...hmm....feels the same...

For a variety of reasons that are really much less lucky or indicative of good planning than one might think, I managed to avoid having a huge portion of my retirement savings wiped out in this current downturn. For one thing, I rarely invest in single-issue securities, having little appetite for eggs when placed in a single basket.

Just now, though, I'd like to gloat that the only single-issue stock currently in my portfolio just rose above the price I paid for it, commission and all, meaning I have an actual capital gain since buying the security in December 2007.

The stock? Peet's Coffee (NASDAQ: PEET), whose slow-growth strategy combined with extremely high quality standards not only means I drink their coffee and tea every single day, but also that their stock is going up in the middle of a crash. (Their 46% profit growth last quarter didn't hurt their stock price, either.)

I can't wait for Summer House to come back next month...

I'm really not sure from where the panic over H1N1 (swine) flu comes, but I have some faith that it's going to kill more people than the virus. Take, for example, the mad rush to buy hand sanitizer:

Stores are quickly being depleted of products used to help stave off or battle the flu, a combination of swine, bird and human virus strains that in some cases has been fatal. The disease is suspected in at least 160 deaths, the majority in Mexico. The only reported U.S. death was that of a toddler in Houston.

There are nine probable cases in Illinois, five of them in Chicago, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported Wednesday. An elementary school on the city’s North Side was shut down Wednesday after a child was diagnosed with what is believed to be swine flu.

I don't have the exact numbers here, but I would imagine that more than one extra person will die and more than nine extra people will be injured because of people driving to the store to buy hand sanitizer than would otherwise be killed or injured without the extra driving. It's like the rise in traffic fatalities after 9/11, attributed to a mix of more driving and stress, both of which came at least partially from blind fear.

Of course, it's possible that this flu could be the end of civilization. History suggests otherwise.

But if it makes people feel better, by all means jump in your cars and buy toxic chemicals to rub on your hands in a futile effort to kill invisible agents of your...um...sneezing. Even better if you drive to the store without wearing a seatbelt.

...the New Hampshire legislature has authorized gay marriage. It should be law in a week or two, depending on whether Gov. John Lynch signs it. (It will likely become law if he vetoes it; it'll just take longer.)

Legislators in Maine introduced a likely-to-pass bill this week. And to think, 300 years ago New England was a theocracy.

Via Sullivan, David Frum thinks of Arlen Specter's defection pretty much what I do—except he's not as happy about it:

Pat Toomey is of course the former president of the Club for Growth who planned to challenge Arlen Specter in the 2010 Pennsylvania Republican primary. Polls showed Toomey well ahead – not because he is so hugely popular in the state, but because the Pennsylvania GOP has shriveled to a small, ideologically intense core. Toomey now looks likely to gain the nomination he has sought – and then to be crushed by Specter or some other Democrat next November.

...I submit it is better for conservatives to have 60% sway within a majority party than to have 100% control of a minority party. And until and unless there is an honored place made in the Republican party for people who think like Arlen Specter, we will remain a minority party.

By the way, I'd rather have an actual opposition party than what we have now. But this sort of thing has to happen about once in a generation. And 40 years from now, after the U.S. has swung farther left than most Americans can tolerate, it'll be our turn again.

Parker's emergency bath, by the way, was successful. He is now allowed back in the house.

Parker is asleep on my back porch and not allowed in the house because he decided, within 15 seconds of being off-leash at the park, that it would be fun to roll in a pile of gross, green, grass-covered, glistening, goose poop.

We are now on our way to Petco for an emergency bath.

Dogs.

While in San Francisco for the weekend, I decided to continue the 30-Park Geas by seeing what the Oakland A's were up to. Last place, it turned out; but then, so were their opponents, the Tampa Bay Rays.

From the moment you get off the BART, you know you're not going to the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field. Wrigley, for example, has less concrete and barbed wire:

Of course, Wrigley has fewer "World Champions" banners, too, but we'll skip that for now.

Arriving home this evening, after three days in San Francisco and frequent email checking while there, Outlook presented me with 295 unread messages (not counting the hundreds of messages in my spam filter). Of these, almost all were on my RSS reader—75 Facebook status updates, 50 posts from Andrew Sullivan, etc., etc.

