Events

The Times morning newsletter highlighted a story from Tuesday about yet one more example of people who have come to believe something that is not only crashingly stupid, but potentially fatal: [A] small number of spring water aficionados...believe untreated water, or “raw water,” contains enriching minerals that are removed from tap water during the purification process. The trend, however, alarms health experts, who say that spring water devotees are taking unnecessary risks. The country’s robust water...

After my general statistics for 2024, here are the books and media I consumed since 2023. Books I didn't read as many books in 2024 as in 2023, mainly because they were longer. Any one of the Culture novels is the equivalent of 3 or 4 times The Outsiders, for example. The 30 books I started (and 26 I finished) included: Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc. An excellent handbook for the kakistocratic country we now live in. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. I hope this does not become a handbook...

Item the first: Weather Now got an update today. Under the hood, it got its annual .NET version refresh (to .NET 9), and some code-quality improvements. But I also added a fun new feature called "Weather Score."  This gives a 0-to-100 point value to each weather report, showing at a glance where the best and worst weather is. A perfect day (by my definition) is 22°C with a 10°C dewpoint, light winds, mostly-clear skies, and no precipitation. The weather at O'Hare right now is not, however, perfect, and...

Despite getting back to a relative normal in 2023, 2024 seemed to revert back to how things went in 2020—just without the pandemic. Statistically, though, things remained steady, for the most part: I posted 480 times on The Daily Parker, 20 fewer than in 2023 and 17 below the long-term median. January and July had the most posts (48) and April and December the fewest (34). The mean of 40.0 was slightly lower than the long-term mean (41.34), with a standard deviation of 5.12, reflecting a mixed posting...

Twenty five years ago this evening, I rang in New Year 2000 in the ops center at ING Barings in midtown Manhattan...and nothing happened. Since then, people have largely bought into the myth that because nothing happened, the Y2K problem wasn't a real problem. I assure you, it was a real problem, thousands of programmers spent most of the late '90s fixing it. Remember this when the Unix timestamp problem hits us on 19 January 2038. If my Social Security check that month gets delayed because everyone...

It's New Years Eve, so it's time for the Chicago Sunrise Chart for 2025. Other end-of-year and beginning-of-year posts will dribble out today and tomorrow.

Here's the annual Chicago sunrise chart. As always, you can get sunrise data for your own location at Weather Now. Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2025 3 Jan Latest sunrise until Oct 28th 07:19 16:33 9:13 27 Jan 5pm sunset 07:08 17:00 9:52 4 Feb 7am sunrise 07:00 17:11 10:10 19 Feb 5:30pm sunset 06:41 17:30 10:48 26 Feb 6:30am sunrise 06:30 17:38 11:08 8 Mar Earliest sunrise until Apr 13th Earliest sunset until Oct 28th 06:14 17:50 11:36 9 Mar Daylight saving time begins Latest sunrise until...

The 39th President of the United States died at his home in Plains, Ga., yesterday: The Carter Center in Atlanta announced his death, which came nearly three months after Mr. Carter, already the longest-living president in American history, became the first former commander in chief to reach the century mark. Mr. Carter went into hospice care 22 months ago, but endured longer than even his family expected. “To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a...

Welcome to a revisit to #5 on the Brews and Choos project. Distillery: 28 Mile Vodka, 454 Sheridan Rd., Highwood, Ill.Train line: Metra Union Pacific North, HighwoodTime from Chicago (Ogilvie): 52 minutes, zone 4Distance from station: 300 m After Amtrak effectively cancelled our day trip to Milwaukee on Friday and meeting a third friend up there, my Brews & Choos buddy and I met the other friend in Highwood instead. We ultimately met up at Broken Tee Brewing, but we had an hour to kill while the third...

I had planned to go to Milwaukee for a quick day trip yesterday to further the Brews & Choos Project. Two friends were going to meet me at the Public Market, then go to two breweries and a distillery in the five hours between trains. Alas, after everyone had boarded the 1:05 Hiawatha, Amtrak got all of us off the train and cancelled it because of—no kidding—a flat wheel. We could have gone on the (now-overcrowded) 3:05, but we just decided to forget it and meet one of the friends up in Highwood. So I'll...