I was all set to give two talks in a symposium at the IALE meetings in Madison. Unfortunately I was flying American Airlines. They canceled my flight about an hour before leaving. The airport was mayhem with people stranded from earlier in the day desperately trying to get onto flights. It was 4pm and I was talking in the morning. I just went home. No way I would have made it. What is so irksome is that AA knew that the flights would be canceled, but waited until the last minute to actually tell anyone. You've probably heard, but AA grounded its fleet of MD80's for required maintenance.
THK's blog
Christmas birding
I decided to get out of town on Christmas and went birding around Corpus Christi (strange name for a city). I camped on the beach under a full moon at Mustang Island State Park. Quite spectacular. Fog slowed the early morning start. The fog cleared as I drove up to Port Aransas. I spotted a Merlin on the power lines along the way. The community park was slow. All the usual suspects (Stilts, Avocets, Teal, White Pelicans, Neotropical Cormorant). I then headed inland across the ferry to Port Aransas Pass. The inner bay was entirely filled with birds.
The Netherlands adopts open document formats
The Dutch government has taken a step in the right direction by mandating electronic documents be stored in open formats. Data formats are important for archival of public documents. Technology changes over time and documents can become orphaned when the software that created them is no longer available.