It's amazing how much better you can feel after hitting <Ctrl>+A, right-click, "Mark As Read". Problem: solved.

Still, I hate feeling like I missed something....

I'm returning from San Francisco this afternoon, so tomorrow I'll have photos from Saturday's A's game and, if I get my very own YouTube account, a video of my sister's dog. I'll leave that for now.

This morning, just a link: TheExpiredMeter.com, of interest to anyone who deals with the Chicago parking system. I found it because I discovered only yesterday that, sometime today, my car will get a parking ticket. I discovered this when my alderman's office sent a notice of street sweeping yesterday saying they'll be sweeping the block my car is on today. A little more notice might have helped. Welcome to summer in the city.

Via Dan Savage:

More from Garfunkel and Oates...

So confusing.

At my last Cubs game, they beat the Cardinals to get into first place. But here's yesterday's result:

Let's see that in close-up, just to drive home the pathos and pain....

(Photo after the jump.)

The Chicago Tribune reports today that the City Council now, five months later, wants to have hearings about the late-night, rush-rush, badly-managed parking meter privitization they pushed through in December:

Less than five months after the Chicago City Council quickly and overwhelmingly approved the deal, aldermen buffeted by public complaints pushed a slew of ordinances Wednesday targeting the $1.2 billion lease of Chicago's parking meters to a private company.

One measure calls for hearings to examine the deal, which ushered in dramatic rate hikes at 36,000 meters across the city. Another would halt rate increases until all meters are uprooted and replaced with "pay and display" equipment allowing motorists to pay with credit cards and place tickets on their dashboards. Yet a third would require a 30-day waiting period before aldermen could approve any plan to privatize city assets.

The proposals appear aimed at giving aldermen political cover amid widespread discontent and technical problems as the parking meter system transitions to private control.

Not that people don't carry around buckets-full of quarters wherever they go. Not that charging the same price for parking all the time and throughout the city fails to take account of the fundamental principles of demand economics. No, now let's have hearings.

I can't tell whether they were stupid or if they all got paid off. That's how badly they handled this. (Usually in Chicago the politicians aren't actually stupid, they just lose IQ points when confronted with fat envelopes.)

Via TPM, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) thinks he stumped Nobel laureate Stephen Chu:

Barton: You’re our scientist. I have one simple question for you in the last six seconds. How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean?

Chu: (laughs) This is a complicated story, but oil and gas is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geology, and in that time also the plates have moved around, and so, um, it’s the combination of where the sources of the oil and gas are–

Barton: But, but wouldn’t it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole. It wasn’t a big pipeline that we created in Texas and shipped it up there and then put it under ground so that we can now pump it out and ship it back.

Chu: No. There are–there’s continental plates that have been drifting around throughout the geological ages–

Barton: So it just drifted up there?

Chu: That’s certainly what happened. And so it’s a result of thinks like that.

(Low whistle...)

That's the word the first commenter used to describe Paul Krugman's conclusion about the march to war:

Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

There's a word for this: it’s evil.

If that's shrill, we need to re-examine the 2002 State of the Union address, don't we?

Via Daily Howler, Naomi Klein argues we should throw out Larry Summers:

The criticisms of President Obama's chief economic adviser are well known. He's too close to Wall Street. And he's a frightful bully, of both people and countries. Still, we're told we shouldn't care about such minor infractions. Why? Because Summers is brilliant, and the world needs his big brain.

And this brings us to a central and often overlooked cause of the global financial crisis: Brain Bubbles. This is the process wherein the intelligence of an inarguably intelligent person is inflated and valued beyond all reason, creating a dangerous accumulation of unhedged risk. Larry Summers is the biggest Brain Bubble we've got.

...And that's the problem with Larry. For all his appeals to absolute truths, he has been spectacularly wrong again and again. He was wrong about not regulating derivatives. Wrong when he helped kill Depression-era banking laws, turning banks into too-big-to-fail welfare monsters. And as he helps devise ever more complex tricks and spends ever more taxpayer dollars to keep the financial casino running, he remains wrong today.

