The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Parker in the right place

The last couple of days have reminded us we live in Chicago, severely limiting Parker's walk time. I don't want to keep him outside more than 15 minutes when it's below -15°C. He doesn't understand hypothermia, and he's got a double coat, so to him it seems like I'm being completely arbitrary. He probably doesn't remember the day it got down to -27°C and he fell over, whimpering, because his paws were too cold to walk after less than five minutes outside.

So he's at day camp today, and I'm working on an interesting coding problem.

I hope he comes home really, really tired.

It happens every year

At least the sun is out:

We had days last year close to -17°C, but it was last this cold on 5 February 2009. Parker is bored, but even he didn't seem to want to stay outside this morning.

As an aside, because of the radiator in my living room the Inner Drive Technology Worldwide Data Center that I can't turn off, I have two windows open right now and it's still 24°C3°C above normal—over by the server rack.

The UK debates a weighty issue

Should they go to year-round Daylight Saving Time? Scotland says no:

Britain currently sets its clocks at Greenwich Mean Time in fall and an hour ahead of that in spring. (New York is generally five hours behind Britain; Western Europe is an hour ahead).

The problem is that while a clock change might bring afternoon joy to London, it would condemn Inverness in the far reaches of Scotland — in relative terms, about 700 miles north of Montreal — to long, dark winter mornings with sunrises as late as 10 a.m.

Even worse, many Scots feel, it would mean giving in to English politicians. Though the devolution of British politics has given Scotland its own legislature and responsibility for many of its own affairs, the clock is still controlled by Parliament in London.

(You can see what sunrises and sunsets would look like up there at Weather Now.)

Daylight Saving Time has generated controversy for almost a century now, with good and bad arguments on both sides. I'm almost indifferent, though I do get annoyed waking up in the dark at the beginning of November.

Stacked

My reading stack has now passed my own height (175 cm):

This happened because:

  • I spent 18 months reading a lot of stuff for school;
  • Friends kept recommending books to me;
  • There have always been books I really should read (like the three-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson my mom left me); and
  • Amazon is just so convenient.

(Some of those are gifts, too.)

I have therefore declared a moratorium on buying books from Amazon until I get through at least one of those shelves.

Then there's the problem of the 12 movies stacked up on my DVD player I have yet to watch...

Anniversary of "my god that's cold!"

Forecasters predict Chicago will get down to its coldest temperature so far this winter, -19°C, overnight:

What arrives Thursday night and Friday morning on gusty northwest winds is but a lobe of cold air off that vast wintry reservoir of air. If there's one piece of good news which accompanies the cold blast, it's that the chill is to hit hard for a day and a half then back off, giving way to a more moderate brand of cold air this weekend. But, while its stay here is to be comparatively brief, the near -18°C low temperature predicted at O'Hare is to be accompanied by 24-32 km/h sustained winds likely to generate dangerous wind chills under 20-below---and potentially as low as 30-below in a few of colder locations north and northwest of the city.

But on this day in 1985 we experienced -33°C, the coldest temperature recorded in Chicago. If I recall correctly that was one of only two days in my four years of high school when they closed the school for weather—because they couldn't start the buses.

At least the snowstorm pounding the central U.S. will miss us.

Lisbon in sunlight

As promised, I've uploaded a couple of photos from my last trip to Lisbon to contrast with the most recent. Usually in January Lisbon has beautiful weather; my trip last week coincided not only with crappy weather back home but also with crappy (but warmer) weather there.

In January 2001, the view from Castelo de São Jorge looked like this:

And my January 2001 obligatory Parque Eduardo VII photo came out substantially better than my most recent attempt. Here's the older one:

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!

President Johnson makes a phone call

Via Sullivan (of course), a phone conversation between LBJ and his tailor, bringing class and decorum from Texas to the Oval Office. The animator explains:

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson needed pants, so he called the Haggar clothing company and asked for some. The call was recorded (like all White House calls at the time), and has since become the stuff of legend. Johnson’s anatomically specific directions to Mr. Haggar are some of the most intimate words we’ve ever heard from the mouth of a President.

We at Put This On took the historic original audio and gave it to animator Tawd Dorenfeld, who created this majestic fantasia of bungholiana.

Put This On: LBJ Buys Pants from Put This On on Vimeo.

Empty spaces...don't show up in HTML

I meant to post this yesterday. Sullivan rounds up an entertaining collection of posts about post-punctuation spacing in the era of computerized typesetting:

Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It's one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men's shirt buttons on the right and women's on the left. Every major style guide—including the Modern Language Association Style Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style—prescribes a single space after a period.

The Daily Parker has adhered to the one-space rule since the beginning of time. In fact, even when I used a mechanical typewriter as a kid, I never got into the habit of adding supernumerary spaces after punctuation. I feel for those poor lost souls who do.