Events

First, on the flight from Dallas to San Francisco, this handsome boi slept peacefully on the floor four rows ahead of me: Bane is a malamute mix, 11 years old, and here in the SFO baggage claim area, very tired. Monday morning, I walked over to the Ferry Terminal on my way to the Caltrain terminal at 4th and King. This guy posed long enough for me to compose and take a shot: I don't know his name, or even whether he's male. Sorry. Later, in Palo Alto, I stumbled upon this historic site: That's the...

New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Arden, just resigned unexpectedly, which is a much more surprising story than any of these I queued up: President Biden quietly made a big move on immigration that the opposition either didn't notice or can't really criticize. Julia Ioffe understands the same thing the White House understands: Putin has no incentive to negotiate for peace. Newly-sworn-in US Representative "George Soros" (R-NY) stole $3,000 from a GoFundMe meant to pay for life-saving surgery for a...

Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Black Hammer Brewing, 544 Bryant St., San FranciscoTrain line: Caltrain, San Francisco terminalTime from Chicago: about 4½ hours by airDistance from station: 600 m I spent most of Monday in Palo Alto, Calif., one of the few places in California that has an actual commuter rail station. Caltrain's northern terminus, at 4th and King, is only three blocks from an actual brewery, so naturally I stopped in. My $20 flight started with the Jaded...

Unfortunately, though, I'm already at the airport, staring out at blue skies and sunny...airplanes. I'm looking forward to getting home, though, and to picking up Cassie tomorrow morning after her bath. (She was already overdue, but after 4 days with her pack, she'll need it even more.) I've got a couple of Brews & Choos from yesterday as well as a few photos from the weekend coming later this week. Stay tuned.

I just got an alert that the outside temperature at my house went above 10°C: It's mid-January, and my house in Chicago is only 2°C cooler than San Francisco. (O'Hare is only 1°C cooler.) Maybe I have the wrong attitude. Chicago will likely have its 2nd or 3rd warmest January in history, followed by a warm and lovely spring, with flowers and sunshine for all. So I should just enjoy it. Cassie sure is. I keep saying that the decently-governed city whose winters have gotten remarkably better in my...

Apparently the rain has stopped! So I'm going to take a walk and get some tea. Lunch in Palo Alto; dinner possibly at The Stinking Rose, depending on how much I want to offend the people sitting next to me on the flight home tomorrow. What am I doing hanging round? I should be on that train and gone.

Chicago Transit Authority president Dorval Carter, Jr., blamed "extremely higher-than-normal call-offs" (i.e., a blue flu) for the New Year's Eve failures that left The Daily Parker waiting on a platform 35 minutes for the El: It’s not unusual for CTA workers to “call off” on holidays, but the CTA has in the past been ready to replace them. But this year, with a shortage of train operators in the ranks, the CTA couldn’t deliver the number of free trains it promised. The CTA promoted increased service on...

The United States once had the best universities in the world. Maybe we still do, to an extent. Most empires, in their primes, have them. But in every culture, some people simply don't (or can't) understand the benefits of learning for its own sake. In the waning days of empire, when politics drifts farther from governing and closer to self-dealing, people who do understand why we need great universities nevertheless see political advantage in pretending we don't. In the last week I've seen three...

One Daily Parker reader sent me this clarification that the big hole in CA-92 preventing people in Half Moon Bay, Calif., from reaching Silicon Valley is not, technically, a sink hole: The first thing to know about that sinkhole that opened on Highway 92 on Thursday: It’s not a sinkhole: Geologists make a distinction between sinkholes, which require a particular blend of soils — limestone, salts, gypsum and other components — and caverns that appear with water due to engineering failures, aging...

Staring out a window at the Terminal A parking garage at DFW Airport, I pause to check my email. Top of the pile I see this lovely report from MSNBC: Californians should brace for flooding and possible landslides as “heavy to excessive rainfall” is expected over the weekend and into next week, forecasters warned early Saturday.  With recovery efforts continuing in parts of the state which was battered by storms earlier this week, the National Weather Service said in a bulletin that a couple of Pacific...