She makes a pretty good point.

So, on a recommendation, I picked up a copy of Barbara Bleau's Forgotten Calculus, to brush up on the subject in advance of starting business school this fall.

Only, I haven't forgotten calculus. No, my problem is, I never learned it in the first place.[1]

So if anyone knows of a book called "Calculus You Never Learned In The First Place," please let me know.

[1] I guess you could say I'm a bit behind the curve.

I announced Friday that I deployed a complete, ground-up rewrite of Weather Now, but it looks a lot like the old version. So what's really different?

(Because of the limited appeal of technical information, the answer is after the jump.)

(Mudville is that $1.5 billion park just over the Harlem River in the Bronx.) The Yankees had a disappointing 2nd inning hosting the Indians yesterday as Cleveland set a new Major League record:

A 37-minute top of the second at Yankee Stadium saw the Tribe put up 14 runs on 13 hits off right-handers Chien-Ming Wang and Anthony Claggett. The big inning, which set the Tribe on course for its eventual 22-4 victory, tied for the most productive inning in Indians history and set a record for the most productive inning by an opponent in Yankees history.

The 14 runs set a Major League record for the most in the second inning. The record was 13, and it was last accomplished, ironically, by the Yankees exactly four years ago against Tampa Bay.

In other news, the Cubs beat the Cardinals yesterday 7-5 at Wrigley after 11 innings.

1:15 pm, Chicago:

Full size:

This, I think, says it all...almost:

Weather Now 3.5 is now the official, public version of my 9½-year-old demo. I first launched the site in September 1999 as a scripted ASP application, and last deployed a major update (version 3.0) on 1 January 2007.

As threatened promised, I'll have a lot more to say about it in the next few days. But I should address the first obvious question, "Why does it look almost identical to the previous version?" Simply: because my primary goal for this release was to duplicate every feature of the existing application, without adding new features unless absolutely required. It also had to run on the existing databases. That's why this version is 3.5, not 4.0 (which I hope to finish in early 2010).

I couldn't avoid some user interface (UI) differences, mainly because I used better design techniques than in the last release. And just as a matter of course, as I re-wrote each UI feature, I corrected or obviated numerous defects along the way. That said, version 3.5 has all of the features that 3.1 had, and any URLs that worked in 3.1 will work in 3.5.

I invite everyone to play with the application, and let me know about any defects or hiccups you discover. I think you'll find that it's an improvement over the last version.

This passage from Almost Perfect, Pete Peterson's autobiography of his days at WordPerfect Corp., inspired me to get out of bed, walk to my computer, and post a blog entry:

We on the Board had no one to blame for the delays but ourselves. The project directors we had chosen were inexperienced managers, and they made the mistakes inexperienced managers make. They were prone to overly optimistic forecasts and had trouble chewing people out when they missed their deadlines. Another of our mistakes was that we waited too long to add new programmers to the project....

And here is the context of that passage, which Peterson, without irony or self-awareness, set up only two paragraphs earlier:

I was not entirely honest in making the admission [that our release date had slipped]. Rather than go with a realistic date or a vague date or no date at all, I announced a hoped-for second quarter release, which was the most optimistic date from our most optimistic developer.

Yes, the Board had no one to blame...but they blamed the managers and developers. Yes, the managers had trouble chewing people out...for missing deadlines the programmers thought impossible and never agreed to. Yes, the programmers came up with a range of estimates...which turned out to include the actual ship date. And there's more.

The new Weather Now demo is feature-complete, meaning it has all of the pieces required for release. I will push it out to production, replacing the current demo, tomorrow morning, after I make some configuration changes to the web server it's going on. But because you read this blog, you've got a sneak preview.

Over the next few days I'll be writing about the demo, why it's completely new even though it looks an awful lot like the old version, and what I'll be doing in the next few months to improve it.

I haven't finished all of Almost Perfect yet, but I think I understand now what happened to WordPerfect Corp.: they had accidental success, naïvely thought they authored the success, and never thought strategically.

