Events

One of my favorite publications, the century-old New Republic, died today: There was a telling moment at the New Republic’s centennial celebration last month in the stately Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium. New CEO Guy Vidra, recently appointed by owner (and Facebook co-founder) Chris Hughes, took the podium to discuss the magazine’s challenges and opportunities in a digital age, just as any modern-day media mogul would do. When he referenced the name of The New Republic’s top editor, however, he...

Well, little time today. Since I'll be on an airplane for 8 hours on Sunday, I will probably have time to catch up on these: The Chicago Tribune's John Kass doesn't like the Episode 7 lightsaber. Chicago Public Media's Jim DeRogatis doesn't like Pomplamoose. Cranky Flier wonders why American Airlines doesn't like profit-sharing. I will probably really like Microsoft Azure DocumentDB partitioning (but it's a pretty esoteric topic for most Daily Parker readers). Your solid-state drive (SSD) probably likes...

We finished our business here in Baton Rouge last night, so I'm already chilling at the airport waiting for my (delayed) flight to Dallas. Had I taken the flight I booked originally, I'd get to our final Messiah rehearsal late, or missed it entirely. That would be bad. The other problem with spending all day in meetings or airplanes yesterday: my FitBit numbers sucked. I went 27 days in a row getting more than 10,000 steps, and almost 40 days getting more than 9,000, but only got 7,500 yesterday. Pfah....

December 2014 opened the coldest in 118 years in Chicago, but all the forecasts point to a huge warm-up over the next two weeks: he scope of the warming being predicted is really something. The global scope of the milder than normal temps is evident from the depiction at the top of this post. The Weather Service’s GFS model, Environment Canada’s GEM ensemble and the European Center’s deterministic and ensemble model are all on board with the onset of a significantly warmer than normal pattern. This...

Pomplamoose front-man and Patreon CEO Jack Conte published a blog post last week discussing the economics of touring musicians. I commented here, both as a fan of Conte's and as a supporter of Pomplamoose (including through Patreon). Within a few days, music critic Bob Lefsetz accused Conte of fabricating his figures, and also of concealing his role with Patreon. Master click-bater Mark Teo piled on, Conte responded, and it's now a standard Internet catfight. I don't see the ethical problem here. I do...

The modern Daily Parker started in November 2005. Since then I've posted 4,376 entries, averaging 1.32 per day—though, for the past 48 straight months, I've averaged more than 1.32 per day, with pretty high consistency: The green line is the 12-month moving average, which I have (alas) brought down most of this year. The red line is the raw mean, which, because of mathematics, has gone up every month since December 2010. Is there a point to all this? Nope. Not at all. It's just a testament to a habit of...

Via Sullivan, John Cleese and Bill Maher discuss fundamentalism and political correctness:

Their forecast was correct: a cold front has pushed into the Chicago area, dropping temperatures rapidly and turning our sunny morning into a cold and grey last day of autumn. At 11:30 it was 11°C outside my door; now, just over 2 hours later, it's 4°C, and getting cooler yet. This will not stop me from walking another few kilometers, though. It's still above freezing, after all.

Knowing that winter is coming later today motivated me to take Parker on his biggest walk since we went hiking in mid-September: an hour and three quarters, 10 km, 11,000 FitBit steps (which translates to about 60,000 Parker steps). The 11°C out my door can't last, though. Rockford is down to 1°C; Burlington, Wisc., about an hour northwest of O'Hare, is already below freezing. With 13,000 steps already behind me today, and being only 7,000 steps away from a 1-day total over 20,000 and a 7-day total over...

As reported yesterday, an Arctic high pressure area is moving south into the United States, bringing freezing temperatures with it. The latest surface analysis looks like this: It's 9°C in Chicago but 3°C in Rockford, just 145 km away. Conclusion? It's time to take Parker on his long walk of the day. Now.