The Atlantic Cities blog examines why we don't see tons of dead pigeons in cities, even though we see tons of live ones:

Here's a brief accounting of all the ferocious animals that eat urban pigeons:

Red-Tailed and Cooper's Hawks: These stocky killers know that fat city pigeons have the juiciest meat. So they roost all throughout the states in trees, on roofs and atop telephone poles, waiting to take the birds “on the wing,” as Seerveld puts it. “In Orlando where I live, it's unbelievable,” he says. “They pick off pigeons like they're one of their favorite food items.” The wildlife expert recalls one time when an Aeropostale employee called him because a hawk was stalking a pigeon INSIDE the clothing store. “A pigeon flew in and a hawk chased it right through the door,” he says. “I caught it with a net and brought it outside and let it go.” Here is that hungry, hungry hawk.

Author John Metcalfe helpfully links to a few videos, including one of a hawk eating a live pigeon and a turtle moving faster than you ever thought possible.

Two unrelated but interesting items. First, Walter Russel Meade rings down the curtain on OWS:

To some degree, it was killed by its “friends.” The tiny left wing groups that exist in the country jumped all over the movement; between them and the deranged and occasionally dangerous homeless people and other rootless wanderers drawn to the movement’s increasingly disorderly campsites, OWS looked and sounded less and less like anything the 99 percent want anything to do with. At the same time, the movement largely failed to connect with the African American and Hispanic churchgoers who would have to be the base for any serious grass roots urban political mobilization. The trade unions picked up the movement briefly but dropped it like a hot brick as they found the brand less and less attractive.

It is as if the Tea Party had been taken over by the Aryan Brotherhood and delusional vagrants while failing to connect with either evangelical Christians or respectable libertarians. The MSM at one point was visibly hungering and thirsting for exactly that fate of marginalization to happen to the Tea Party, and the MSM did its klutzy best to tar the Tea Party with that kind of Mad Hatter extremism. The Tea Partiers by and large (not always or cleanly) escaped the fatal embrace of the nutters and the ranters on their side of the spectrum; OWS was occupied by its own fringe, and so died.

On a happier note, NPR had a quick hit on craft brewing:

Beer production has been flat in the U.S. for decades — it's actually a tiny bit lower than it was 30 years ago (find a comprehensive data set here). And the number of big breweries has gone down.

But over the same time, the number of small, independent breweries in America has exploded. ... Craft breweries account for more than 95 percent of the breweries in America, but they make just 6 percent of the beer.

And here's a map of craft breweries per capita by state:

The bad news is I've been in meetings with clients all day. The good news is their office has a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Updates as warranted. And as I have time for.

I had meant to make a note of my 3,000th blog posting, but I completely forgot it was coming. So, after 2,353 days (and 24 minutes), three house moves, a few significant personal events, and Parker's entire life, The Daily Parker is still going strong.

At the historical posting rate for the blog (1.28 per day), I'll hit 6,000 entries in September 2018 and 10,000 entries by April 2027. (For the last two years, though, I've posted about 1.5 per day, so you could see 10,000 as early as April 2025.) Stick around.

And thanks for reading.

The word we would use in programming to describe this situation is: "FFFUUUUUUUUU—":

Someone parked by Braille. Someone has grey paint on his bumper. Someone is my sworn enemy.

At a client site all day, with about 10 minutes for lunch. Regular posting will resume Sunday.

Pauvre chat:

(Via Sullivan.)

I like being busy, but it does take time away from lower-priority pursuits like blogging. If I had more time, I'd pontificate on the following:

• Paul Krugman wonders why Paul Ryan is taken seriously, as do I;
• Chris Mooney and Kevin Drum wonder what about the Republican brain makes them so opposed to facts;
• The Atlantic Cities has a fun gallery of world subway platforms; and
• The Times examines the ridiculousness of taking laptops out at airport checkpoints.

For now, though, it's back to the mines.

Mike Wallace: Now, you've watched this gate for many years, right?

St Peter: Yes, that's right.

MW: And do you decide who gets in the gates?

SP: Well...I mean, I don't make the final decisions, no...

MW: But you can, for example, send someone to the back of the line?

SP: That's...you know, that's not something that would be done. In some, rare cases, people decide to return to the end of the line on their own.

MW: Peter, come on. Did Carl Sagan go back on his own?

SP: Well, look...you know, Carl was...look, Carl was a special case, being an atheist and all. There wasn't a decision made or anything. He got to the gate and decided, you know, on his own I think, that he didn't want to go in.