Now, possibly, I'm imputing Pete Peterson's own failures to the entire company, but I have to assume the other board members condoned his approach or they wouldn't have kept him on for so long. Peterson himself seems hopelessly without self-awareness, stumbling from decision to decision without a thought to the implications of each and without any coherent plan for how they all fit together. He is, in the Myers-Briggs jargon, an off-the-charts Sensor, completely detail-driven with a disdain for abstractions of any kind. For example....

Quick update:

• The Titanic dinner at Mint Julep Bistro was wonderful. Rich's wine pairings especially rocked—as did his beef tournedos in port reduction. Mmm. Not so much fun was Metra's return schedule (featuring a 3-hour gap between 21:25 and 0:35), nor my reading of it (I did not remember this three-hour gap). The fine for taking public transit out to the suburbs (because driving to a 10-course, 9-wine-plus-apertif dinner seemed irresponsible) was $80, paid to the All-Star Taxi Service.
• I did, in fact, buy a Kindle, and I love it. I've now read three books on it and numerous articles (converting a .pdf or text file costs no more than 10c for automatic downloads), and I hardly notice the machine. It only holds 1.5 GB of stuff, but the complete works of Shakespeare ($4) only takes up 4 MB so space is not exactly at a premium.
• I may have a new release of Weather Now out today; if not, then tomorrow morning. I'll be writing over the next few days more about what's different, and why it took nearly two years to produce something that, to some, will look almost identical.
• Tangentially about my Kindle and software releases, I'm now reading Almost Perfect (hat tip Coding Horror), Pete Peterson's account of the rise and fall of WordPerfect. It's a fascinating tale of what happens when everyone in the company is just like you, and when entrepreneurs can't let go.

Finally, in a tiny piece of good news, it looks like we'll have tolerable weather Friday for my first Cubs home game this season.

American Airlines, my carrier of choice, will finally replace its fleet of awful MD-80s, many of which it inherited from TWA:

The acquisition of 76 Boeing 737-800s through early 2011 represents a doubling of that airplane model flown by Ft Worth-based American.

All the new planes will be based at O'Hare International Airport.

The move also will lead to the eventual retirement of American's McDonnell Douglas MD-80s--a reliable but noisy aircraft that gulps 35 percent more fuel than the 737-800.

American plans to phase out its 280 MD-80s over about 10 years, said Dan Garton, the carrier's executive vice president of marketing.

"All of the new planes will be based at O'Hare..." Sigh. That makes me so happy.

Via Calculated Risk, a really scary graph from the Oregon State government:

Oregon’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 12.1 percent in March from 10.7 percent (as revised) in February. The state’s unemployment rate has risen rapidly and substantially over the past nine months, from a rate of 5.9 percent in June 2008. The U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent in March, from 8.1 percent in February.

In March, Oregon’s seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll employment declined by 14,000 jobs, following a drop of 22,800 (as revised) in February.

Industry Payroll Employment (Establishment Survey Data)

In March, five of Oregon’s seven largest private-sector industries recorded substantial seasonally adjusted job declines. The losses were widespread with trade, transportation and utilities down 3,600 jobs and four other major industries each down approximately 2,400 jobs. None of Oregon’s major industries gained a substantial number of Jobs in March.

(Low whistle.)

Can't wait for Illinois' report.

The Chicago Tribune has a photo history of the disaster that shut down Chicago's Loop 17 years ago today. Worth a look.

The plane -- carrying up to 215,000 liters of highly flammable aviation fuel -- was less than 70 cm off the ground when it crashed through lights almost 200 m from the end of the runway.

...The fully-laden Airbus A340-500 was believed to have been travelling about 280 km/h when it reached the end of the runway without becoming airborne.

At the last minute, the two pilots "rotated" the plane [too steeply] causing its tail to crash into the end of the runway.

Damage to the $220 million plane is so severe that the airline is considering writing it off rather than repairing it.

... Aviation officials said ... Emirates' pilot training and competency standards are almost identical to those in Australia....

