The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

The worst part of living in Chicago

This time of year Chicago residents can easily forget the planet orbits an actual star that gives off actual heat and light. This month hasn't helped a bit:

If you're susceptible to SAD---Season Affective Disorder---a form of depression brought on by winter's short days and lack of sunlight, the past 9 days (since Tuesday, January 11) have no doubt been especially rough. The period has logged only 10 percent of its possible sunshine, we're told by veteran National Weather Service observer Frank Wachowski---a total of just 7.9 hours.

Under the best circumstances, a typical January is not one of Chicago's sunnier months. But this month's abysmal 10 percent tally falls far short January's average of 43 percent of its possible sun. That means Chicago area residents have seen less than a quarter of January's typical sunshine.

But good news! We'll have a couple of sunny days later this week. Yes, once that cold front passes and that pile of cold, dry air pushes on through, we'll have plenty of sun—and -16°C temperatures.

Sigh.

Update, 13:56 CT: Look! Up in the sky! It's...it's...the sun!

Guys, he lives here. Move on.

The fight continues today over whether Rahm Emanuel meets Chicago's residency requirements. Of course he does: he always intended to return to Chicago after finishing his service with the Federal Government, which makes him prima facie a Chicago resident. But don't take my word for it; let Cecil Adams explain it:

Let's review. There are two laws applying to Rahm's situation. My friend Greg Hinz says one is a city law and one is a state law. Not so — they're both state laws. If you read only the first one, things look bad for Rahm. Here's what Section 3.1-10-5 of the Illinois Municipal Code says:

A person is not eligible for an elective municipal office unless that person is a qualified elector of the municipality and has resided in the municipality at least one year next preceding the election or appointment.

Rahm did not, of course, live in Chicago for at least one year prior to the election. As one of the petitions objecting to his spot on the ballot states, he moved with his family to Washington, D.C., where he served as Obama's chief of staff from January 2009 till October 2010.

Let's turn to the second law. Chapter 36, Section 3.2(a) of the Illinois Compiled Statutes includes the following provision:

A permanent abode is necessary to constitute a residence within the meaning of Section 3-1 [which says who's allowed to vote in Illinois]. No elector or spouse shall be deemed to have lost his or her residence in any precinct or election district in this State by reason of his or her absence on business of the United States, or of this State.

Does this second law contradict the first law? Of course not; it merely provides an exception.

It's a distracting petition, and the petitioners know it. But every fool must have his day in court. (Cecil supplies a few other reasons why the petitioners might be even more foolish.)

Getting hunches confirmed

It turns out, December was a lot colder (relatively) than the rest of 2010:

So after nine months of above-average temperatures, including three in the top-10 warmest in recorded history, we got December, in the top decile of coldest months. I'm happy about the last two days when we had a brief, spring-like spell of 10°C temperatures, but wow, what a tease.

Memo to Weather: Christmas is over

I can imagine that my friends in the Northeast aren't too happy today:

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY
1240 PM EST SUN DEC 26 2010

...DANGEROUS WINTER STORM IMMINENT...

...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM EST MONDAY...

* HAZARDS...HEAVY SNOW AND STRONG WINDS...WITH CONSIDERABLE
  BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF SNOW WITH NEAR ZERO VISIBILITY AT
  TIMES.

* ACCUMULATIONS...15 TO 20 INCHES...WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS UP
  TO 2 FEET POSSIBLE.

* IMPACTS...EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TRAVEL CONDITIONS DEVELOPING
  THIS AFTERNOON INTO THE EVENING DUE TO SIGNIFICANT SNOW
  ACCUMULATIONS...AND STRONG WINDS CAUSING CONSIDERABLE BLOWING
  AND DRIFTING OF SNOW. VISIBILITIES WILL BE NEAR ZERO AT
  TIMES... WITH WHITEOUT CONDITIONS EXPECTED. STRONG WINDS MAY
  ALSO DOWN SOME POWER LINES...TREE LIMBS...AND CHRISTMAS
  DECORATIONS.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES THIS AFTERNOON INTO
  MUCH OF TONIGHT. THE SNOW WILL TAPER OFF FROM WEST TO EAST
  MONDAY MORNING...BUT STRONG NORTHWEST WINDS WILL PERSIST THROUGH
  THE AFTERNOON.

* WINDS....DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM TONIGHT...NORTH WINDS
  WILL INCREASE TO 25 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS OF 40 TO 60 MPH.
  ISOLATED HIGHER GUSTS ARE POSSIBLE ACROSS LONG ISLAND.

