WGN Weather Center Blog Monday afternoon’s thunderstorms brought an abrupt end to a hot, steamy day here. Outflow from the thunderstorms brought a rush of dense cold air to the surface dropping temperatures nearly 30º in less than an hour’s time. The heat relief is only temporary, however, with heat and humidity expected to return Tuesday, along with more thunderstorms. Here are some of the largest temperature drops as recorded on our WeatherBug network. Hoffman Estates 93º down to 64º a drop of 29º Wilmette 94º down to 66º a drop of 28º Algonquin 92º down to 67º a drop…
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A Hipper Crowd of Shushers – New York Times ON a Sunday night last month at Daddy’s, a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, more than a dozen people in their 20s and 30s gathered at a professional soiree, drinking frozen margaritas and nibbling store-bought cookies. With their thrift-store inspired clothes and abundant tattoos, they looked as if they could be filmmakers, Web designers, coffee shop purveyors or artists. My friend Debbie will probably have seen this, but I’ll send her a link anyway – she’s a librarian, and once did a paper on the stereotype of the be-bunned, shushing librarian in…
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Salt Lake Tribune – Rosa Brooks: Did Bush fool us or did we fool ourselves? So why did it take us so long to notice? Someday, historians will ponder our strange collective passivity in the face of Bush-Cheney madness. Why did the editorial boards of our major newspapers either parrot the administration line or raise only muted criticism on so many issues, and for so long? Where were the tough journalistic questions? Why didn’t more members of Congress protest the administration’s blatantly unjustified policies and transparent constitutional outrages? For that matter, when Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft and countless…
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BBC ON THIS DAY | 7 | 2005: Bomb attacks on London 2005: Bomb attacks on London A series of bomb attacks on London’s transport network has killed more than 30 people and injured about 700 others. Three explosions on the Underground left 35 dead and two died in a blast on a double decker bus. It was two years ago today that London suffered the devastating suicide bomber attacks on the Underground and on a bus. I was horrified, and set up a quick photo of a funny little mug that I bought on a trip to London many…
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Hey! Last night we had a thoroughly compacted, gravel road with a clay base. As of 910am this morning, we suddenly have a strip of asphalt on our side of the street, and the steamroller has been going back and forth smoothing it down. They started around 8am, I think, but it didn’t get noisy enough to bounce pictures off the wall and call our attention to their activities until just now. If you check the webcam you may see some of the equipment going by. That’s the new mailbox we put together, lying on the driveway waiting to be…
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Bush urges resolve on Iraq war – Los Angeles Times West Virginia is a once-reliably Democratic state that for the last two presidential elections has been central to Bush’s victories, and Wednesday marked the fourth Independence Day he has visited the state since taking office. But even here, where he won repeated rounds of applause in a gigantic hangar just completed for a new detachment of C-5 Galaxy cargo planes, there were hundreds of empty seats behind a towering American flag. Offering a history lesson on the 231st anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence from Britain, Bush…
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Progressive Political News and Information: Nevada Thunder Frank Rich of the New York Times (paywall) “When The Vice President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal” Even now, few have made the connection between this month’s Cheney flap and the larger scandal. That larger scandal is to be found in what the vice president did legally under the executive order early on rather than in his more recent rejection of its oversight rules. Timing really is everything. By March 2003, this White House knew its hype of Saddam’s nonexistent nuclear arsenal was in grave danger of being exposed. The order…
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Boing Boing: Merlin Mann’s decluttering roundup From FlyLady.net: The 27-Fling Boogie We do this assignment as fast as we can. Take a garbage bag and walk through your home and throw away 27 items. Do not stop until you have collected all 27 items. Then close the garbage bag and pitch it. DO NOT LOOK IN IT!!! Just do it. Next, take an empty box and go through your home collecting 27 items to give away. Suze Orman taught me this in her book, The Courage to be Rich. This will change the energy in your home and bring about…
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mullentown » Blog Archive » If You Were the Architect Yay! It’s coming back, and it’s nothing to do with politics: it’s the Walker Bank sign in Salt Lake City. As seen in the comments at mullentown, it sounds like the old Salk Lake weather icon may be making a comeback. In one of those weird Internets Tubes coincidences, my Uncle Charlie is mentioned on that Early Television site, as he was a long time radio enthusiast and tinkerer with new technologies in Salt Lake. In the 40’s and 50’s, he was involved with a lot of this stuff. I…
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A Decision Made Largely Alone President Bush limited his deliberations over commuting the jail term of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to a few close aides, opting not to consult with the Justice Department and rebuffing efforts by close friends to lobby on Libby’s behalf, administration officials and people close to Bush said yesterday. Let’s see… on that short list would be Cheney, Rove, and maybe Barney. Possibly Laura, if she can take time off from her “No Regrets Tour.” Bush listens to no one else except that voice in his head that keeps telling him he’s doing God’s work. January…