MW: Well, we spoke to Carl a little while ago, and he said, I'm quoting here, "There were billions and billions of people in the line, and I had to walk past all of them after St. Peter turned me away." What do you think about that? Did you make Carl Sagan walk back to the end of a line containing billions of people?

SP: OK, you know, I'm not... Look, if a decision was made, it wasn't made by me. I don't make policy, I'm just the guy, you know, at the gate.

MW: Sagan went on to say that you said a couple of other things to him. Peter, did you call Carl Sagan a "dirty unbeliever" and an "apostate?"

SP: Now, wait, that's just... Look, I can't comment on that.

MW: Peter, did you send Carl Sagan to the end of the line?

SP: Mike, I'm sorry, I really can't answer that question.

MW: Peter, did you send Carl Sagan to the end of the line because he was an atheist?

MW (in studio): Peter ended the interview at that point. But still, we're left with the question, who decides who gets in? After repeated denials from the Trinity, we were able to speak to Metatron...

Some items that have gotten my attention:

• Linda Greenhouse on the Supreme Court's divisions, and how they may throw the health-care law into chaos
• Laura Miller on Game of Thrones' real-life inspirations and Charli Carpenter writing in Foreign Affairs on Game of Thrones as Realpolitik
• The Daily with more about craft brewing's increasing market share
• On Friday, schlock artist Thomas Kinkade died, joining a pantheon of artists we wish the world would forget but probably won't, a group that includes Johannes Pachelbel, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Le Corbusier.

More, I'm sure, later.

The Mega Millions lottery, held in 42 states including Illinois, now has an estimated jackpot over $540m. (The amount will probably be higher as more people buy tickets.) But how much do you really get if you win?

First, you have to choose whether to get 26 annual payments or take the award as a lump sum. The lottery uses a discounted cash flow analysis so that the amount you get as a cash lump is worth the same as 26 equal payments of the whole thing. In other words, if you get a lump sum, you actaully only get the amount that the total award would be worth if you took it in the future.

Take that $540m prize. If you take it as an annuity over 26 years, you get 26 payments of just under $21m each. But a promise of $21m in 2038 is worth a lot less than $21m right now. Think about it: if you have that $21m today, instead of 26 years from now, you can make investments, give it away, buy a lot of stuff that gives you happiness, etc. So how much is $21m in 2038 worth right now? Only $10.7m. Or, put another way, if you take $10.7m in 2038 or $21m today, it's worth about the same—according to the lottery.

We can figure this out by looking at the lump-sum value you would get if you opted for it. If you won today's lottery, Mega Millions will give you $540m only if you take it in 26 payments. Or they'll give you a steaming pile of $389m in cash right now. Because to them, it's the same value.

Why? If you win, you have to make a bet on whether they've estimated something called the discount rate correctly. The discount rate is a guess about how much money will be worth in the future because of things like inflation and the risk that investments change in value. For example, if I bet on a discount rate of 4% (which is historically about middling in the U.S.), I'm betting money gets less valuable by about 4% per year on average. In that case, if I give you the option of taking $100 today or $104 a year from now, and you think the discount rate is 4%, it's an even bet. But if you think the discount rate is 3%, you would take the $104 in a year—because by your estimate, $100 invested today is only going to be worth $103 in a year.

Using a quick Excel function, I figured out that Mega Millions uses a discount rate of 2.6%, well below historical averages but close to what we've seen in the last five years. Here's the calculation:

Yeah, but watch this. If you increase the discount rate to 4%, the estimate of the present value of that $540m drops to $332m, a difference of $57m. In other words, because the lottery uses such a low rate, if you bet that the rate is 1.4% higher, you're betting that you'll come out ahead $57m by taking the money right now instead of over 26 years.

So, great, you're getting $389m in one big pile. Excellent.

Later today I'll talk about your Federal (36%) and Illinois (5%) taxes...and what they might do to the calculation.

Via reader DB, a report of a coyote captured in downtown Boston:

At about 3 p.m., the 40-pound animal was finally located by Animal Rescue League workers. It was found cowering next to a downtown building near the corner of Lincoln and Summer streets, surrounded by a crowd of curious onlookers and police. Using teamwork, a large net, and a catchpole, the rescue workers were able to catch it.

[A Boston Animal Rescue League spokesman] suspected that the animal most likely was able to enter the city by following train tracks, but couldn’t find its way back. He said this happens a few times a year and that coyotes are much easier to catch than deer.