I corrected the penultimate paragraph because the reporter seems to believe that "rotating" is an emergency procedure that involves yanking the yoke back hard enough to bounce the tail off the runway. Actually "rotating" just means rotating the airplane on its horizontal axis so the nose points up. Rotating a Cessna 172, for example, is such a subtle maneuver at takeoff speed that non-pilot passengers often wonder how the plane got airborne. What the Emirates pilots did was to pull back so hard that they caused a tail strike. In other words, they panicked, which compounded the problem because the plane's angle of attack seems to have been too steep to generate sufficient lift to take off.

As you pull back on the yoke, the tail of the aircraft is pushed down, which pushes the nose up. This translates speed into lift. It also increases drag, which means pulling back too far slows the plane too much which causes lift to drop. In an airplane the size of a Cessna 172, this can cause a takeoff stall; with an Airbus 340, the plane is so long that the tail scrapes the runway long before the plane stalls. That causes a different kind of drag, of course, and now you're "in the world of physics" as pilots say and no longer flying.

I hope to read follow-up about this when it's available; in particular, I'm wondering what went on in the cockpit at takeoff.

Note that the photo is not of the accident airplane.

After some experimentation, I may have found a setup that works:

It has the added advantage of showing the Inner Drive Technology Worldwide Data Center in the background.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a Tribune article about how the U.S. lags the rest of the industrialized world in rail technology. The Economist this week continues the discussion:

There are reasons, however, to be cautious. First, the cost of any one project far exceeds the money available. California, which has the most advanced plan, would connect the state's biggest cities with trains running at more than 200mph. In November Californians approved $9.95 billion of bonds for the project. On top of this, officials hope to get $12 billion-16 billion from Washington. The plan is expected to cost $40 billion in all. But the stimulus contains only $8 billion for the whole country.

Second, many plans would make trains high-speed only in a relative sense. Proposals that are cheaper than California’s are also much slower. A plan for the Chicago-St Louis line, for example, would speed up trains from 79mph to only 110mph. Multiple road crossings require trains to move more slowly than in Europe. Adding to the problem, most passenger trains run on track owned by freight railways. Congestion makes service less reliable.

I'm actually sad to see $2 gasoline again, because I think a couple years of gas prices around $4 (or even $9, like in Europe) would finally give us a decent rail system. So the next time I fly to London I'll take solace in the Heathrow Express when I get there, and try to forget about the Blue Line that brought me to O'Hare. (Though, in fairness to the CTA, in the past two years they have cut the trip from the Loop to O'Hare from an hour and a quarter down to 40 minutes.)

As Parker gets older and less likely to shred things, I'm leaving him alone for a few hours at a time without stuffing him in his crate. Of course, when he's crated, it's easy to put a camera on him. Not so much when he has run of the house.

So, I've tried pointing the camera at places I thought he'd be likely to hang out. His crate, for example:

Moments like these need to be savored. Via Talking Points Memo, the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay group, has announced a new initiative:

Now that activist legislators are legislating from their legislatures to legalize gay marriage, activists are turning up the volume on anti-gay marriage rhetoric.

There's just one, ahem, kink.

In an unintentional but hilarious nod to gay sex chatters everywhere, the National Organization for Marriage has dubbed their campaign "2 Million for Marriage". Or 2M4M.

This initiative comes as the group announces their new P.R. director, ormer U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-MN).

Talk about good news, bad news. I just got an email from amazon.com:

We now have delivery date(s) for the order you placed on January 27 2009 09:59 PST
(Order# 123-4567890-1234567):
   Matthew Fox, et al "Lost: The Complete Fifth Season [Blu-ray]" [Blu-ray]
   Estimated arrival date: 12/10/2009

Sigh. I guess I can wait until December. But when will I get my Mad Men Season 2?

Via Bruce Schneier, a demonstrably incompetent police chief in the UK has resigned after mishandling a secret document:

Police were forced to carry out raids on addresses in the north-west of England in broad daylight yesterday, earlier than planned, after [Bob] Quick, the Metropolitan police's assistant commissioner [and senior-most counter-terrorism official], was photographed carrying sensitive documents as he arrived for a meeting in Downing Street.

A white document marked "secret", which carried details of the operation being planned by MI5 and several police forces, was clearly visible to press photographers equipped with telephoto lenses.

