath of office.Peter Osnos recounts the time when he edited one of Donald...
View ArticleNew Fitbit milestone
Not bad:So, 25 million (recorded) steps in 1,840 days. And I'm currently on a streak—which will likely end today because of my long flight tomorrow—of 207 consecutive days of 10,000 steps or more.
View ArticleAll good things
My 207-day streak of 10,000 steps per day ended, as I suspected it would, at midnight GMT tonight.Traveling from Chicago to London takes 6 hours out of the day, and it's hard to get enough steps before...
View ArticleThirty years ago
I remember the early evening of 9 November 1989. A bunch of us were hanging out on our floor in my college dorm when my roommate told us to come in and watch what was on TV. We saw Germans atop the...
View ArticleAnother anniversary
Twenty years ago today, I launched wx-now.com. It's now on version 4.5 with version 5 in the works (when I get the time).The earliest view on the Wayback Machine comes from late 2000, but the design...
View ArticleBack home, stuff can wait
I didn't get nearly as much sleep as usual on this trip, compared with other weekends in London, so I'll have to figure out why before next time. But Parker and I are home now, and if I can stay up...
View ArticleJust a couple of things to note
And it's not even lunchtime yet:A storm has left Venice flooded under 187 cm of water, the second highest flood since records began in 1923. Four of the five largest floods in Venice history have...
View ArticleYou don't have to be a super-spy to know this
I found myself actually shocked at one piece of testimony in yesterday's impeachment hearing:A U.S. ambassador’s cellphone call to President Trump from a restaurant in the capital of Ukraine this...
View ArticleLooking good for 7,000
National Geographic describes a reconstruction of a woman who lived 7,000 years ago on the Swedish Coast:The woman was buried upright, seated cross-legged on a bed of antlers. A belt fashioned from...
View ArticleNews? What news?
As Gordon Sondland throws the president under the bus (probably because (a) he's under oath and (b) the president would do it to him soon enough), there are actually a lot of other things going on in...
View ArticleWhich weed for me?
In case you had questions about what to do when THC becomes legal for recreational use in Illinois in six weeks, Chicago Public Media has your back:What type of high are you looking for?The type of...
View ArticleDog behavior in the news
Two articles came out today about dogs. The first, in the New York Times, explores how dogs became so indiscriminately friendly:In the early 2000s, when Dr. [Clive] Wynne began research on dogs, one of...
View ArticleMid-day link roundup
As I try to understand why a 3rd-party API accepts one JSON document but not another, nearly-identical one, who could fault me for taking a short break?Feargus O'Sullivan explains in more detail why...
View ArticleConfirming expectations
Yesterday, the President of the United States mused aloud why we haven't celebrated the centennial of the 19th Amendment's passage in 1920 sooner:After working his way through the prepared remarks,...
View ArticleSick day reading
I hate taking sick days, I really do. Fortunately, the Internet never takes one:Mother Jones looks at how NOAA is doing under the current administration.Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page gave an interview to...
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