We've had coyotes in Chicago news a few times in the past couple of years. I've seen them as well, the last time right by the Whole Foods in Lincoln Park. I love how they've learned to adapt to us—and what they're doing to the rabbit and Canada goose populations. (Sorry, Bugs, you're just a long-eared rat.)

I don't want to lose these things:

• The Economist hosted an online debate about aviation security between security expert Bruce Schneier and TSA director Kip Hawley.
• The Atlantic explains why conservatives are afraid of cities.
• a la card Chicago, which sells a deck of 52 $10-off coupons to area restaurants, has a one-day promotion today for 50% off. (Enter code "SPRING2012" in the appropriate box.

That is all. More UK and France photos later today.

When visiting a familiar place, it helps to sit on the plane next to someone who lives there. The local person, recognizing that you've already done the tourist stuff, can recommend places that you might not see otherwise. I had this good fortune yesterday.

This afternoon I traipsed around Marylebone, which is just north of Hyde Park. My seat-mate recommended two places specifically, so I went to them. First, Daunt Books, on Marylebone High Street:

I love bookstores; I miss real bookstores; I could spend a day in this one:

After wishing for half an hour that I could buy half a tonne of books, I went around the corner to La Fromagerie. Next time I'm in London, I'm going to eat everything in the store. Even the little cold cheese room made me swoon. Instead of getting a 10-kilo variety pack, I settled for a simple, £2 medallion of unpasteurized goat cheese. Words are insufficient to describe it, other than to say, it was yum.

Then I hopped on the Tube to this famous location:

Yes, that's Abbey Road, and those are a bunch of tourists blocking traffic. In the 30 minutes I hung out there, no fewer than 10 groups posed on the zebra crossing. (I confess, I took photos for two of them.)

Now, off to find food and ale. Relatively early bed tonight: tomorrow the Chunnel.

Yesterday, probably when I got on the bus going home, I lost my Starbucks card and a credit card. I have another card on the same account, but with a different number, that I keep out of my wallet in case something like this happens. As soon as I discovered the missing credit card, I called the issuer's customer service line, and...you can see where this is going, right?

Yes, they closed the card I still had and left the lost one open. I discovered this a few minutes ago. Fortunately, the person I talked to just now understood what I was saying, saw what had happened, and is now sending both replacement cards overnight. (The haste is required because I'm going to the UK this weekend, and I need at least one credit card overseas.)

So, points to the issuer for correcting a mistake expeditiously. That just about evens out my frustration this morning trying to get coffee.

Oh, and about that trip to the Land of Uk: it's a pretty quick weekend, courtesy of ridiculously low fares from American Airlines earlier this year. I also scored a ticket on the Eurostar Saturday for £49.50 outbound, which was too good to pass up. I'm so looking forward to the weekend. I just hope I have at least one credit card to use...

As I mentioned last night, the U.S. Census Bureau uses a different algorithm to estimate world population than the U.N. So despite all the stories last October about the U.N.'s population estimate hitting 7 billion, the Census estimate hit 7 billion...about 20 seconds ago:

Thanks for playing. Check back in about 12 years for the 8th billion mark.

Back in October, the United Nations declared that the world population had hit 7 billion. The U.S. Census Bureau, however, believes differently. Here are the World and U.S. population clocks from a moment ago:

So, as far as the Census is concerned, we'll hit 7 billion tonight sometime.

That the Census didn't update its estimates to match the U.N.'s suggests they're confident of their more conservative model.

I'm close to naming the new baby ("Lena" is the front-runner). Meanwhile, I took it to the local dealer so I could get a full inspection, and so they could update the navigation software. It turns out, the car's still under warranty, so (a) the inspection was free and (b) so was the scheduled service they did for me.

So at least for the next few months, until the warranty runs out, I'm not going to have to sell Parker to pay for car maintenance. Whew.

Two more views of my new car, with accurate color corrections:

(Yes, that's Parker in the background.)

I'll do proper photos when I get the right combination of light and location. Also, because we've had some rain and snow, she already needs a bath before we can do it right.

So, what to call her? She's 3 years old, born in München, very German. A friend suggested Brigitta, Brigid, and Mädchen, but that none of those seems right to me. Freya? Hanna? Lena? I think I'll have to live with her for a bit to figure it out.

