The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Come sail away

We may stop at Ribfest one more time today, after we hike over to Horner Park to meet some friends. (This may also include a quick stop to cool off at Burning Bush.)

Yesterday, Cassie got a chance to nap during the day while I spent some time a few kilometers off shore in Lake Michigan:

Not a bad view, despite the Canadian wildfire smoke:

After I got home, Cassie and I went back over to Ribfest for three more samplers before ending the evening at Beygle again. But the poor girl really needed another nap, not least because we've gotten over 5 hours of walkies since Friday morning. If you've ever seen a 5-year-old two hours past bedtime, you have an idea. I had to take her to the far end of the patio after she decided she really wanted another dog's bully stick, even though she doesn't really like bully sticks.

And yet, just look at this punim:

We're heading out to the dog park in about 90 minutes. I'll let her nap until then.

Preliminary rib report

I am happy to share that this year's Ribfest improved on last year's so far. Cassie and I walked over there a bit before the dinner rush and got three samplers. Then on the walk home we discovered that Begyle Brewing has partially rescinded the no-dog policy they instituted in the pandemic: they now allow dogs on the patio, though they're still verboten inside (except to order).

I'll have a full After Action Report on Sunday or Monday. Today I'm aiming for three more samplers for dinner, and possibly sailing with friends on Lake Michigan this afternoon.

Happy Friday

I'm about to take Cassie on her noon peregrination, which will be shorter than usual as we're heading over to North Center Ribfest tonight in perfect weather. Last year's Ribfest disappointed me (but not Cassie). I hope this year's is better than last year's. (Hard to believe I took Parker to our first Ribfest over 15 years ago...)

Chicago street festivals are having trouble raising money, however. When a festival takes over a public street, they're not allowed to charge an entry fee, though they can ask for donations. I'll be sure to make my $10 donation this evening.

While I wipe the drool off my keyboard thinking about ribs, I'll be reading these:

  • The National Hurricane Center has issued a tropical storm watch for Orange, Riverside, San Diego, and Imperial Counties in California, plus Catalina Island, as Hurricane Hilary drifts towards being the first tropical storm to hit SoCal since the 1930s.
  • US Senator Joe Manchin's (RD-WV) strategy of bollixing up the President's agenda seems to have backfired.
  • Credit-card issuer Discover swears up and down it didn't fire its CEO last week over regulatory matters. Nope, he's accused of compliance problems.
  • The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning may recommend that Chicago-area transit agencies merge their fare systems to encourage more people to take trains and buses. (I've been mulling a long post about the problems with transit in the US in general.)
  • What's with all the kids selling candy on the streets of New York (and Chicago)?
  • Getting a "technical brush-off" when asking your city to make a change to a roadway? Strong Towns has a strategy for you.

Finally, National Geographic describes the reconstruction of a murder victim in Sweden—from 700 years ago. Crime tip: Don't try to hide a dead body in a peat bog. Someone will find it eventually.

A bit toasty in the Pacific Northwest

Many cities in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho hit all-time record high temperatures yesterday, including 43.3°C in Dallesport, Wash., and 40.6°C in Boise, Idaho. Even Portland, on the ocean side of the Cascades and usually lovely this time of year, hit 39.4°C.

Chicago right now is a decent 27°C, with the moisture from this morning's storms adding a bit of bleck around the Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters. And the roofing contractor had to disconnect one of my A/C units this morning because they mismeasured the placement of a privacy screen, so I might have to sleep on the couch with Cassie tonight. The forecast says 15°C and north-northwest winds, so maybe it'll cool off enough to open windows upstairs. We'll see.

End of day reading list

The XPOTUS continuing to get indicted for trying to steal the 2020 election wasn't the only bit of authoritarian fuckery this week:

Finally, Michael Oher, the subject of the book and film The Blind Side, says the white family that he lived with not lied to him about adopting him, but also used their positions as his conservators to screw him out of compensation from the story of his own life. Which, if you remember, put the white folks up as the heroes. I wish I'd been more surprised and shocked, but no, it tracks.

Note to my future self

This is why I won't get 10,000 steps today:

I'm still at 84,000 steps over the past 7 days, though.

Still, even though it's cool enough to have all the windows open, and none of the rain seems to be blowing in, I'd still rather have gotten all my steps today. Cassie, for her part, got over 4 hours of walks this past weekend, so she seems fine with it. She doesn't like the rain any more than I do.

Maybe tomorrow.

Lots of walking

My phone, watch, and dog are all recharging right now after Cassie and I walked 9.5 km to the Horner Park DFA and back.

Right now it's officially 30°C with the occasional wind gust at O'Hare, but here in Ravenswood we've got 26°C with a light breeze. So once my watch has fully charged we're going back outside.

