Events

Mark Twain, 1905. In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not. In Austria and some other countries this is not the case. There the state arranges a man’s...

I have meant to post this for a while: a list of the media I regularly consume. This may help visitors to the Daily Parker more easily decide whether something I post is crap or (more likely) researched more than the typical Internet meme. (The title comes from an essay by Mark Twain.) The impetus to post this came from my Facebook feed, which contained a number of suspicious memes and posts from close friends today. In each case it took me about 30 seconds to fact-check them and gently remind people to...

Mark Twain, 1900 Fifty years ago, when I was a boy of fifteen and helping to inhabit a Missourian village on the banks of the Mississippi, I had a friend whose society was very dear to me because I was forbidden by my mother to partake of it. He was a gay and impudent and satirical and delightful young black man -a slave -who daily preached sermons from the top of his master's woodpile, with me for sole audience. He imitated the pulpit style of the several clergymen of the village, and did it well, and...

I love trains. I love beer. I don't love driving when I'm having beer. So how to reconcile all of those things, I wonder? My solution: identify breweries in and around Chicago close to rail lines and visit them. Starting in February 2020, I identified 98 locations ranging from one as close as 400 m from a downtown Chicago train station to four that require a 100-minute train ride to a neighboring state. Even better, the densest stop on any train line turned out to be the one closest to my house: there...

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2020 4 Jan Latest sunrise until Oct 29th 07:19 16:33 9:13 28 Jan 5pm sunset 07:08 17:01 9:52 5 Feb 7am sunrise 07:00 17:11 10:10 20 Feb 5:30pm sunset 06:40 17:30 10:49 27 Feb 6:30am sunrise 06:30 17:39 11:08 7 Mar Earliest sunrise until Apr 12th Earliest sunset until Oct 29th 06:15 17:49 11:33 8 Mar Daylight saving time begins...

On July 27th I began a series on common logical fallacies. Each entry provides a brief description and a couple of examples. Here are all the posts: Fallacies of irrelevant conclusion Argument to the person, 27 July 2019. Argument to popularity, 27 July 2019. Argument to ignorance, 28 July 2019. Argument to pity, 28 July 2019. Argument to awe, 2 August 2019. Argument to force, 2 August 2019. Red herring, 4 August 2019. Material fallacies Argument by accident (overgeneralizing), 5 August 2019. Converse...

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 4 Jul 8:30pm sunset 05:21 20:30 15:08 16 Jul 5:30am sunrise 05:30 20:24 14:54 9 Aug 8pm sunset 05:53 20:00 14:07 16 Aug 6am sunrise 06:00 19:50 13:50 29 Aug 7:30pm sunset 06:14 19:30 13:16 14 Sep 6:30am sunrise 06:30 19:02 12:32 16 Sep 7pm sunset 06:32 18:59 12:27 23 Sep Equinox, 02:50 CDT 06:39 18:47 12:07 26 Sep 12-hour day...

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 13-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in May 2017, and a couple have things have changed. So here's the update. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States. The weather. I've operated a weather website for more than 16 years. That site deals with raw data and objective observations....

Here is the list of topics I wrote about for the 2019 Blogging A-to-Z challenge on the topic of music theory: A is for A (April 1) B is for Bass (April 2) C is for Clef (April 3) D is for Deceptive Cadence (April 4) E is for "Ethnic" Sixth Chord (April 5) F is for Fugue (April 6) G is for Gregorian Chant (April 8) H is for Harmony (April 9) I is for Interval (April 10) J is for Jazz (April 11) K is for Key (April 12) L is for Legato (April 13) M is for Modes (April 15) N is for Notation (April 16) O is...

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2019 3 Jan Latest sunrise until Oct 29th 07:19 16:32 9:13 27 Jan 5pm sunset 07:08 17:00 9:51 5 Feb 7am sunrise 07:00 17:11 10:11 20 Feb 5:30pm sunset 06:40 17:30 10:50 27 Feb 6:30am sunrise 06:30 17:39 11:09 9 Mar Earliest sunrise until Apr 14th Earliest sunset until Oct 29th 06:13 17:51 11:37 10 Mar Daylight saving time...