Quiet week?

Not so much:

• Former representative Charlie Wilson died. This is a good weekend to watch Charlie Wilson's War (screenplay by Aaron Sorkin) one more time.
• A couple days ago Northern Illinois had a 4.2-magnitude earthquake, and no one knows why.
• Speaking of Illinois, after the amusing silliness with the Lt. Governor primary race, the legislature has proposed eliminating the office altogether. That would make the Attorney General second in line for Governor. People from outside Illinois should note that the current AG is the House Speaker's own daughter. Our state is a little like Rome at times, but in a harmless sort of way.
• Paul Krugman, on the other hand, doesn't think we're like Rome; he thinks we're more like Poland, specifically 18th-century gridlocked Poland. It's worth a read.
• As I contemplate commuting between Raleigh and Chicago more frequently, I am saddened to read confirmation that the big carriers are much more likely to use their annoying regional carriers on short routes like that one.
• Asperger's is on the way out, to the dismay of software testers everywhere.
• And finally, this is now officially the snowiest winter ever in Washington and Baltimore, with 140 cm so far in DC and more than 175 cm in Baltimore. At those amounts we'd even notice in Chicago. Some morons ignoramuses climate-science critics have commented that this bolsters their magical world-view, but unfortunately the reality-based community predicted increasingly extreme weather early on. Welcome to global warming.