The Daily Parker

Something about some sheep defending their pasture against cats? Do I have that right?

I'm working through Best Picture nominees and generally chilling out, so I might have to miss it. Let me know which of the barnyard animals wins.

The temperature dropped 17.7°C between 2:30 pm yesterday and 7:45 this morning, from 6.5°C to -10.2°C, as measured at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters. So far it's recovered to -5.5°C, almost warm enough to take my lazy dog on a hike. She got a talking-to from HR about not pulling her weight in the office, so this morning she worked away at a bone for a good stretch:

Alas, the sun came out, a beam hit her head, and she decided the bone could wait:

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:

• Julia Ioffe interviews Russian diplomat Dr Andrey Sushentsov about Russia's views of the Ukraine crisis. tl;dr: the US and Russia don't even have a common set of facts to discuss, let alone a common interpretation of them.
• In Beijing, former Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon blasts the Russian team for once again crapping on their own performance with yet another doping scandal.
• The government of Ontario secured a court order last night allowing the Windsor Police and OPP to start clearing the Ambassador Bridge. So far, they have managed to do so without violence, but a few extremists haven't yet budged.
• James Fallows updates his earlier post on how framing outrageous actions as "that's just Trump" is an abrogation of the press's responsibility to its consumers. "For perspective here: the late Sandy Berger, who had been Bill Clinton’s National Security Advisor, was investigated, charged, fined $50,000, and sentenced to two years of probation for stuffing copies of a classified document into his socks, and sneaking them out from the National Archives. The story of his downfall was a major news feature back in the mid-2000s."
• The UK now allows fully-vaccinated travelers from most countries to arrive and depart without getting a swab stuck up their nose.
• Comedian Bob Saget died of blunt head trauma, consistent with a slip and fall, according to an autopsy. It also found his heart had a 95% blockage, which might have killed him even without the fall.

Finally, in 2018 Rebecca Mead returned to London after living in New York for 30 years. Her 15-year-old son now speaks with a unique accent Mead says has become the new standard "Multicultural London English."

Welcome to stop #70 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Afterthought Brewing, 218 E. St. Charles Road, Lombard
Train line: UP-W, Lombard
Time from Chicago: 46 minutes (Zone D)
Distance from station: 500 m

In my conversation with the staff at Afterthought Brewing, I mentioned that they are almost precisely the opposite of Goldfinger. Where Goldfinger precisely controls yeast strains, brewing times, temperatures, and their immaculate Euro-style taproom, Afterthought lets nature do her thing and decides what to do with the results afterward. The staff countered, no, we do the same thing: we make one style of beer really, really well.

Afterthought's style is saisons, by which they mean traditional farmhouse-style beers brewed in the ancient style: "While the specific flavors from different hop combinations will change from batch to batch, the resulting beer will always be lightly bitter, lightly tart, fruity, and low in alcohol." But wow is their palate tart. Manager Billy told me that most of their beers have a specific gravity between 1.0 and 1.01—meaning they have no sugar left after the microbes finish fermenting it.

I started with their first beer, Faible (4.2%), which they describe as a "hoppy saison." It reminded me of an Arnold Palmer but with beer substituting for the iced tea. Yes, it was light and fresh, but they aren't kidding about bacteria cultures, which made this the tartest beer I can ever remember trying.

At least until I tried their other beers. The Saison Meer (5%, 30 IBU) was even tarter, with a crisp finish and refreshing effervescence. The BSB (5.0%, 35 IBU), their take on an English bitter, had the most tenuous connection to an ESB of any beer to use the title. It was like they squeezed a lemon into an ESB, leaving no trace of malt. Finally, the Amer (5%, 50 IBU), with its New Zealand Riwaka hops, had noticeable bitterness, and an almost oaky nose.

I want to be clear: these are really well-made beers. They're just not to my palate. Still, I bought a bottle to give to a friend who loves Saisons with all his heart.

Beer garden? Seasonal
Dogs OK? Yes
Televisions? No
Serves food? Snacks (BYOF)
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Eighty years ago today, the US imposed daylight saving time as a wartime energy-saving measure. It took until April 1966 for Congress to enact a permanent regime of changing the clock twice a year. But that's all ancient history.

More recent history:

• Peter Wehner examines how the loser XPOTUS really hates that he's a loser.
• Meanwhile, Michelle Cottle wonders when the Republican Party turned "into a bunch of snowflakes?"
• The City of Chicago has (finally!) started cracking down on "dibs," the practice of leaving household junk in the street to claim parking spaces in winter.

Finally, Chicago brewery Hop Butcher to the World will delay opening up its new space in the old Half Acre property in North Center. The Brews & Choos Project will stop by as soon as it opens.

One hundred years ago today, President Warren Harding installed a "Radio Phone" in his White House office. As the Tribune reported, "Navy radio experts commenced work to-day installing the latest scientific means of communication."

Flash forward to now:

• Margaret Talbot argues that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom nobody ever elected to public office, is playing a long game to bring her right-wing Catholic ideology into the mainstream—or, at least, to enshrine it in the law.
• Times columnist Margaret Renkl, writing from Nashville, argues that Tennessee has bigger problems than just one school board banning Maus.
• Ultra-low-cost airlines Spirit and Frontier have merged, after years of dating and several previous feints toward the altar.
• The oldest pub in the United Kingdom will close because of lost revenue during the pandemic, according to its current proprietor. The landlord hopes the pub, first opened in 793 CE, reopens soon.