I do love them:

The term "brainstorming," conjured up by BBDO partner Alex Osborn in the 1940s, conjures up images of creative people in a creative meeting creatively coming up with great ideas. Only, it doesn't actually work that well:

The first empirical test of Osborn’s brainstorming technique was performed at Yale University, in 1958. Forty-eight male undergraduates were divided into twelve groups and given a series of creative puzzles. The groups were instructed to follow Osborn’s guidelines. As a control sample, the scientists gave the same puzzles to forty-eight students working by themselves. The results were a sobering refutation of Osborn. The solo students came up with roughly twice as many solutions as the brainstorming groups, and a panel of judges deemed their solutions more “feasible” and “effective.

And yet Osborn was right about one thing: like it or not, human creativity has increasingly become a group process. “Many of us can work much better creatively when teamed up,” he wrote, noting that the trend was particularly apparent in science labs. “In the new B. F. Goodrich Research Center”—Goodrich was an important B.B.D.O. client—“250 workers . . . are hard on the hunt for ideas every hour, every day,” he noted. “They are divided into 12 specialized groups—one for each major phase of chemistry, one for each major phase of physics, and so on.” Osborn was quick to see that science had ceased to be solitary.

Lehrer continues to examine the success of Broadway musicals and the story of MIT's Building 20, "one of the most creative spaces in the world" from the 1940s until its demolition in 1998.

My schedule this week has been: SFO to ORD, sleep, client in Suburbistan, dinner with friend, sleep, work, and in a few minutes, ORD to MSP. If I have time at the hotel tonight—and I can remain conscious—I'll silence the critics.

There are a few examples of public transportation in the world that double as fun things for tourists over and above their practical uses for commuters. The Chicago El's Loop section, for example, or New York's Roosevelt Island Tramway.

In San Francisco, tourists mob the cable cars, pushing regular commuters aside, and removing them from this category. Same, to some extent, with the Muni F-line streetcars. but near the convergence of the F and California St. Cable Car is the Ferry Terminal Building, which, despite its transformation in the last 20 years into an urban market, actually has ferries. I took one of them yesterday.

I had to get from the city to Sausalito. The Sausalito Ferry is, it turns out, the best way to do that. The $4.85* fare not only gets you to Sausalito, but it also gives you this view:

The whole trip is like that. In fairness to the city, it wasn't as gloomy as it appears in the photo; I just caught it at a particularly dramatic moment.

Upon disembarking in Sausalito, however, this sign greeted me:

I have no idea what that means, especially since without cholesterol, animals die. But, hey, it's California, and no one from the Sausalito Police came to steal my cholesterol.

----

* It's $4.85 if you have a Clipper Card. Otherwise it's $9. If you regularly travel to a particular city, I recommend getting a transit card.

That's the gist of an article in this month's Atlantic, profiling the work of biologist Jaroslav Flegr:

[I]f Flegr is right, the “latent” [Toxoplasma gondii] parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia. When you add up all the different ways it can harm us, says Flegr, “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.”

Flegr was especially surprised to learn, though, that the protozoan appeared to cause many sex-specific changes in personality. Compared with uninfected men, males who had the parasite were more introverted, suspicious, oblivious to other people’s opinions of them, and inclined to disregard rules. Infected women, on the other hand, presented in exactly the opposite way: they were more outgoing, trusting, image-conscious, and rule-abiding than uninfected women.

The idea that parasites affect our behavior is relatively new, but gaining ground. And T. gondii may not be the only one that affects human behavior. This is a bit of science to watch.

Writer Matt Glassman wrestles with why Bradshaw didn't take a knee on the 1 in yesterday's game:

League wide, 99.4% of extra points were made this year. The Giants were 45 for 45. You think Brady has less than a 0.6% chance of leading a TD drive with a minute and two timeouts? Not a chance. According to the NFL win probability stat, the Pats had a 4% chance to win when they got the ball back. And they only had 1 timeout as it turned out. And win probability doesn’t take into account the individual team, or whether or not you have Tom Brady. Here’s the thing: football is a zero-sum game. If Belichek was correct to let the Giants score, then by definition the Giants were wrong to get into the end zone there. By the above math, the Giants gave the Pats a 24-1 chance to win, when they could have made it roughly a 199-1 chance. That’s right: by getting in the end zone, the Giants increased their chance of losing eightfold.

He goes on to outline how it was the wrong choice by the numbers, but probably the better choice for the individuals involved. Good stuff.