And hey, we might see this guy again:

Several people have identified this as a Cooper's Hawk, one of the more common raptors in the Illinois prairies, and I hope a more common visitor to my rabbit-infested neighborhood. Plenty to eat here!

Today is like May 1st

Since I live in a temperate climate, I think about seasons more than my friends who live in, say, San Jose, Calif. This becomes especially pronounced the closer we get to the equinoxes as the change in daylight hours peak then. On my walk with Cassie earlier today, I started thinking about how actually to quantify the lengthening shadows in autumn.

Here, then, is a chart of the position of the sun in Chicago for the first day of each month, along with its equivalent day on the other side of the equinox. For example, today the sun is about 63° above the southern horizon at solar noon—almost exactly the same as on May 1st. This means also that the day has about the same length (14 hours, 2 minutes), and the sun rises and sets in the same parts of the eastern and western skies, respectively.

Using the code I wrote for Weather Now, it took just a couple of minutes to generate the basic data for this chart. It should make sense right away, except for the column marked "Shadow." That's the length of the shadow cast per unit of hight at solar noon. So, for example, today's 63.3° sun angle gave a 10-meter building a shadow almost exactly 5 meters in length. The two days of the year (in Chicago, anyway) when the sun is 45° above the horizon—giving everything a shadow equal to its own height—are March 13th and September 30th.

Enjoy:

Date Sunrise Sunset Daylight Rise Noon Set Shadows Same as
Jan 1 07:20 16:31 9:11 121° 25° 239° 2.14 Dec 11
Feb 1 06:35 17:07 10:02 112° 31° 248° 1.67 Nov 10
Mar 1 06:27 17:42 11:14 99° 41° 261° 1.17 Oct 12
Apr 1 06:35 19:17 12:42 83° 53° 277° 0.76 Sep 11
May 1 05:48 19:50 14:02 68° 63° 292° 0.51 Aug 11
Jun 1 05:19 20:21 15:01 59° 70° 301° 0.36 Jul 11
Jul 1 05:20 20:31 15:11 57° 71° 303° 0.34 Jun 11
Aug 1 05:45 20:10 14:25 65° 66° 295° 0.45 May 11
Sep 1 06:17 19:26 13:08 78° 56° 282° 0.67 Apr 11
Oct 1 06:48 18:34 11:45 94° 45° 266° 1.01 Mar 12
Nov 1 07:24 17:46 10:22 109° 34° 251° 1.51 Feb 11
Dec 1 07:00 16:21 9:21 119° 26° 241° 2.03 Jan 11


Another thing I found interesting: notice how quickly shadows lengthen in the fall and shorten in the spring. That's what I noticed today, in fact: the east-west sidewalks were completely in shadow at noon today. They haven't been since, oh, the beginning of May.

Now, the date pairs should work for any point on earth, but all the other data will change. If you want to see your own location's sunrise and sunset times, go to Weather Now.

Temperature 26, dewpoint 22

I just got back from walking Cassie for about half an hour, and I'm a bit sticky. The dog days of summer in Chicago tend to have high dewpoints hanging out for weeks on end, making today pretty typical.

Our sprint ends Tuesday and I still have 3 points left on the board, so I may not have time to give these more than a cursory read:

Finally, Andrew Sullivan adapts a column he wrote in August 2001 asking, "why can't Americans take a vacation?" One reason, I believe: all the time and money we spend in and on our cars.

Wait, it's August?

While I fight a slow laptop and its long build cycle (and how every UI change seems to require re-compiling), the first day of the last month of summer brought this to my inbox:

  • Who better to prosecute the XPOTUS than a guy who prosecuted other dictators and unsavory characters for the International Criminal Court? (In America, we don't go to The Hague; here, The Hague comes to you!)
  • After the evidence mounted that Hungary has issued hundreds of thousands of passports without adequate identity checks, the US has restricted Hungarian passport holders from the full benefits of ESTA that other Schengen-area citizens enjoy.
  • The US economy continues to exceed the expectations of people who have predicted a recession any day now. (Of course, every dead pool has a guaranteed winner eventually...)
  • After an unprecedented 31 consecutive days enduring temperatures over 43°C, Phoenix finally caught a break yesterday—when the temperature only hit 42°C.
  • Jake Meador explores why about 40 million fewer Americans go to church these days than in 1995.
  • Remember how we all thought Tesla made cars with amazing battery ranges? Turns out, Elon Musk can't do that right, either.
  • American car culture not only gives us unlivable environments, but also discourages the exploration that people in other countries (and I when I go there) do all the time.
  • We should all remember (and thank) USSR naval Captain Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, who vetoed firing a nuclear-tipped torpedo at an American destroyer during the Cuban Missile Crisis 71 years ago.

Finally, Chicago historian John Schmidt tells the story of criminal mastermind Adam Worth, who may have been Arthur Conan Doyle's inspiration for Professor Moriarty.