Events

I've spent a lot of time in hotel rooms in the past couple of years. Sometimes, like this week, I have a good view:

The New York Times recently ran an op-ed urging us to stop lying to ourselves about how great we are, and get on with fixing things: America is great in many ways, but on a whole host of measures — some of which are shown in the accompanying chart — we have become the laggards of the industrialized world. Not only are we not No. 1 — “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” — we are among the worst of the worst. Yet this reality and the urgency that it ushers in is too hard for many Americans to digest. They would prefer to...

Kain demolishes the Tribune's chart showing how long it takes to fire a tenured teacher: First, this chart only applies to tenured teachers. Bad teachers can be weeded out much quicker before gaining tenure. School officials need to use this time window appropriately. Second, the point of tenure is to protect teachers from arbitrarily being fired. Teachers need protection from over-zealous bosses and ideological politicians. This is the same thinking behind seniority rules, which protect more expensive...

Jon Stewart puts the differences into their proper perspective: The Daily ShowTags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Economist ran a good story last week analyzing the pros and cons of federalism: Why is the tie between federalism and democracy so awkward? In most federations the units have formally equal status, regardless of population, so voters in small units fare better. Thus the 544,270 residents of Wyoming have two senators—the same as the 37m people of California. In Australia the 507,600 people of Tasmania have the same weight in the upper house as the 7m who live in New South Wales. In rich...

It's March? How did that happen?

I'm wrapping up in Fairfield County, Conn., today, then I get five nights at home before popping off to Boston for an indefinite series of 4-day weeks there. At least it's Boston, a city I enjoy, and one with easy access to the airport. (I expect my commute will be two hours shorter than it is to Connecticut.) Parker won't like it, though: he'll likely board from Sunday night to Thursday afternoon every week for the duration of the project. No word yet on Internet connectivity. The client with whom I'm...

Because of a barrage of comment spam, I've temporarily killed the comment feature of The Daily Parker. These things usually pass in a couple of days. Management apologizes for the inconvenience.

I finally got around to reading The Atlantic's 2010 Fiction issue, and I happened upon this essay by Richard Bausch: Finally, a word about this kind of instruction: it is always less effective than actually reading the books of the writers who precede you, and who are contemporary with you. There are too many "how-to" books on the market, and too many would-be writers are reading these books in the mistaken idea that this will teach them to write. I never read such a book in my life, and I never will....

We did, in fact, break the snowfall record for February: February 2011 will go down as the snowiest February in Chicago's 126 years of recorded weather history. One inch of snow fell overnight at O'Hare Airport, Chicago's official reporting station, pushing the monthly snowfall total to 726 mm. This surpasses the old record of 706 mm, established in 1896. OK, maybe we didn't break the record, but the record, she is a-broken.