And finally, Max Boot asks, why does anyone care what Ben, Jerry, Whoopi, or Joe have to say? In my conversation just now with the reader who sent me the link, I pointed out that people have had about the same reaction to every new communications technology back to the printing press. (Probably back to the stone tablet, if you really think about it.)

The Brews & Choos Project officially kicked off two years ago today, with a stop at Macushla Brewing in Glenview. I expected it to take a lot less than two years. But the list now has 135 breweries and distilleries on it, up from the 98 I identified at the start of the project. With 69 reviews on the blog, and a little arithmetic, that stretches the project out to...almost exactly 4 years.

So what's next? Well, it's February, so I'm prioritizing less walking and places without outdoor seating. Depending on the weather Friday, I might stick close to the office (Adams Street Brewing, Crushed by Giants), or perhaps pop up to Logan Square (Bixi Beer, Middle Brow). Or Pilot Project if the weather really sucks, as they have 5 breweries on site.

I hope to accelerate my research when the weather gets warmer. Some trips I've planned include hour-long walks between train lines, both for exercise and because the schedules don't otherwise work, and lots of places have beer gardens that look comfortable.

Will I finish before the end of 2022? Almost certainly not, with 66 places left to review, a couple more opening over time, and train schedules that make it hard to visit more than three in one afternoon. But maybe I'll get there by the end of summer in 2023, just in time to start revisiting the ones I really liked.

Jennifer Rubin says what I've been thinking:

I have never been a fan of the Olympics. Or, I should say, I have never been a fan of the International Olympic Committee.

An organization that rewards dictatorial regimes (Russia in 2014, and now China for the second time) with events that attract billions of eyeballs and sappy worldwide coverage — all while punishing athletes who stand up for human rights — is not apolitical or “promoting the Olympic spirit.” It’s making money off and providing cover for brutal regimes that use the Games to burnish their image.

To stage the Games in the midst of China’s genocide of Uyghurs and ongoing repression of Tibet and Hong Kong is an atrocity. To herald the spirit of sports in a police state that is clearly holding tennis star Peng Shuai captive — and worse, staged obvious PR stunts to clear China’s name — is simply grotesque.

The IOC exists to serve the IOC, using people's emotions about the Olympic Games to drive billions in revenue. The IOC's demands of host countries for this cycle shocked Norway into dropping out, "leaving Almaty, Kasakhstan and Beijing as the only remaining cities to host the event." And after the games this month, what will happen to the Olympic Village? Well, Sochi is a ruin; Rio's facilities have been stripped by looters; other recent host countries got half-billion dollar disasters instead of perpetual improvements.

I remember when Chicago put together a bid for the 2016 Games, but voters like me made it painfully clear to the City that we didn't want them here.

The IOC needs to go away, or at least reform significantly. I like the proposal to have the games in Greece permanently, but the IOC, accustomed to working with authoritarian regimes to get the perks of royalty for its management, will never accept that until people stop watching.

It turns out, tenors don't actually spread Covid more readily than the other three sections, despite what you may have heard from the Welsh Government:

The advice appears to have been motivated by a spoof social media news post, created by meme page Quire Memes to appear as if written by us here at Classic FM. A doctored headline claimed that ‘Tenors should sit three metres away from other choir members, COVID study says’.

The post, which is categorically fake news, is captioned: “Tenors found to disperse aerosols the furthest, in this in-depth coronavirus study.”

A government spokesperson denied that the advice was based on a spoof post, but said they “apologise unreservedly for this error and for any confusion it may have caused”.

Professional tenor and choral director Charles MacDougall told The Telegraph it was “preposterous” that the Welsh government appeared to have based their official guidance on a meme.

Believe me, tenors have enough problems without being blamed for spreading this particular disease. Gonorrhea, however...

In no particular order:

• Dale Clevenger played French horn for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1966 to 2013. He was 81.
• Sheldon Silver went to jail for taking bribes while New York Assembly Speaker. He was 77.
• Lisa Goddard made climate predictions that came true, to the horror of everyone who denies anthropogenic climate change. She was 55.

In a tangential story, the New Yorker profiles author Kim Stanley Robinson, who has written several novels about climate change. (Robinson hasn't died, though; don't worry.)

The snow has finally stopped for, we think, a couple of days, and the city has cleared most of the streets already. (Thank you, Mike Bilandic.) What else happened today?

• The James Webb Space Telescope reached Lagrange-2 this afternoon, and will now settle into a "halo orbit" that will hold it about 1.46 million km from Earth. (It's still traveling at 200 m/s, which gets you from Madison to Peterson in about a minute.)
• Lord Agnew (Con.), the minister responsible for policing Covid fraud in the UK, resigned from government this morning, citing the government's inability to actually police Covid fraud. (Watch his resignation speech and observe the steam coming out of his ears.)
• Here in Chicago, our own alleged Covid fraudsters got a visit from the FBI today.
• Michael Tomasky makes a case for impeaching Justice Clarence Thomas over his refusal to recuse himself in several cases despite many apparent conflicts of interest.
• Fiona Hill follows her interview with Julia Ioffe last week with an op-ed in the Times explaining how Russian president Vladimir Putin has the US "right where he wants it."
• New evidence suggests that moderate drinking, while not necessarily dangerous, is nonetheless not actually beneficial.
• The stock market continued what now looks like a correction as both the S&P 500 and DJIA gave up over 10% of their peak gains in the last two weeks on today's 4% drop.

Finally, Weber Grills apologized today for its really unfortunate timing last week, when it emailed thousands of customers a recipe for BBQ meat loaf—on the day singer Meat Loaf died.