Events

The Cubs announced their 2014 schedule a few days ago. Assuming it holds up, it looks like the 30-park Geas will next year take me to Cubs away games in Phoenix in July, Denver in August, and Toronto in September. That will leave just four parks (Minneapolis, St. Louis, Texas, and New Yankee) to finish the Geas in 2015.

The Republican party's antics have reminded me of Chicken Little recently. On reflection, I thought a closer analogue really is a book I read when I was five: The Monster at the End of this Book. I won't spoil the ending for you—it was so good I think my dad read it to me about a ZILLION times—except to say that the GOP's gloom-and-doom histrionics about the Affordable Care Act feel similar to the premise of the book. The monster at the end of the book really is [SPOILER!] the Republican Party itself....

Last night my cousin and I went to Wrigley for the last time until next April. We wound up leaving after the 7th. Why? Here's why: In 2012, the Cubs set a franchise record for most losses on the road. On Tuesday, they lost their 50th game at Wrigley Field this season, establishing a club mark in that category. The Friendly Confines have been anything but for the Cubs this year. Rookie Gerrit Cole helped himself with a two-run single, Pedro Alvarez drove in three runs and Jordy Mercer added a solo home...

Today, it turns out, is "National Punctuation Day;" however, that does not give anyone license—beyond whatever one's local political system grants him—to misuse one's keyboard/mouse/other text-entry device (including voice recognition tools) in furtherance of inappropriate text markings. I'm hoping we can get a diacritical mass of people on board with this. It's also the last night game this season at Wrigley, and therefore the last game I'll attend until next April. We won't see a lot of drama as the...

My experiment with Divvy—the ugliest form of transportation in Chicago—continues. Yesterday I took, I think, five Divvy rides of varying length, and ran into a problem that will always exist in their model. It wasn't weather. In fact, on reflection I believe that being able to park and forget the bikes means not caring at all about whether it's going to rain later. If it does, all one needs to do is take another way home. No, yesterday I encountered a supply problem at the remotest Divvy station on the...

I'm starting a new post series born out of frustration with existing restaurant and search tools. Simply put, most entertainment sites (e.g., Yelp) don't have easy ways of searching for good places to have a beer while working. Anyone who's read The Daily Parker knows I usually have a "remote office." Often, after regular working hours, I relocate from my regular office to a quiet bar to do another hour or two of work. Right now my remote office is Duke of Perth, where I wrote much of the Inner Drive...

I've never had much user for LinkedIn. Apparently I'm not alone: The site’s initial appeal was as a sort of self-updating Rolodex—a way to keep track of ex-coworkers and friends-of-friends you met at networking happy hours. There’s the appearance of openness—you can “connect” with anyone!—but when users try to add a professional contact from whom they’re more than one degree removed, a warning pops up. “Connecting to someone on LinkedIn implies that you know them well,” the site chides, as though you’re...

The question just came up in an email exchange with a friend's friend's sister: what are my favorite pubs in the world? After a couple minutes' thought, I got here: 1. Duke of Perth, Chicago. Obviously; it has been my remote office off and on for over 20 years. 2. Southampton Arms, London. If I ever live in the UK, this may switch places with the Duke. It's just hard to say a place is my favorite when it's 6,000 kilometers away and I only go there twice a year. 3. Tommy Nevin's, Evanston, Ill., my...

I signed up for Divvy only a few days ago and got my key yesterday. This morning I zipped to work in 28 minutes, door to door, which is about 33% faster than taking the quickest public transit route. (Cabs are still the fastest, but also the most expensive.) Of course, now I get the flipside. It's almost 5:30, and I have to contend with this: At least it looks to end soon.

I live for this kind of thing: What did Shakespeare’s English sound like to Shakespeare? To his audience? And how can we know such a thing as the phonetic character of the language spoken 400 years ago? These questions and more are addressed in the video above, which profiles a very popular experiment at London’s Globe Theatre, the 1994 reconstruction of Shakespeare’s theatrical home. As linguist David Crystal explains, the theater’s purpose has always been to recapture as much as possible the original...