Someone had time to have the sign made up, then had the inclination to stick it on the construction site. That's kind of sad:
There's a building in Chicago, at the corner of Wacker and Clark, that could use similar treatment. Someday, there will be funding again. Someday.
As long as we're in San Francisco, how about an iconic shot of a successful construction project? Here you go:
Airbus Industrie and the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) have worked out how to get an A380 to the EAA show at Oshkosh next weekend:
The aircraft will do a seven-minute flight display before setting up for landing on Runway 36. In a web conference Friday, Airbus test pilot Terry Lutz said that while the 8,000X150 runway is plenty for the A380, there's only one taxiway that will accommodate the aircraft, although, happily, it's the one that leads to Aeroshell Square. That gives the crew about 5,500 feet before the turnoff, which Lutz said will be plenty, even with a 10-knot tailwind. The aircraft that's coming is a test plane and will land at about 720,000 lbs, about 60 percent of its maximum weight.
EAA had to bring in a tug from JFK in New York to pull the plane into place. The tug driver has one shot to get the plane positioned correctly. Lutz said the wingspan of the A380 is exactly one foot less than the width of the ramp.
More from EAA. And even more coolness (if you're a pilot geek), Airbus has an interactive cockpit tour that holds nothing back.
Oshkosh is only a 3-hour drive from Chicago...hmm...
Forty years since that one, small step.
NASA has real-time audio, 40 years later. The lunar module landed at 20:17 UTC, so if you're near a computer at 3pm Chicago time, you should listen to it.
Usually, my July visits to my family in San Francisco allow me to get away from Chicago's oppressive heat. This year, both cities are about the same, San Francisco just a little warmer than usual, and Chicago...well, it's the coolest July of my life:
July has slipped to the coolest to date here in 42 years—its 68.7°F degree average temperature running nearly 5 degrees behind the long-term (138-year) average. Friday's 70°F high was the first time in 53 years a July 17 temperature failed to rise above 70—you'd have to travel back to a 64°F high 85 years ago to find a July 17 that was cooler.
The average high for July's first 17 days has been 77.5°F—the second coolest in the 50 years of O'Hare Airport weather records dating back to 1959. Only 1967's 76.2°F tally has been cooler.
Maybe Chicago will have a super-hot August this year. Like, when I'm in London....
Yesterday I pondered Amazon's deletion of works by Orwell, and asked for confirmation that they had deleted unauthorized (i.e., stolen) copies of the copyrighted material. Amazon last night confirmed this is, in fact, what happened:
An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. "When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers," he said.
Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances," Mr. Herdener said.
Now, I am not one who believes in perpetual copyright. I hate with a passion the Sonny Bono Mickey-Mouse Protection Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, passed (seriously, I am not making this up) in part to protect the Disney rodent for another 20 years on the eve of its lapse into public domain. I think it's unconstitutional, making a mockery of the "limited terms" clause, and on top of that I think it's a shining example of the pernicious effects of money on politics.
However, it's a pretty clear law, and in the U.S. the coypright in Orwell's work will not expire until at least 2021, 70 years after his death. Think about that. If I live another 21 years, which I will do even if it kills me, this blog entry will be protected by copyright until the 22nd century—unless the U.S. Congress comes to its senses and returns us to a copyright law that comports with international standards. Orwell's copyrights have expired in other countries, including Canada, but that introduces a web of competing claims that Amazon doesn't want to touch.
In sum: Amazon deleting books off users' Kindles was stupid, but probably within the terms of service and copyright law. However, had the users backed up the affected devices, and if they'd downloaded copies from Canada, they'd still have the book—a loophole in the TOS that, I'm sure, Amazon's partners will want closed very soon.
A few things of note happened while I was en route to San Francisco yesterday:
- The Cubs continued winning, taking their second in a row after the All-Star break and moving up to second place, though only because they've beaten up the hapless (25-63) Nationals to do it.
- Wisconsin officials announced a deal to buy new 320 km/h train sets for the Chicago to Milwaukee route. Initially plans call for allowing the trains to run at 176 km/h (40% faster than today) while a new, dedicated high-speed line is studied.
- In San Francisco, BART, the light-rail agency, averted a strike that could cripple the area's transportation system. The agency's employees unanimously rejected management's last contract offer and walked away from negotiations, but the two sides have since resumed talks.
- Finally, Walter Cronkite died last night at 92.
And that's the way it is.
Update: One more from my dad: a big weenie drove into a house in Wisconsin yesterday, no doubt because the driver was in mourning.
Even though there are more important things going on in the world, there are also better bloggers out there, so I trust sticking with entirely petty and parochial issues won't offend anyone. Like this, for instance:
Prying the Sears name off North America's tallest building was as simple as asking the leasing agent from U.S. Equities Asset Management to do it.
"I kept saying, 'Sears Tower, Sears Tower. I'd rather have it be Kmart Tower,'" said Carmine Bilardello, the Willis executive who negotiated the lease. "Then I asked them what it would take to put our name on the building, and they said that could be arranged."
Well, then, I guess that's as good a reason as any. I'm still not calling it Willis Tower. Or "Big Willie," for the love of dog.
I'd like confirmation on this: the Times' David Pogue reported today that Amazon deleted a particular author from people's Kindles overnight:
[A]pparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.
You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?
The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were "1984" and "Animal Farm."
The Kindle forum thread on the topic reads, to me anyway, like the copies deleted were from a publisher that didn't have the rights to sell electronic copies. Like it or not, Orwell's works are still protected by copyright. So if the deleted copies were indeed sold by a publisher illegally, it's not like Barnes & Noble removing the book off your shelf and leaving 99c on the table; it's like Barnes & Noble discovering it had sold you a remaindered book and correcting the error.
On the other hand, perhaps an email explaining the situation might have helped Amazon in this case?
Cubs win their first game to start the beginning of the ending of the season at 1 game over .500. Hey, it could happen.
The Sears Tower's name officially changed to Willis Tower this morning, under the new ownership of UK insurance brokerage Willis Group Holdings Ltd. No one will call it that for a generation, of course, a fact not lost on NPR's Steve Inskeep this morning.
Willis CEO Joseph Plumeri, in what I sincerely hope was a moment of retail British irony rather than wholesale American idiocy, suggested a way to help ease the transition:
[Crain's Chicago Business]: Any idea how long will it take for people to get used to the new name?
[Plumeri]: No, I don't. People have asked me, "What do you think they'll call it? Willis, Sears?" I've said, "You can call it the Big Willie, and that would be fine with me." And I mean that. I don't mean that in a comedic way. (Chicago) is a town of neighborhoods and it's a town of nicknames. And people in this town, when you call something by a nickname it's not meant to be demeaning, because I come from the neighborhoods. It's meant to be a term of endearment. So if they did that, that would be fine.
One more thing: I want to warn my friends and colleagues that, today and tomorrow, anyone uttering that hideous phrase from that treacly 1980s sitcom—you know what I'm f@!$&!! taliking about—will be punished. Oh yes. In the names of Strunk, White, and Orwell, you will be punished.