Events

A farmer in northeastern Nevada has capitulated to the "highly skilled environmental engineers" beavering away on his property: Last year, when Nevada suffered one of the worst droughts on record, beaver pools kept his cattle with enough water. When rains came strangely hard and fast, the vast network of dams slowed a torrent of water raging down the mountain, protecting his hay crop. And with the beavers’ help, creeks have widened into wetlands that run through the sagebrush desert, cleaning water...

I took Friday off, so it felt like Saturday. Then Saturday felt like Sunday, Sunday felt like another Saturday, and yesterday was definitely another Sunday. Today does not feel like Tuesday. Like most Mondays, I had a lot of catching up at the office, including mandatory biennial sexual harassment training (prevention and reporting, I hasten to point out). So despite a 7pm meeting with an Australian client tonight, I hope I find time to read these articles: The Chicago Bears have revealed a preliminary...

The UK Conservative Party has elected Liz Truss its new leader, making her the new Prime Minister. Just over 81,000 of the 67.22 million citizens of the UK voted for her, giving her even less of a mandate than the last two PMs had: The foreign secretary, who won 81,326 votes (57.4%) of Tory members to the former chancellor’s 60,399 (42.6%), takes over from Boris Johnson, who was ousted by his own MPs earlier this summer. Britain’s fourth Tory prime minister in six years declared “we will deliver, we...

Earlier this year I asked a friend if he would answer a couple of questions about his experience with firearms. Rich P. is a competitive pistol shooter living in Connecticut. He and I have agreed about some things and disagreed about others since we were first-years at university. I thought he'd have a reasonable presentation of firearms regulation that differs from mine, and he did not disappoint. I have edited his responses only for Daily Parker site style and by adding links for context. Otherwise I...

As I feared, yesterday my body really did not want to walk a full 42.2 km marathon. In fact, around 14 km, I decided to turn around and get a beer: I maintained a great pace, though: 8'54" per kilometer (14'24" per mile). But wow, it was exhausting: I sense a nap in my future...

As I did the Friday before my birthday in 2020 and 2021, I planned today to walk a marathon (42.2 km). Alas, my body doesn't seem as into it as it was before. I did everything right, I thought: lots of sleep all week, no alcohol at all for a few days, keeping active but not too strenuous. That worked well in 2020: And in 2021: But last night, not so restful: In the week before the 2020 walk my BB averaged 70, and 72 in 2021. As of today, my 7-day average is 47, even though my 7-day sleep average is 8:06...

Despite record temperatures in late spring, Illinois had a perfectly average August, which the state climatologist for some reason refers to as "mild:" May kicked off summer early in Illinois with a very unusual heat wave. Then came a very warm June that had this winter lover wishing for sweater weather. Fortunately, a slightly cooler July was followed by a very mild August. August average temperatures ranged from the low 70s [F] in northern Illinois to the high 70s in southern Illinois, within 1 degree...

Yesterday, Democrat Mary Peltola beat former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin in the special election to fill deceased Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) seat: Peltola finished fourth in a crowded nonpartisan primary in June, when 48 candidates battled to secure one of the four spots on the Aug. 16 special election ballot. But heading into Wednesday’s final tabulation, Peltola was leading the pack. The special election was the state's first test of ranked-choice voting, which was implemented after a 2020...

Meteorological summer ends in just a few hours here in Chicago. Pity; it's been a decent one (for us; not so much for the Western US). I have a couple of things to read this afternoon while waiting for endless test sessions to complete on my work laptop: Former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev died at 91. Julia Ioffe looks at Ukraine's risky counter-offensive—that might just work. Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle, who has covered the XPOTUS since the 2016 campaign, wonders if the...

Longtime Daily Parker readers know that I always want my software deployments to be as boring as possible. Push some code, watch the automated continuous delivery pipeline whirr for a bit, and boom! Dev/test deployment done. If any part of the deployment fails in the pipeline, the deployment stops. I've spent a lot of time making it vanishingly unlikely that a bad deployment will succeed. Cryptocurrency start-up OptiFi apparently had not learned this lesson before they locked themselves out of their...