Events

Extreme cold and winter weather slammed Texas over the weekend, dropping temperatures to -9°C in Houston and causing snow in Galveston. But Texas politics has made the situation far, far worse as power failures have affected a quarter of all Texans: As this map makes obvious, politics seems to have caused the worst of it. The right-wing Republican government of Texas slashed regulations and even disconnected Texas from the National Grid to avoid Federal rules. And now, the poorest and hardest-hit in the...

WBUR–Boston's Julie Wittes Schack says Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You" tops the list: [N]ow, nearly 50 years after it was released on “Blue,” one of the best singer/songwriter albums of all time, I can still confidently assert that “A Case of You” is one of the best love songs ever written. The quantitative evidence of that can be found in the fact that there are over 300 known cover versions of it; 300 artists who found something in its distinctive melody or conversational lyrics that they felt they...

It snowed overnight. Actually, it snowed from Sunday afternoon until about 4am today, so we have a bit of accumulation: Our official weather station at O'Hare reported 53 cm of snow on the ground at 6 am, including yesterday's record 16 cm of new snow. (Midway Airport, on the Southwest Side, reported 46 cm for just this storm.) So far, 46 cm of snow has fallen since February 1st at O'Hare, about 3 times the normal amount, while we're having the coldest February in history, averaging -10.4°C. And yet...

The Daily WTF today takes us back to one of the worst software bugs in history, in terms of human lives ruined or lost: The ETCC incident was not the first, and sadly was not the last malfunction of the Therac-25 system. Between June 1985 and July 1987, there were six accidents involving the Therac-25, manufactured by Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL). Each was a severe radiation overdose, which resulted in serious injuries, maimings, and deaths. As the first incidents started to appear, no one was...

I want this, right now: But this is what I've got, right now: The forecast, which includes a winter storm warning, calls for lake-effect snow continuing through tomorrow morning with accumulations of around 30 cm. Oh, and it's -14°C out there. I may not get to 10,000 steps today. Note that the top photo shows a typical February 14th in St Maarten.

Last night, the temperature got down to -21°C for the first time since 31 January 2019—when it got down to -29°C. But even in 2019 we only had to endure, at most, 7 days below freezing. Today is our 10th in a row, with another 6 predicted. (It may get up to 2°C next Sunday.) If the freeze goes through Friday, we'll have had a longer freeze than the 14 days we had ending 7 January 2018. Of course, I lived through the longest below-freezing period in Chicago's history, the 43 days between 28 December 1976...

Welcome to stop #37 on the Brews and Choos project. As promised, now that Illinois has moved into Phase 4 (and, we hope, Phase 5 before too long), we're brewing and chooing again. But a confession: I walked to this one. Brewery: Corridor Brewery and Provisions, 3446 N. Southport Ave., ChicagoTrain line: CTA Brown Line, Southport Time from Chicago: 27 minutesDistance from station: 100 m Corridor Brewery might be the least-pretentious restaurant on the Southport Corridor. They brew beer; they serve...

The New Republic's Alex Pareene finds the obvious way to cut the Gordian knot tying Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to his post: If you’ve sent or received any mail over the last few months, you may have noticed that the United States Postal Service is not in great shape. After Louis DeJoy, a Republican fundraiser, took over as postmaster general last June, he quickly implemented a series of “reforms” seemingly designed to slow down service, leading to precipitous declines in the speed with which mail...

Shortly after upgrading from my old Canon 20D to a new Canon 7D, I flew to New York for business. My company let me fly in on Saturday instead of Sunday as the lower airfare offset the extra hotel day, enabling me to spend Saturday afternoon and evening getting to know the new camera. You can see some of the results here. This morning, I revised the treatment of one of the photos I posted that evening: 1/30 s, f/3.5, ISO 6400, 18mm I think the Mark II could do even better. Whenever I'm able to travel to...

We're having a very cold, very snowy February: The average temperature for February 2021 so far is among the coldest ever when compared with monthly averages going back to 1875. Even if Chicago recorded normal temperatures for the rest of the month, 2021 would still rank in the top third of coldest Chicago Februaries. When it comes to snow, 2021 is also ahead of the curve, with a total of 193 mm. Normally there would have been only 89 mm. It will take some work to catch up to the record snowiest...