The Superbowl starts in a little over an hour, with weather in Indianapolis no one expected: clear skies and 9°C. In Chicago it's just a smidge cooler, but still a beautiful afternoon for February. Or for March, for that matter.

Parker gets one more walk before the game. Go Giants! (For why, see Robert Wright's decision tree on the subject.)

I can scarcely believe I've had this guy for 10 years:

The car is named João, because he's from Brazil, and he seemed kind of like a Joe: He's a little rough around the edges, he's fun to hang out with, and he's super-reliable—except for the occasional hangover.

The photo is from the day after I got him. He's scarcely aged. (See, for example, this shot from last February. You can kind of see the dings, but he's still got a good profile.)

This came to me from one of the creators, Deena Rubinson, someone I've known since the mid-1990s. It's billed as "the saddest comedy ever," which may be true. It's also well-acted, well-written, and well-edited—which is a lot harder to do than people think. I'm looking forward to episode 4...

I love weekends like this past one. I went to New York ($150 round-trip, including taxes), saw a couple of friends, and did something fun I would never have done without being taken along by people who refused to tell me what it was all about (more on that later).

I also managed to get from Grand Central Terminal in New York to the Whole Foods in Lincoln Park, Chicago, in just over four hours, in part because American Airlines and I like each other so much.

Details later.

Via Strange Maps, malts.com has a free handy whisky chart everyone should bring to Duke of Perth this week:

A couple of us have come to Brown Deer, Wis., to work with a vendor on an upcoming software release. (Brown Deer is about 160 km north of Chicago.) The vendor has been über-cooperative, the trip up (for me, anyway) took less than two hours, and we're getting everything done we weren't able to do from our respective offices in other states.

Two of the guys are from Texas, one is from Delhi, and I'm from the Greatest City in North America. So the only thing we're having any difficulty negotiating is food.

At lunch today we scouted Google Maps rigorously for anything other than Applebee's, and found the only place better within a 20-minute drive: Olive Garden. Between discussing the project and other stuff about work, we decided that Brown Deer is a food desert. So tonight, after scanning Yelp and getting other recommendations, we're heading into downtown Milwaukee for some real food.

Unfortunately, that means tomorrow night we'll have Applebee's. But at least we'll make the effort.

In 2011, I:

• took 8,198 photos, including 4,352 in Chicago, 881 in Japan, 588 in Portugal, and 337 in the U.K. (and only 71 of Parker). This is almost as many as I took in 2009 and 2010 combined (9,140), and more than I took in the first 8 years I owned a camera (1983-1991, 7,671).
• flew 115,845 km but drove less than 4,500 km
• visited 5 countries (the UK, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Japan) and 8 states (California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Indiana, North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) in 35 trips. Sadly, this meant Parker boarded for more than 100 days
• spent more than 186 hours walking Parker, which partially made up for all those days being boarded
• wrote 539 blog entries, with the most consistency in the blog's 6-year history (averaging 1.48 per day with a standard deviation of only 0.11)
• got 2.3 million hits (object views) on the Daily Parker, and 1.7 million on Weather Now, including 47,956 and 181,285 page views, respectively. According to Google Analytics, the blog had 28,613 unique visitors, and Weather Now had 26,539.
• read only 34 books, but as these included the first four of the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, it should count as 46
• started and ended the year in the same place (Duke of Perth, Chicago)
• went to only 8 movies, 3 plays, 3 concerts, and 3 baseball games, which is terribly sad

Oh, and I also got a master's degree. (Almost forgot.)

It's 2012 everywhere from Cairo to points east, and I've got a lot to do between now and tomorrow, so I will postpone whatever end-of-year summaries, year-in-review posts, photos of Parker, and looks forward to next year until tomorrow. Suffice to say, I didn't accomplish everything I'd hoped to do today, this month, or this year, but I'm satisfied. Mostly. And I think 2012 will improve upon 2011, which improved upon 2010, and so on back to 1999, which, for a variety of reasons, hasn't been topped.

So how to make 2012 better than 1999, without moving back to New York, being 13 years younger, and having the confidence and drive that can only come from unbridled hubris riding on a crashing ignorance of one's profession? I'm sure it won't be that difficult. Perhaps more nuanced, though.

Thanks for reading this year. Expect another few hundred posts next year, with more photos, stuff about Parker, rants about the election, and possibly a note here and there about the weather. And expect 2012 to rock, generally.

