The Daily Parker

Yesterday's storm, which right now has parked itself over Cape Cod, dumped 80 cm of snow on parts of New Jersey and pretty much shut down New York:

Morning commuters faced the daunting prospect of cutting fresh tracks in over a foot of snow along roads and sidewalks that looked more like Colorado than the urban north. In New York City, a badly crippled subway system hobbled along, but Long Island Rail Road service remained suspended early on Monday, as did some New Jersey Transit and Metro-North Railroad lines.

The storm’s timing was diabolical — too late for a white Christmas, but just in time to disrupt the plans of thousands of people trying to get home after the holiday, return unwanted gifts or take advantage of post-holiday bargains at stores. Public schools were not in session, much to the dismay of many children.

By 7 a.m. Monday, 50 cm covered Central Park, according to the National Weather Service. The deepest snow was recorded in Elizabeth, N.J., where 80 cm fell. By sunrise, the storm had largely moved on from New York City, heading northeast out past Long Island and up over Nantucket, gradually weakening, the weather service said.

I'm hoping friends out East will send photos. Meanwhile, here's one from the New Year's Eve storm 10 years ago, on 30 December 2000:

I know this will incite some regular Daily Parker readers, but we should get used to storms like this more often. They're a predicted consequence of climate change.

I can imagine that my friends in the Northeast aren't too happy today:

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY
1240 PM EST SUN DEC 26 2010

...DANGEROUS WINTER STORM IMMINENT...

...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM EST MONDAY...

* HAZARDS...HEAVY SNOW AND STRONG WINDS...WITH CONSIDERABLE
  BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF SNOW WITH NEAR ZERO VISIBILITY AT
  TIMES.

* ACCUMULATIONS...15 TO 20 INCHES...WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS UP
  TO 2 FEET POSSIBLE.

* IMPACTS...EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TRAVEL CONDITIONS DEVELOPING
  THIS AFTERNOON INTO THE EVENING DUE TO SIGNIFICANT SNOW
  ACCUMULATIONS...AND STRONG WINDS CAUSING CONSIDERABLE BLOWING
  AND DRIFTING OF SNOW. VISIBILITIES WILL BE NEAR ZERO AT
  TIMES... WITH WHITEOUT CONDITIONS EXPECTED. STRONG WINDS MAY
  ALSO DOWN SOME POWER LINES...TREE LIMBS...AND CHRISTMAS
  DECORATIONS.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES THIS AFTERNOON INTO
  MUCH OF TONIGHT. THE SNOW WILL TAPER OFF FROM WEST TO EAST
  MONDAY MORNING...BUT STRONG NORTHWEST WINDS WILL PERSIST THROUGH
  THE AFTERNOON.

* WINDS....DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM TONIGHT...NORTH WINDS
  WILL INCREASE TO 25 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS OF 40 TO 60 MPH.
  ISOLATED HIGHER GUSTS ARE POSSIBLE ACROSS LONG ISLAND.

We've got a little lake-effect snow right now, with about 15 cm on the ground, but nothing too heinous. Parker, in fact, just got half an hour of running around in it at Oz Park. He's even doing better on recall. Not much better, but still.

This came to me in 1988 from the Internet (though back then no one called it "the Internet" and we ramped onto it through CompuServe). Enjoy.

Hotline!

By James Zachary

Every now and again, a caller to the water and wastewater department will ask about issues of national concern.

RING!

Southeast plant, this is Zack.

"I am taking a survey for my organization. Do you have time to answer a few questions?"

Ma'am, this is a sewage plant...

"You are a taxpayer and a voter, aren't you?"

Yes Ma'am, but...

"This will only take a few moments. Do you think prophylactics should be on television?"

Say what?

"Prophylactics...condoms...they are..."

I KNOW what they are, lady.

"Should they be on your TV?"

What good would they do on my TV? It never leaves the house...

"DO YOU FAVOR ADVERTISING THEM ON TV!?"

I could care less.

"WELL, YOU BETTER CARE! THERE IS AN AIDS EPIDEMIC GOING ON AND THE PUBLIC IS BASICALLY IGNORANT!"

