From the Small Wonder entry on wikipedia:

Information Consistency Problem

In the section entitled “Premise” it states:

V.I.C.I.’s features include superhuman strength and speed, an AC outlet under her right arm, a parallel port under her left arm, and an access panel in her back.

Further down the page in the section entitled “Characters” it states:

Vicki has an access panel in her back, an electric socket in her right armpit, and an RS-232 serial port under her left armpit.

A parallel and a serial port are 2 different kids of ports that differ in look and operation. I am not certain which one is correct, or if both of them are (which I doubt), but I would recommend this be researched and corrected. If both are correct, I would recommend mentioning both ports in both sections.

I love wikipedia.

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A little over 140 years ago the residents of the American south rose up and began brutally slaughtering thousands of their fellow citizens to defend a despicable system of slavery.  They chose to kill and destroy instead of recognizing that the tide of history had finally turned against them.  Yet the memory of these traitors and murderers is honored, the reasons for their crimes santized.

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I was always sleepy while at work, and I think this exhaustion was because I felt trapped in a contradiction: the fast pace demanded complete focus on the task, yet that pace also made any real concentration impossible. I had to actively suppress my own ability to think, because the more you think, the more the inadequacies in your understanding of an author’s argument come into focus. This can only slow you down. To not […]

Most “knowledge” work is horrible.
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Empathy appears to be a biblical qualification for judges.
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I suspect a lot of bloggers may be introverts, because blogging is great if you like to sit in front of the internet all day. If not for my aversion to specialising in one subject, I probably would have been an academic historian, because I think it would have suited me to work in libraries back before there was an internet.

I’m not sure I buy his characterization of the Democratic party as pandering to its base. I could probably identify 5 hard-right Republicans in Congress for every hard-left Democrat.
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This week, the Lexicon provides an introduction to virtue ethics.

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(by Richard Florida) The economic crisis is hitting hardest at working class jobs, and rates of male unemployment have skyrocketed. A commonly asked question is how do we retrain them for emerging job opportunities in other sectors. The Globe and Mail`s Margaret Wente suggests the problem runs a whole lot deeper than we think. The new economy (over the long term) is creating tons of service jobs in retail, customer support, and personal care. The trouble is that […]

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Depressing.
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According to reports out of Kabul, the Taliban announced that they have waterboarded three U.S. soldiers taken prisoner. The Taliban commander asserted that waterboarding is not torture and does not violate the Geneva Convention or U.S. law. He assured everyone that a medical officer monitored all waterboarding sessions to insure that no permanent damage was done to the soldiers. In addition, he said they were careful to follow the directions on waterboarding […]

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Links to thoughtful liberal responses to Obama’s Notre Dame address.
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Thoughtful conservative responses to Obama’s Notre Dame address.

Marked and unmarked graves of Union war dead in Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery.

Soldier, originally uploaded by mmmmarshall.

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5/5/2009
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5/5/2009
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5/4/2009

Charles Lewis Francis traveled from Baltimore to Chicago in June of 1862, on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad. Here’s what his route would have looked like:

This is based on an 1860 map of the B&O Railroad available online at the Library of Congress. CLF reports that it took nearly 48 hours to make the trip. The same trip on Amtrak today would require a transfer in Washington, D.C., but would arrive in Chicago (on the Capitol Limited) in less than 24 hours, assuming no delays. Wikipedia reports that in 1861-1862, the B&O in the Cumberland valley was subject to disruption due to the war, so this may have added to his journey’s length. Additionally, according to the same Wikipedia article, the railroad bridge over the Ohio at Bellaire (or Bel-air, as CLF reports it) wasn’t completed until 1871, so CLF would have had to disembark in Wheeling, WV, and crossed the Ohio river some other way. CLF also reports passing through Columbus, but it’s not clear exactly which route was taken from there to Chicago. It’s possible that he passed through Dayton, Ohio, near where some of his descendants would one day reside.

It’s likely that CLF arrived in Chicago at the Illinois Central Depot, located where Millenium Station now stands, at the intersection of Madison and Michigan. In 1858, it looked like this:

This is a photo provided by the Chicago Historical Society. The white buildings behind the train tracks are grain elevators. All of this is underground now, under the Art Institute and Millennium Park. Here’s another view of the waterfront station, courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society, from an 1857 “birds-eye view” of the city. Note the train steaming in from the left (South) across what was then a breakwater, but is now Grant Park.