At my office today, or rather directly above it, workers are installing carpet. The office is in an 1880s-era loft, with very little separating the banging above from my desk below. Add to that a slightly loosened support holding up the HVAC tubing that squeaks every time someone walks past the door (or, for example, pounds on the floor above with sledgehammers), and I'm thinking of jumping out the window.

A moment's reflection suggests tossing someone else out the window, of course, and since the someone in question has a large hammer, I will demur.

I sense a long lunch coming on...

After almost exactly 5 days (actually 5 days and 20 minutes), I'm unpacking, laundering, rehydrating, and figuring out where I put the gifts I didn't get a chance to hand out before leaving.

Regular updates resume presently.

Oh, and:

I'm at the Peet's Coffee in Half Moon Bay, Calif., while the rest of the family slowly starts their days. In the past hour I've heard the following:

• "All meditation techniques are awesome."—60-something woman
• "What I really need is someone who's good at syndicating real-estate investments."—the same woman three minutes later
• "If you eat something that only eats vegetarians, that's still vegetarian."—man of unknown vintage wearing dark sunglasses and a pony tail, trying to work out why the Jewish clerk didn't have (a) Christmas dinner or (b) crab meat yesterday

I think the clerk had more difficulty working out how crab meat got involved than how someone living outside San Francisco in the 21st Century failed to grasp the relevance of Christmas to non-Christians. Apparently the latter happens all the time.

Then there's this Captcha I just encountered, which did its job so well it prevented a non-automated system (me) from proceeding:

(This may have been the vendor's attempt at Hanukkah humor.)

Every time I visit San Francisco, I stop here:

Today I only left with 400 g, which unfortunately I'll have to leave with my family. Well, unfortunately for me; knowing them, it won't last two weeks in the house. That's an acceptable outcome.

I'm still banging away at software today—why is this damn socket exception thrown under small loads?—so I only have a minute to post some stuff I found interesting:

• Chicago and the State of Illinois are planning the largest urban park in the world in the mostly-abandoned Lake Calumet and South Works areas of the south side.
• It looks like the far-right has hijacked Hungary's government, in the way that right-wing governments do, which should remind everyone who lives in a democracy how fragile the form of government can be.
• The Atlantic's Ta-Nahesi Coates has one of the best definitions of bigotry I've encountered: "The bigot is never to blame. Always is he besieged--by gays and their radical agenda, by women and their miniskirts, by fleet-footed blacks. It is an ideology of 'not my fault.' "
• I have tentatively decided that Facebook's Timeline feature is cool, while at the same time recognizing how it once again makes it harder for average users to control the privacy of their data on the site.

More updates as events warrant.

In the past day I've seen two movies, both adaptations from really good novels: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Incendiary.

The former, adapted from John le Carré's 1974 novel, brought me right into the Cold War and had me transfixed by Gary Oldman's performance. After next weekend—when I think I'll have a couple of hours of free time—I'm queuing up the 1979 version with Alec Guinness.

The latter, adapted from Chris Cleve's 2005 novel, disappointed me. Except for Michelle Williams' superb acting, it missed the point of Cleve's novel so completely I wonder if director Sharon Maguire read the novel or the Cliff's Notes. Perhaps the novel's dark and disturbed ending didn't test well? It wasn't a happy novel; it wasn't supposed to be. Maguire made an entertaining Bridget Jones' Diary, so why'd she miss so badly here?

I'm juggling a couple of clients today, so I can't write entire entries on any of these:

• My favorite steakhouse in Chicago, Morton's, will get bought out by a company in Houston. The deal closes in February, so I'll have to get in there once I finish digesting my Christmas dinner. (Could take weeks.)
• Christopher Hitchens died last night; Andrew Sullivan has posted great stuff about him today.
• The President will sign the Defense Authorization Bill into law, even though it contains almost-certainly-unconstitutional provisions.

OK, back to the mines...

A client visit up in Manitowoc, Wis., ended a little earlier than planned today, so I was able to:

1. Avoid rush-hour traffic in both Milwaukee and Chicago;
2. Pick Parker up tonight instead of tomorrow; and
3. Snap this photo from the roof of the Lincoln Park Whole Foods:

So I thought I'd take another look at Sebastian Gutierrez' film Girl Walks Into a Bar the other day. But before the film started I saw this:

Not knowing what to make of these options, I chose the two minutes of proselytizing and went to make my lunch. When I got back, the movie was on its way without interruptions, as promised.

