Wrigley Field

 Home of the Cubs

On the near north side of Chicago.

Rats. Rats!

Rat That Sniffs Out Land Mines Receives Award For Bravery

Not since the fictional Remy of the 2007 Disney-Pixar film "Ratatouille" has a rat done so much to challenge the public's view of the animals as creatures more commonly seen scuttling through sewers and the subway: Magawa has discovered 39 land mines and 28 pieces of unexploded ordnance, and helped clear more than 1.5 million square feet of land over the past four years.

They call it the dismal science because…

…it really is, well, dismal. Economics, I mean. 

This from a piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal:

The swings in our buying habits have accentuated the difference between the consumer-price index (CPI) and the personal-consumption-expenditures price index (PCE). CPI captures the headlines and determines the return on inflation-linked Treasurys, or TIPS. The Federal Reserve uses PCE—and the two diverged over the summer.

Which, in non-Econspeak, means we are undergoing a fundamental recalibration of "normal" right now. 

Given time, things will work themselves out. In the meantime, hang on to your hat.

You will never escape

Drone home: Amazon’s new Ring indoor security camera gives flight to new privacy concerns

Amazon drones will probably be zipping around outside your house to drop off packages before too long. But before that day arrives, the drones could also be flying inside your home. Ring, the Amazon-owned smart doorbell and security company, unveiled a flying indoor camera on Thursday morning.

Maybe you can train your canary to keep an eye on it… 

Fried SPAM

 That's for supper. A fried SPAM sandwich and assorted other stuff. This is the first can of SPAM I've opened in six months. No wonder I've been so grumpy. I thought it was the Congress' fault but it was only partly that. 

I might have to eat early this evening.

Wait…global luster?

Why Supreme Court battle could tarnish global luster of US judiciary

 We have global luster? Is this some kind of tricky shampoo ad?

Ah, the memories

 Coldest Temperature Ever Recorded in Northern Hemisphere Uncovered by 'Climate Detectives'

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has recognized a temperature reading of -69.6 degrees Celsius (-93.3 degrees Fahrenheit) from 30 years ago as the lowest ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere.

Also something something climate change. 

News is where you find it

How is anybody going to understand you if you're speaking 43 languages?

Scarier than usual, I'm guessing

What does Halloween look like during a pandemic?

LOL for a minute there I thought it said…

 …"if you’ve been looking for super small white noise generators that you can wear to bed, the Sleepbuds II are one of a very small number of potential solutions."

Wait. It did say that?

Bose Promises Round 2 of the Excellent Sleepbuds Will Fix Their Biggest Problem

September

Food for nerds

 Mathematically Correct Breakfast

Maybe he was just a man ahead of his time

Quote of the Day: Roman L. Hruska and Mediocre Judges

Moral: Don't put your ear in some drunk Brit's mouth?

 British man bites off part of friend’s ear in drunken fight on plane

Summer bows out

I read somewhere…

…some book about inventors, as I recall, that the person who figured out how to preserve food in cans (thereby winning a prize from Napoleon, who wanted a better way to feed his armies) never followed that invention up with a can opener, forcing the troops to open their rations by whatever means was at hand…hatchets, bayonets, bombs, whatever.

Which is pretty much the problem we still have with blister packaging.

Hot or Not?

Hot or Not was, famously, the name of an early Zuckerberg venture that lead, eventualy, to Facebook (Russian troll or not). These days it's also the mantra of some officials screening for COVID-19, as with this special helmet being used to scan football (but not really football) crowds in England.

“In short, the helmet uses sophisticated infrared camera technology,” says Dr Guo, “The smart helmet visor’s thermo-scan sensors show the temperature of people within a five-metre radius, as we know that a high temperature can be a symptom of someone who is COVID-positive. It also has the potential to connect with other data on COVID-19 track and tracing apps.”

And so we have one more way to keep track of you, Earthlings; do not imagine you will ever escape. 

Get away for the weekend (or a minute or two, anyway)

 Here are a couple of web sites (H/T Forbes magazine) that let you quit staring out of your own window and look through somebody else's—sound track included. 

One is called WindowSwap (see sunny Italy!), the other is Take Me Elsewhere (see Brooklyn!)