Yesterday, realising the existence of the ­photographs of the ­document – which included the names of several senior officers, sensitive locations and details about the nature of the overseas threat – the government imposed a "D notice" to restrict the media from revealing the contents of the picture.

The Guardian article has a photo of the document, taken as Quick got out of his car.

Police also revealed that Quick's Windows password was "bob1" and that he routinely leaves his keys in his car "so [he'll know] where to find them."

I asked the Nature Nerd why the duck on the right has different coloring than the one on the left:

One more park on the 30-Park Geas is complete. Yes, I have been to the park before, but it doesn't count. Last night's Astros-Cubs game does.

Wow, so I'm out of touch for a few hours, and this happens:

• The Federal judge in the Ted Stevens corruption trial has ordered a criminal investigation of the prosecutors who tried the case. It may be surprising, but apparently a heavily-politicized Republican Justice Department may have deliberately thrown it. Hmm.
• The Canadian dude who stole a Cessna yesterday was apparently attempting suicide by fighter jet, but for some reason opted out of suicide by crashing into the ground, and so will now face Federal prosecution.
• As absentee ballots get counted in Minnesota's (longest-in-history) U.S. Senate race, Democrat Al Franken's lead has opened up to 312. Republican former Senator Norm Coleman has vowed to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, where he hopes to get five more votes. His lawyer, by the way, is the same guy who got five extra votes for Dubya in 2000.
• And, oh yeah, Vermont legalized gay marriage, overriding the governor's veto to do so.

OK, I have about 90 minutes to enjoy (*kaff*) downtown Houston before going to my first Cubs game of the season. Then I'm going to an odd little bar that I discovered when I worked in this fine city back in 2001. In fact, my hotel room looks out over the dazzling, deodorant-stick-shaped building that the client I worked for owned before they went bankrupt spectacularly later in the year. Hmmmm...can't remember their name... I'll have to compare photos of the building to help me remember.

No, I'm not talking about those annoying smelly birds that take airplanes out of the sky. I mean the 30-Ballpark Geas, which resumes today in Houston.

The last game I attended really showcased the Cubs ability to blow a game, but at least were in first place; so they are today after beating Houston last night 4-2. I'm looking forward to either a 2-0 season opening, or at least having enough beer that it doesn't matter.

Photos and results tomorrow afternoon.

A pair of F-16 fighters escorted a Cessna 172 stolen from a Canadian flight school all the way from Michigan to Missouri this afternoon:

The plane was reported stolen at about 2:30 p.m. ET and was spotted flying erratically.

At about 5 p.m., the state capital building in Madison, Wis., was evacuated before the plane passed near the region. Police cars cordoned off the streets around the building and officers told people to move away from the area.

What I find amazing: How did the F-16s fly that slowly? I mean, the stall speed in a C172 is around 35 knots with full flaps; I think F-16s move that fast when parked.

And another thing, how amazing is it to find a Canadian that stupid? Or did some American dude sneak over the border and steal the plane?

I hope there's follow-up on this story. It seems improbable.

Here's an interesting meteorological aviation record (METAR) code:

KORD 060151Z 02020G25KT 1/2SM R14R/4000V5500FT SN FG BKN006 OVC012 01/M01 A2971 RMK AO2 PK WND 02027/0118 SLP066 SNINCR 1/1 P0012 T00061011 $

Hmmm....what does all that mean?

KORD: That's Chicago O'Hare International, the offical weather station for my home city.

060151Z: The record is from the 6th at 1:51 Zulu, or 8:51 pm CDT. Twenty minutes ago.

I got a lucky break yesterday: low winds, clear skies, cool weather, decent landing practice. Not an exciting flight (see the .kml), just up to Waukegan, and one go-around caused by coming in too high and fast, but otherwise a good use of time.

People wonder why I'd go up just to practice landing. Simply put, all landings are mandatory, and one prefers to do them well. The more practice I get landing the less I have to think about during the most difficult (and, again, mandatory) part of a flight, which makes it more enjoyable.

I've booked another plane for mid-month. April usually has better weather than January, so I might even get to fly, and if so, I'll actually go somewhere.

