Events

Via Bruce Schneier, a retired CIA codebreaker recently decoded a message sent to Confederate Lt. Gen. John Pemberton in July 1863: The encrypted, 6-line message was dated July 4, 1863, the date of Pemberton's surrender to Union forces led by Ulysses S. Grant, ending the Siege of Vicksburg in what historians say was a turning point midway into the Civil War. The message is from a Confederate commander on the west side of the Mississippi River across from Pemberton. "He's saying, 'I can't help you. I have...

Welcome to the semi-annual update of the Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2011 3 Jan Latest sunrise until Oct. 29th 07:19 16:32 9:13 27 Jan 5pm sunset 07:08 17:00 9:51 5 Feb 7am sunrise 07:00 17:11 10:11 20 Feb 5:30pm sunset 06:40 17:30 10:50 27 Feb 6:30am sunrise 06:29 17:39 11:09 12 Mar Earliest sunrise until Apr. 17th Earliest sunset until Oct. 26th 06:08 17:54 11:45 13 Mar...

Throughout my career in software development, I have spent many, many hours in meetings. Endless meetings. Soul-sucking meetings. Insurance companies are the worst, and they hire lots of developers, which just increases the aggregate lifetime meeting time-suck of the average developer. It's fun to figure out after the meeting not only how much time just disappeared from the universe, but also how much it cost. So I am overjoyed to discover that Scott Adams sells this on his website: When meetings are...

Reader MB sent some art from Murphy, N.C.: She writes: [I] saw your request for winter wonderland pictures on Facebook and thought you may be interested to see what Murphy, N.C., looked like during the past few days. We were supposed to get a max of 8 cm on the 25th according to initial reports, but I think the total was closer to 40 cm as of 10am [Monday] morning when the sun finally decided to show its face. Meanwhile, the rest of the East Coast continues to dig out. Today's snow pack map from NOAA's...

I've just pushed out an interim build of the Inner Drive Technology demonstration project, Weather Now. In addition to fixing a couple of annoying bugs, I added a significant new feature. The weather lists on the home page now can show whatever text I want for the weather station names. Before, it could only show their official designations, which made the lists harder to use. You can see how useful this is immediately. The list of NFL football games now shows you what game the weather goes with. Also...

I'm not entirely sure what I think of this: Amazon is working on a solution that could revolutionize digital gift buying. The online retailer has quietly patented a way for people to return gifts before they receive them, and the patent documents even mention poor Aunt Mildred. Amazon's innovation, not ready for this Christmas season, includes an option to "Convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred," the patent says. "For example, the user may specify such a rule because the user believes that this potential...

The Economist's Anthony Gardner didn't mind getting stranded: Sure, there were dark moments. The first came with the news that our delayed flight from Cairo to Heathrow was being diverted to Brussels; the second, when we learnt that all the airport hotels were full. But thereafter things began to look up. Though it was after midnight by the time Egyptair despatched us to the Hotel Le Plaza in the city centre, its elegant lobby told us that we had landed firmly on our feet. Brussels—a city I had never...

Yesterday's storm, which right now has parked itself over Cape Cod, dumped 80 cm of snow on parts of New Jersey and pretty much shut down New York: Morning commuters faced the daunting prospect of cutting fresh tracks in over a foot of snow along roads and sidewalks that looked more like Colorado than the urban north. In New York City, a badly crippled subway system hobbled along, but Long Island Rail Road service remained suspended early on Monday, as did some New Jersey Transit and Metro-North...

I can imagine that my friends in the Northeast aren't too happy today: URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY 1240 PM EST SUN DEC 26 2010 ...DANGEROUS WINTER STORM IMMINENT... ...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM EST MONDAY... * HAZARDS...HEAVY SNOW AND STRONG WINDS...WITH CONSIDERABLE BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF SNOW WITH NEAR ZERO VISIBILITY AT TIMES. * ACCUMULATIONS...15 TO 20 INCHES...WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS UP TO 2 FEET POSSIBLE. * IMPACTS...EXTREMELY...

This came to me in 1988 from the Internet (though back then no one called it "the Internet" and we ramped onto it through CompuServe). Enjoy. Hotline! By James Zachary Every now and again, a caller to the water and wastewater department will ask about issues of national concern. RING! Southeast plant, this is Zack. "I am taking a survey for my organization. Do you have time to answer a few questions?" Ma'am, this is a sewage plant... "You are a taxpayer and a voter, aren't you?" Yes Ma'am, but... "This...