Events

What is it with U.K. rail? One would think the wrong type of snow would no longer stop an entire train line, but the snow struck again: IT'S NOT the snow that shut down Eurostar. It's the type of snow. "Fluffy" snowflakes got through special screens and into the power cars of five trains on Friday, shorting out the engines and stranding thousands of travellers in the Channel Tunnel for hours. Service remains cut by a third, and normal service will not resume before Christmas. Some 100,000 people have...

Laredo (pop. 250,000) will shortly have no bookstores, making it the largest city in the U.S. without one: The Associated Press reports that letters from schoolchildren had no effect on the corporation's decision to shutter the B. Dalton; Barnes & Noble announced plans earlier this year to close all remaining B. Dalton outlets. "Corporate America considers Laredo kind of the backwater," said Jerry Thompson, an author who lives in Laredo and is a professor at Texas A&M International University. Barnes &...

Washington looks quite pretty from the air with all the snow on the ground: I'm confused. Yes, I see snow, and on the ground at DCA it seems to be about 30-35 cm deep, but in Chicago we'd find this annoying, not paralyzing. I wonder if Virginia still has the same number of snowplows as Chicago (which was true in 2003, the last time the area got "buried" like this). If so, maybe they want to examine some of the climate-change projections calling for more precipitation? Hmm. Diane and Parker are a few...

By this time next Sunday, I'll have gone through O'Hare five times in eight days. I actually don't mind—yet—possibly because this is only my second visit of the week. The flight to DC isn't horribly delayed, and I've got a good perch to watch the planes: Gotta run. Time to wait on the plane instead of in the club...

That's how much snow covers Washington, D.C., right now: A major storm that broke all records for a December snowfall buried the Washington area Saturday, forcing authorities to suspend public transportation, declare a state of emergency and plead with residents to stay home. Hundreds of airline flights were canceled, Metro stopped running trains to aboveground stations and shopping malls closed early because few customers could navigate treacherous roads to get there on the last weekend before...

Yesterday I mentioned how helpful American Airlines was helping me avoid what promised to be an excruciating layover at O'Hare today. It turns out, Washington's weather is worse than even the most pessimistic forecasts: A snowstorm of historic proportions is burying a wide swath of the Mid-Atlantic under as much as 30 to 90 cm of snow as the weekend gets underway. The Washington D.C. area is to end up among the locations hardest hit with as much as 60 cm of snow a possibility -- the heaviest...

Original plan: Fly to Chicago tomorrow, then change at O'Hare for D.C. New plan: Fly to Chicago tomorrow, twiddle my thumbs at home, and fly to D.C. Sunday morning. Why? Because no one is flying to D.C. tomorrow: The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Warning for the entire [Washington] area, starting midnight Friday and lasting through 6 a.m. Sunday. ABC 7 Meteorologist Chris Naille says the most of the region can expect 10 to 15 inches of snow, with up to 20 inches in spots along and...

Um...

A high court in the U.K. has ordered British Airways cabin crews not to strike over Christmas: The dispute at BA centres on its desire to cut costs by reducing cabin staff on most flights and limiting wage increases. The airline’s pilots and engineers have already accepted austerity measures; cabin staff, notified of the proposed changes in July, are less inclined to compromise (though some have taken voluntary redundancy). On December 14th Unite, the union which represents almost all of the company’s...

Via the Freakonomics blog, the New Scientist has examined the science behind the eternal question, dogs or cats? Utility Dogs can hunt, herd and guard. They can sniff out drugs and bombs and even whale faeces; they guide blind and deaf people, race for sport, pull sleds, find someone buried by an avalanche, help children learn and possibly even predict earthquakes. Cats are good if you have an infestation of rodents. Perhaps that assessment is unfair, though. After all, we love our pets for other...