I've come out in favor of the CTA Bus Tracker because it provides very helpful information when you need it. Like recently, as I watched the #22 pass my winter office while getting my coat on, I checked the next bus time. Fourteen minutes. Phooey. What about the #36, which passes a block away? "Arriving." Yep, I can see it passing a block away. Next one in 16 minutes. Phooey.

The problem is, it's a 15-minute walk.

So while the CTA Bus Tracker saved me waiting in the cold for longer than it would take to walk home, the CTA itself spaced the buses so far apart that any advantage from having the information was lost by having to walk home after all.

And yes, the next #22 passed me right on time as I walked past my home stop.

Phooey.

U.S. Attorney Pat Fitzgerald announced a new, 16-count indictment (pdf) of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich today, with a new twist:

The RICO conspiracy count alleges that Blagojevich personally, the Office of the Governor of Illinois and Friends of Blagojevich were associated and, together, constituted the "Blagojevich Enterprise," whose primary purpose was to exercise and preserve power over Illinois government for the financial and political benefit of Blagojevich....

As part of the racketeering conspiracy, Blagojevich allegedly permitted [defendants Christopher] Kelly and [Tony] Rezko to exercise substantial influence over certain gubernatorial activities, as well as state boards and commissions, knowing that they would use this influence to enrich themselves and their associates. In return, Kelly and Rezko allegedly benefitted Blagojevich by generating millions of dollars in campaign contributions and providing financial benefits directly to Blagojevich and his family.

Look, I know Chicago tolerates a certain, baseline level of corruption, but it's usually like calling your alderman to get a pothole fixed in exchange for, you know, a couple-two-tree votes in April. But this? Yeah, even Chicagoans recoil at the brazenness. Let's all just hope Fitzgerald doesn't pull a Spitzer...

Yes, it's nerdy, but when this happened over the weekend I had to snap a photo:

(Full size after the jump.)

CBS has pulled the plug on Guiding Light, which they first broadast (over radio) in January 1937:

The radio show, which had its debut on January 25, 1937, was broadcast from Chicago until 1946, when production moved to Los Angeles and later New York. It was introduced as a 15-minute CBS TV show on June 30, 1952, with actors doubling up on both TV and radio until the end of the series' radio run four years later. It expanded to 30 minutes in 1968, a year after it began being broadcast in color.

... Cast members over the years included Christopher Walken, Billy Dee Williams, Hayden Panettiere, Joseph Campanella Sandy Dennis, Cicely Tyson, James Lipton, Ruby Dee, Barnard Hughes, JoBeth Williams, Chris Sarandon, Ruth Warrick, James Earl Jones, Sherry Stringfield, Christina Pickles, Melina Kanakaredes, Anna Marie Horsford, Ed Begley Sr. and Patti D'Arbanville.

I'm not a fan, and I don't think I've seen the show since that time I had chicken pox in the mid-19—er, a while ago. But the show is a piece of history. And, on September 18th, it will become completely historic.

All of these are true, and all of these are appropriate for April Fool's day:

• Punzun Ltd., my software firm, proudly announced record earnings yesterday, earning a net profit of $0 on $0 of gross revenue and ($0) expenses (all figures in millions). It's the best quarter we've ever had, 11% better than our last record in 4th quarter 2004.
• Mark Morford, on GM's "recovery:" "Behold this weird new Camaro. It is, in sum, exactly the wrong car at exactly the wrong time with exactly the wrong attitude attached to exactly the wrong hopeless hope for a return to a rather crude automotive golden era that never really existed in the first place."
• The Justice Department is halting its prosecution against former U.S. Senator Stevens (R-AK), figuring he's suffered enough. This, you remember, comes after the conviction. Yes, it's April Fool's day, but no, this isn't a prank.
• Congress is set to repeal the ban on travel to Cuba. The loudest opposition came from U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), who said the measure would prop up the Castro regime, though one expects not for any longer than the Castro brothers' walkers would, given they're both in their 80s.

Finally, the creaking, old Weather Now demo project is getting an injection of mojo. I'll have more when I release it for real, but meanwhile you can check out the Beta version. (It's actually a ground-up re-write, even though it looks the same. Really. It's cool.)