The Daily Parker

Still busy. So busy.

• Some intrepid Tribune reporters went to every bar in Wrigleyville so you don't have to.
• Meanwhile, Crain's went to a bunch of breweries and wineries in Southwestern Michigan so you can also.
• Do you want to hear Trump's self-immolation at last night's Alfred E Smith dinner?
• Better yet, just go back and re-watch last night's Cubs game. They're one away from their first pennant since 1945. This could happen...

And now I have to set up a development environment.

Recaps of the debate comprise just a few of the things I haven't had time to read today:

• Who hated Trump's caginess on whether he'd accept the election results if he lost? Everyone: The Economist, The New Republic, The National Review, Talking Points Memo, everyone. 
• Trump's debate performance is being compared to book reports by kids who haven't read the book.
• Pilot Patrick Smith says Trump's airline wasn't that bad for customers, but it never made a profit either.
• Meanwhile, the Cubs beat the Dogders 10-2, which means the series will be decided at Wrigley on Saturday or Sunday.
• Looks like Chicago will have a warm-ish November and a normal-ish winter.
• One of the world's largest data centers, here in the South Loop area of Chicago, will soon be a lot bigger.
• Funny statistic: almost all airport noise complaints come from a handful of people—like the one person in Maryland who complained about Washington Dulles 1,024 times last year.
• Finally, "Hamilton," which I saw Sunday, got a rave from the Tribune.

Back to my meetings.

Why am I not super-excited about the Cubs being in the playoffs? Well, take tonight's game, for example. Right towards the end, Fox Sports' color guy pointed out that in 200 postseason appearances, the Dodgers have never had back-to-back shutouts.

Until tonight.

You know what? Call me when the Cubs win their third game in this series.

I'd planned to wear a Cubs hat every day during the NLCS and World Series this year. Yesterday, however, Hamilton took precedence. I won't make that mistake again. The Cubs are now 1-1 with the Dodgers, and they still have to win 7 more games this year.

I'm also swamped at work.

Last night the Cubs came back from a 3-run deficit to beat the Giants 6-5 and win the National League Division Series. This puts them in the National League Championship Series for the first time since 2008—4 wins away from their first pennant in 73 years and 8 wins from their first World Series win in 108.

I haven't let myself get excited about these possibilities until now, because I've been a Cubs fan for a very long time. But Saturday they're at Wrigley in the playoffs. And two weeks from Saturday, on October 29th, they could conceivably cause millions of Chicagoans' heads to explode.

(The location tag for this post is accurate. I'm on a train heading to a client site. I love living in the future.)

I'm a little disappointed with the Cubs' 6-5 loss to the Giants last night, but they get another crack at them tonight. I'll probably watch—while writing software. Meanwhile, here are some articles I wish I'd had more time to read:

• CityLab has an excerpt from a new book about Jane Jacobs.
• The Republican Party, unable to win a majority of voters on the merits, has been on a decades-long quest to keep "those people" from voting in the first place.
• Sterling has taken a beating because of Brexit, which Krugman argues is normal and The Economist says "we told you so."
• Apparently, Theodosia Burr had an interesting life.
• And wouldn't you know it, murder looks like an evolved behavior, generally more common in primates than in other orders.

Go Cubs, and back to work.

Pretty good, from space. Benjamin Grant, who runs the Daily Overview feed, has put together a "greatest hits" collection in book form, which will be available October 25th:

The best images appear inOverview: A New Perspective of Earth. The book reveals the many ways humans shape the world. Groves of bright green olive trees stand ready for harvest. Deep blue and purple caverns cut into the earth at a uranium mine. Iron tailings turn a pond bright pink. Grant uses juxtaposition to underscore the point, placing, say, a deforested rain forest alongside a paper mill. “You’re able to make comparisons within the chapters, in a way that you can’t if it’s one image per day on the Instagram feed,” he says. The last chapter celebrates remote places, like the reptilian ridges of Rub’ al Khali, the world’s largest contiguous sand desert.

Many of the images are aesthetically beautiful in the abstract, but troubling in context: the aligned grids on a rust-red landscape of the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya, or the yellow stripe and black ridges of a coal shipping terminal in Qinhuangdao, China. Grant hopes to show that tension. “You have an overwhelming sense of the time that would be required to create these staggering landscapes—erosion, build up of mountains—compared to what we’ve developed in the past 100 years,” says Grant.

I pre-ordered the book as soon as Grant posted he was publishing it.

Wow, my blogging velocity has been crap this month. And here I go, doing it crappier:

• The U.S. invaded Afghanistan 15 years ago today. How's that working out for us?
• The Chicago Cubs offered 10 tickets to tonight's game to each member of the city council a while ago. Yesterday an ethics panel ruled that aldermen who took the tickets must attend the game, and the Cubs must announce their presence. Oh, the humanity.
• Josh Marshall is freaking out over the coming anti-Semitic storm from the Republican party.

There will be more later, I'm sure.

Just a couple of tasty items today:

• One of my favorite BBQ places in Chicago, Smoke Daddy, will be opening at Hotel Zachary, which is currently under construction next to Wrigley Field. Next season's chow options will be that much better, not to mention excellent ribs a 20-minute walk from home.
• Republican US Senator Mark Kirk sparred with his Democratic opponent, US Representative Tammy Duckworth, at the Chicago Tribune's editorial board endorsement session yesterday.

That's it for now. Back to optimizing software.

My friend Molly's newborn has become world-famous. Last week, Daniel made the cover of Bored Panda, which got picked up by Huffington Post, and now the Daily Mail has followed.

I've met the kid. He really is this cute.