Events

The blog engine running The Daily Parker, dasBlog, last got updated in March 2009. It appears moribund; no one's updating it anymore. This happens in software development all the time. As a user of the software, however, I'd like some new features and some defect corrections. For example, I complained last month that I couldn't switch from GUID permalinks to more user-friendly ones. I also found a bug in the module that lists the months, off to the side. And I want to show the posting time in the local...

Historian Mimi Cowan needed new headshots for her professional CV. So yesterday, we got a few: ISO-800, f/5 at 1/250, 116mm, here. And if she releases a solo album, we got the cover photo:

Today marks ten years since the last time a mainline U.S. air carrier had a multi-fatality accident: There have been several terrible accidents involving regional planes — all of which have been discussed in this column, from the Air Midwest crash in 2003 to the 2006 Comair crash at Lexington, to the Colgan disaster outside Buffalo in 2009. And in 2005 a young boy in a car was killed when a Southwest Airlines 737 skidded off a snowy runway at Chicago’s Midway airport. Yet amazingly, an entire decade has...

My weather demo, Weather Now, is 13 years old today. I launched it as an ASP 2.0 application on 11 November 1998. The Wayback Machine first crawled the site about a year later, on 20 September 2000. Check out the site's evolution; it's trippy.

It won't look pretty: It would be a gigantic financial shockwave. Once departure by Italy were a serious prospect, there would be runs on its banks as depositors scrambled to move savings to Germany, Luxembourg or Britain, in order to avoid a forced conversion into the new weaker currency. The anticipated write-down of private and public debts, much of which is held outside Italy, would threaten bankruptcy of Europe's integrated banking system. There would be runs on other countries that might even...

The temperature finally got down to freezing at O'Hare, which is the latest freeze recorded there since records started in 1958: With widespread freezing temperatures across the Chicago metro area, Friday's official low temperature reading at the O'Hare observation site should bottom out well below 0°C --- marking the first time readings there have dropped below that mark since April 1st. It also marks the latest in the season the first 0°C temperature has been observed at that site since it was...

Two commemorations today. First, and most important, this Veterans Day we honor the men and women who have defended our country, while the Commonwealth celebrates Remembrance Day. Specifically, we commemorate the end of the Great War, ninety four years ago today. Second, we celebrate International Nigel Tufnel Day, who showed us what it means to go to 11.

Two of my Duke classmates; Crystal Bowersox; Snow (which, in the last five minutes, has disappeared in favor of crystal clear blue skies); and An aggressive batch of chicken soup that, about an hour and a half ago, destroyed my laptop. Three out of four is, all things considered, a good average.

Last night, Penn State students rioted in support of disgraced football coach Joe Paterno: Jimmy Gallagher, raised on the shoulders of students at the top of the Old Main staircase, shouted from a megaphone. "We stand united as students. We don't care what anyone else has to say. We want Joe and we want him back," Gallagher (freshman-energy business and finance) said. Jimmy, your football coach—a grandfather, if one can believe—failed to take action for nine years after he learned that one of his...

Many people reading this blog actually see the posts a day or so later when they show up on my Facebook page. For years, Facebook has imported The Daily Parker through the blog's RSS feed. Today, Facebook announced it will discontinue the practice before Thanksgiving: You currently automatically import content from your website or blog into your Facebook notes. Starting November 22nd, this feature will no longer be available, although you'll still be able to write individual notes. The best way to share...