Events

And we now have a 20th-century health care plan for America. Just in time. Fifty years from now, our children and grandchildren will wonder why the vote was so close, kind of like how we today wonder about the 85 who voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Or maybe the way we don't, but we should. Update—James Fallows: For now, the significance of the vote is moving the United States FROM a system in which people can assume they will have health coverage IF they are old enough (Medicare), poor...

One of my Duke classmates posted a Facebook status update that prompted a discussion. I thought responding in long form would be more appropriate than continuing a comment chain. Here's the chain so far: JP: If healthcare passes I guarantee the stock markets will drop tomorrow. Me: So? BR: David, doesn't a drop in the stock market after the passing of a monumental legislation like the healthcare bill indicate investors feel that the bill will be a detriment to the healthcare sector? Doesn't that seem...

It was on this day in 1985 that I drifted off in Mr. Collins' Algebra class and arrived at the name of my corporation: Punzun Ltd. The corporation became an actual legal entity on 17 February 2000. Oh, and if he were still alive, Bach would be 325 today, and he would have over 100 children. (Oh, yeah—and if we hadn't switched calendars in the 1750s. If you convert to the current Gregorian calendar, Bach's birthday is actually March 31st.)

There are two nearly-identical copies of this poster at Duke of Perth, one unfortunately vandalized by neo-Nazis. (I'm not kidding.) Does anyone have any idea where to get one? I've actually tried getting in touch with Scottish & Newcastle, the company that acquired the John Courage Brewery, but they've since gotten bought by Heineken. No luck there. I even called a poster dealer in London, someone recommended by another poster dealer as specializing in that sort of thing. Any information would be...

That's the code for "frontal passage" on aviation meteorological reports. Apparently yesterday while I was on my way to O'Hare I missed a big one: While temperatures began dropping across the far northern suburbs as early as mid-afternoon, the city was invaded by 30+ mph gusts late in the evening rush hour, initiating a thermal tailspin. In a single hour's time, readings at the Harrison-Dever Crib, three miles off Chicago's shoreline, dove from 62°F to 42°F—a 20°F pullback—between 6 and 7 p.m. The same...

After a lot of procrastination, I've finally upgraded The Daily Parker to dasBlog 2.3. Nothing outwardly has changed, but apparently the developer community has fixed a ton of bugs and, more helpfully, upgraded to .NET 2.0. I don't have time at the moment to go through the entire feature list, but I'm sure there are a couple in there I'll use. Mainly I was tired of having an item on my to-do list since October 2008. (I said "a lot of procrastination.")

Ahem. No, RoboCop isn't pointing a gun at me. However, Avanade's personal blog policy strongly recommends that I post the following, and I happen to agree: Avanade does not control or endorse the content, messages or information found in any public Weblog, and therefore specifically disclaims any liability with regard to this Weblog and any actions resulting from my participation in any Weblog. Also, I am not authorized in any way to speak on Avanade's behalf. This applies not only to The Daily Parker...

NPR reported this morning that dogs likely descended from Israeli wolves: To come up with their results, [UCLA researcher Robert] Wayne and his colleagues studied DNA from more than 200 wild gray wolves. "We looked at wolf populations in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia and from China," he says. In each case, they sought out and found genetic markers that were unique to these different wolf populations. So, for example, there were some markers that were only found in Chinese wolves, and others only...

Or: How I learned to stop being irrational and give up a piece of history. I'm about to mail (yes, use postal mail) a termination order to Earthlink, with whom I have had an account since they acquired Mindspring, with whom I had an account since they acquired Pipeline. That means I've had my Mindspring email address since 1998 (I got the Pipeline address in 1997, but Mindspring converted everyone over), and I've kept it as my spam account since I set up my own email server in 2000. So, I'm feeling a...

I had hoped, as I hoped about Post #1,000, to write something lengthy and truly self-indulgent. This will disappoint many readers, but I don't have time to do that. Instead, just a quick update: even though Inner Drive Technology still exists (as does all of its software and ongoing maintenance), I'm now working for Avanade, a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture. And, in the spirit of the season, on my way to Avanade's Chicago office yesterday, I noticed something...odd...about the Daley...