What the LDS church hopes to accomplish through this PR campaign escapes me for the moment.

If you don't know Hyperbole and a Half, set aside an hour and read every one of Allie Brosh's posts. Since it's December, though, start with this one:

By the time I was done reinventing her, Mary carried a cane, walked with an exaggerated limp and was completely covered in BandAids.

She was also blind.

I started reading the blog last night when I got home for dinner and finally stopped 90 minutes later because my face hurt from laughing.

Apparently they came from China:

While the descent of dogs from wolves through domestication is non-controversial in genetics, determining the region in the world where this occurred has been more of a question. Earlier studies had suggested a Middle Eastern origin for dogs.

A new study focusing on the lineage of the Y-chromosome indicates that dogs originated somewhere in eastern Asia, south of the Yangtze River.

My last meal in Tokyo came off a conveyor belt:

For ¥600 I got this:

...plus a salmon roll, a pair of shrimp nigiri, and a pair of grilled salmon nigiri. And it was yum.

If you're ever southwest of the Shinjuku train station, look for this place:

And in a little over an hour, the long voyage home begins...

I didn't get up at 4am to go watch the tuna auction at the Tsukiji Fish Market, but I did go there for lunch. Oh, what a lunch. This man knows how to make sushi:

And I found the place by looking for a line:

Then I had one tekka maki roll, one tai nigiri, one hamachi, and because the tekka maki made me want to cry, I had a maguro.

Let me explain this tuna.

No, there is no time to explain, let me sum up: It came off the boat this morning.

From the first bite of the tekka maki, when the tuna started melting on my tongue, I understood sushi. I'll still enjoy Green Tea, Ringo, and a couple other places in Chicago, but now, I've had the ur-sushi, right at the source. I might have to go back there tomorrow or Thursday for lunch... (Tomorrow and Thursday? Possibly.)

Oh, and the miso soup? Unbelievable.

Every year, the Economist publishes the Big Mac Index, "a fun guide to whether currencies are at their “correct” level. It is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), the notion that in the long run exchange rates should move towards the rate that would equalise the prices of a basket of goods and services around the world." The current spot price of a Big Mac in Tokyo today is ¥680: just under $9. Yes, NINE DOLLARS.

This fact might cushion the surprise I experienced this evening when I discovered that four small chicken skewers (yakitori), one medium bowl of rice, and a beer, cost $32.75, including tax. This wasn't at the Tokyo equivalent of Charlie Trotter's; this was at an anonymous izakaya near the Shinjuku train station.

Now, friends and enemies alike will tell you that I routinely spend that much at, say, my remote office. There's a tip, for starters, not to mention the occasional disnumeria after I've spent an afternoon there. Only, at Duke of Perth, that amount goes a little farther.

I've noticed other things beside the angina-inducing prices in this city. In no particular order:

• I stand out. I've traveled all over the world, and in no other city (except possibly Shanghai) do I stick out more obviously than I do here. I find no small irony in that here, people don't know whether I'm American or Albanian; but they know I speak English, they know I'm not from these parts, and they know I'm the most likely person in any crowd to act unpredictably. It's not just me; all European-looking people look out of place here. And we all smile wanly at each other on the streets. It's odd.
• Shibuya at night looks just like you'd imagine, sort of Piccadilly Circus, Times Square, and North Michigan Avenue smashed together and fed amphetamines. I'm glad I had the experience. People who know me will understand how happy I am to report that I have been to the most crowded, most chaotic, and most commercial place I have ever seen (i.e., the Shinjuku train station), on my way to the most crowded, most chaotic, and most commercial place the world has ever seen (i.e., Shibuya Crossing at 5pm). And this was Sunday night. Tomorrow, when both the train station and the shopping area are actually busy, I might avoid it. In fact, since my access to the rest of Japan depends on going through the busiest train station in the world, I may start fantasizing about renting a cabin in upper Manitoba for my next vacation.

Obligatory Shibuya-at-night photo:

• No one here speaks English, but it doesn't matter. I've encountered none but helpful, patient people for the last two days. The price of dinner tonight may have made my baby cheeses cry, but the wait staff really dug in and helped me find the right words in my little dictionary. They were also enormously impressed that I know how to use chopsticks, which puzzled me, because I haven't encountered too many Americans who can't. Perhaps they thought I was British?

None of these things really bothers me, by the way. Well, all right, the crowds in Shibuya did, but it's Tokyo, so there are crowds, so what? I mean, we don't have this back home: