One down
I got my first Pfizer Biontech jab this morning, and will get the second one in three weeks. So far, no side-effects. And Cassie seemed to enjoy being with me for the portions of the morning involving...
View ArticleThe timing isn't a random coincidence
Getting my first Pfizer-Biontech SARS-COV-2 vaccine today comes on the heels of Chicago setting a new one-day record for vaccine administration:The 7-day daily average of administered vaccine doses is...
View ArticleDuke of Edinburgh dies at 99
His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, Baron Greenwich of Greenwich in the County of London, Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom, has died just shy of his 100th...
View ArticleEnd of the week or beginning of the weekend?
Today's end-of-workweek stories:National Geographic details who needs to wear a mask outside, and who doesn't.New Yorker reviews a documentary on WeWork and the "decade of delusion" around it.Someone...
View ArticleThe overlap between stupid and criminal
Boy, did we get a clown car full of them today. Let's start with Joel Greenberg, the dingus whose bad behavior got US Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) caught up in a sex-trafficking...
View ArticleYes, firearms have changed
An emergency-room doctor grew up in suburban New York learning how to shoot. She has watched gunshot wounds get worse since she started practicing medicine in the 1990s, for a simple reason:In the...
View ArticleLocal history
Today is the 29th anniversary of the Great Chicago Flood, in which no one got hurt despite nearly a billion liters of water surging through Loop basements:On April 13th, 1992, Chicago was struck by a...
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Winthrop Cooperative, Monday
The United Winthrop Tower Cooperative started life in the early 1970s as a public housing development. In response to rising crime and costs on the order of $1m a year, the residents bought the...
View ArticleThe American Republic
I'm sure I must have read this when it came out, but I have just (re-?)read Andrew Sullivan's 2019 essay "Our Caesar," just to refresh my sadness at the parallels between early-21st-century America and...
View ArticleSupposes Moses was an Asshat
Not Moishe, the mythological figure; Moses, the all-too-real figure in New York City history. I'm about halfway through Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, and I want to dig...
View ArticleBiggest aviation news since 1903
This morning, around 2:30 Chicago time, we flew an aircraft over an alien planet:At about 3:30 a.m., the twin, carbon-fiber rotor blades began spinning furiously, and the chopper, called Ingenuity,...
View ArticleQuite an anniversary
Today I learned that the office of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom took its modern form 300 years ago this month, when Sir Robert Walpole took office as First Lord of the Treasury on 4 April...
View ArticleGuilty
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is, officially, a felon and a murderer. The jury deliberated for longer than 9 minutes and 28 seconds, but not much longer.Good luck in gen pop, you...
View ArticleMeanwhile, in my neighborhood
The Chicago Transit Authority will demolish my local El station starting May 16th, kicking off a 4-year, $2.1 bn project to rebuild the Red and Purple Lines from Lawrence to Bryn Mawr. Good thing we...
View ArticleSure Happy It's Thursday! Earth Day edition
Happy 51st Earth Day! In honor of that, today's first story has nothing to do with Earth:The MOXIE experiment on NASA's Perseverance rover produced 5.4 grams of oxygen in an hour on Mars, not enough to...
View ArticleDay 400
Illinois issued its pandemic-related closure orders on Friday 20 March 2020, exactly 400 days ago. Yesterday the New York Times reported that the US had its highest-ever-above-normal annual death rate...
View ArticleYes, AVGAS still has lead in it
MSNBC is scandalized that 100-octane low-lead aviation fuel (AVGAS) still exists, but as usual for general stories about technical topics, they miss a few important details:While leaded gasoline was...
View ArticleLunchtime reading before heading outside
Today is not only the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, it's also the 84th anniversary of the Nazi bombing of Guernica. Happy days, happy days.In today's news, however:The European Union has...
View ArticleWelcome back, kids
Endangered piping plovers Monty and Rose have returned to Chicago's Montrose Beach for the third year running:The pair of endangered, migratory Great Lakes piping plovers have been spotted at Montrose...
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My, it's warm
Sunday evening we had 4°C gloominess with gusty winds. Today we've got 28°C sunniness with gusty winds. We've also got a bunch of news stories to glance through while a build completes:The US Centers...
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