Tough day to be a Chicagoan
I try (really, I do) to keep the debabblog more or less on topic, but today is one of those days where the motivation just isn't going to come. Of course, Da' Bears lost the Superbowl last night, so today is our unofficial day of mourning. I'm not a sports guy, so I won't bother with game commentary, but if I had to debabble the game, it would go something like this: it rained a lot, the first 30 seconds or so were great, and it was all kind of downhill from there.
To really add insult to injury, it's currently -8°F. This does bring up a bit of what could almost be called a usability question. According to the weather geeks at Weather.com, -8° is between -2° and +5°. I'm no weather expert, but I've had some math in my day, and when the predicted "low" is -2 and then the temperature reaches -8, doesn't -8 become the low? As an end-user of the -8° weather, it doesn't really matter all that much, but it doesn't do much for my already limited faith in meteorology.
The lesson there is a good one for all scientists: remember that your target audience doesn't always play by your rules. Maybe the low is predicted in advance and can't be changed, but it still looks stupid when the current temperature is so obviously less than the low. It's kind of like looking out the window at a downpour and having someone on TV tell you that there's a 40% chance of rain.