We've got a little lake-effect snow right now, with about 15 cm on the ground, but nothing too heinous. Parker, in fact, just got half an hour of running around in it at Oz Park. He's even doing better on recall. Not much better, but still.

Eclipse coming tomorrow

The earth will cast its shadow on the moon Monday night:

But on the longest night of the year, a full moon will disappear at 1:40 a.m. behind the Earth's shadow. There won't be another total lunar eclipse on the night of the winter solstice for 84 years.

Weather permitting — and the forecast isn't favorable in the Chicago area, calling for clouds building Monday and snow overnight — the eclipse will be visible everywhere in the continental United States, and at its darkest, the moon will be halfway up from the horizon in the south-southwest sky.

We'll be able to see the moon start to disappear around 12:30 am Central time, with a total eclipse from 1:40 am until 2:53 am.

Unfortunately, the weather forecast calls for snow, which in Chicago just makes everything look yellow. (Chicago uses sodium-vapor streetlights that cast banana-yellow light.) But if you're up, or you live west of here and have better weather, go out and look.

Chicago startup environment getting better

Chicago Public Radio analyzes losing Bump to Silicon Valley as a demonstration of the lack of VC and incubator support here:

David Lieb and his friend Jake Mintz hatched [Bump] at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business when they discovered in that flurry of the first few weeks of school that they really, really hated manually typing all their new friends’ contact information into their phones.

So, along with their friend Andy Huibers, they figured out a way to “bump” two phones together to transmit that contact info. And their new smartphone application was born on March 27th, 2009. Things moved fast from there - they won the school’s New Venture Challenge business plan competition and in the summer of 2009, just like Gold Rush era miners of yore, they packed up and headed to California.

They didn’t go with the intention of staying. ... [And] just because they got [a $3m VC infusion] there didn’t mean they had to stay. They could have come back to Chicago. But they didn’t. They opened their headquarters in Mountain View, California, and now have 15 employees there and are “aggressively hiring.”

Lieb says the main reason was because Huibers lived in California already. But there was another reason that speaks to Silicon Valley’s dominance.

"We knew we needed to hire a bunch of people, and being here in the Valley is really where all that technical talent is," Lieb said in an interview.

Chicago has lots of talent as well, and it has amenities that the suburbs of San Jose simply can't offer. But I also have found some limitations on the Chicago startup scene, and that many startups here have to be self-funded for the reasons Ashley Gross mentions in her story. (I'll publish my paper later this week.)

Sunset at the beach

Ah, how lovely to be at the beach in Chicago tonight. Just look at it:

Oh, just kidding. That's actually Miami Beach at sunrise in January 2007. This is what Lake Michigan looked like this evening:

The video's resolution isn't high enough to show the snowflakes proceeding in a generally horizontal fashion to the south. Nor does it show my dog, who couldn't decide whether all that snow and water was freaky or fun. (He ultimately decided the water was freaky, the snow was fun, and getting toweled off feels great.)

The bad with the good

In Chicago, we get about 10 days a year like this against about 20 leave-work-early-it's-too-gorgeous-out days:

Current conditions at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters: 1°C, winds from the north at 46 km/h gusting to 57 km/h, with snow. Oh, it gets better, according to the National Weather Service:

Today: Snow and areas of blowing snow. Temperature falling to around -4°C by 5pm. Very windy, with a north wind between 45 and 65 km/h, with gusts as high as 90 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime snow accumulation of 4 to 8 cm possible.

Tonight: Snow and areas of blowing snow before midnight, then areas of blowing snow and a slight chance of snow after midnight. Low around -12°C. Wind chill values as low as -22°C. Very windy, with a north northwest wind between 50 and 65 km/h, with gusts as high as 80 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New snow accumulation of less than one centimeter possible.

Again, though, I have to remind my fellow Chicagoans: for every day we get like this, we get two or three where you don't want to go back inside.

My remote office, noticed

Sullivan included my note to him about The Duke of Perth in his thread on America's corner pubs. The whole thread is worth reading, as most Americans don't seem to know that such thing as a corner pub exists—except those of us who live in actual cities:

I'm sitting in a great pub in Chicago right now: the Duke of Perth. It's walking distance from my apartment, has wonderful Shepherd's Pie (though they assure me it contains no shepherds), Theakston's Twisted Thistle IPA on draught, and 90 varieties of single-malt Scotch. It also has no TVs, free WiFi, and two active fireplaces. Bonus: it's owned by a guy who immigrated from Scotland.

Sullivan's blog has hundreds of thousands of page views per day.