You seem to be a living testament to that...

"Would advertising them on TV offend you?"

After fourteen years in sewage, nothing much does offend me.

"Now, as a viewer of TV, what names would you find the least offensive?"

Trojan.

"I mean what descriptive name? Condoms...? Prophylactics...?"

Call them rubbers. I don't much care.

"That's a bit crude, don't you think?"

Here at work, we call them whitefish or bottlebass...

"What do you mean 'at work?' You wear them at work...?"

No ma'am. Remember that this is a sewage plant and that anything considered disposable usually winds up being flushed down the commode. Every day we get a few thousand of them buggers floatng in the clarifiers and filters. You seem like you are preparing to lobby for having them advertised on TV, so maybe you can give me a break and tell people to quit flushing them.

"What harm does flushing them do?"

Ma'am, they plug the sewer pipes and everything else. I remember one of the many times that I had to pull a plugged pump. You can never see what is in that mass of goo stuck in the pump impeller, so you just have to reach in and grab hold of it all. Well, some bozo had flushed one of those 'exciter' types...

"What type is that?"

...the kind with antlers. I mean to tell ya, it scared the hell outta me when I latched onto that thing! It was wiggling lite it was alive! For a moment, I thought I had an octopus by the ears...

"Uhhh...you mean...there is more than one type?"

Oh, yes ma'am! Should be interesting to see all of the marketing approaches they will use on TV. Should also be REAL educational for the 'ignorant public' that you are so worried about. We used to keep a bulletin board filled with all of the different sizes, models and colors...

"You are kidding of course..."

Oh, no ma'am! We fished out all fo the novelty items and tacked them up for display. My favorite was one that had the American flag on it.

"The flag? Just where did they put the flag?"

About half-staff...

CLICK!

Hmmmm. She must have dropped the phone while saluting...

I did a production of this for WRHU-FM in 1990 that I'm sure made Jeff Kraus wince.

Apparently this gem came from the International FidoNet Association, an ancient online SIG dedicated to the maintenance and preservation of an even-more-ancient software package.

From 1995, various historical figures answer the age-old question, "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Plato

For the greater good.

Karl Marx

It was an historical inevitability.

Machiavelli

So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken’s dominion maintained.

Hippocrates

Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Jacques Derrida

Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Torquemada

Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I’ll find out.

Timothy Leary

Because that’s the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Douglas Adams

Forty two.

Nietzsche

Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Oliver North

National security was at stake.

B.F. Skinner

Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Carl Jung

The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean–Paul Sartre

In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The possibility of “crossing” was encoded into the objects “chicken” and “road,” and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein

Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle

To actualize its potential.

Buddha

If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Howard Cosell

It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.

Salvador Dali

The Fish.

Darwin

It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson

Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus

For fun.

Emerson

It didn’t cross the road; it transcended it.

Goethe

The eternal hen–principle made it do it.

Hemingway

To die. In the rain.

Heisenberg

We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

David Hume

Out of custom and habit.

Saddam Hussein

This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Jack Nicholson

’Cause it (censored) wanted to. That’s the (censored) reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic

What road?

Ronald Reagan

I forget.

John Sununu

The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.

The Sphinx

You tell me.

St. Peter

I tell you, I don’t know any chicken.

Thoreau

To live deliberately...and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain

The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Herbert Marcuse

It was beguiled by false needs. Evidently, it was under the impression that the other side of the road was even better than the side it was already on.

Emile Durkheim

The chicken may have been an individual seeking to express its moral imperative in doing the right thing.

George H.W. Bush

Chicken. Road. Crossed it. Just because.

Rush Limbaugh

Get back here, I’m still hungry! The darn thing just up and took off! And that was not the right thing to do.

Bill Clinton

Well, it could have crossed the road, for some reason, which we will determine after a period of study.

Sinead O’Connor

“Flee chicken! Flee and be free!” The chicken wanted freedom from the chicken–eating big people.

Captain Kirk

Perhaps/probably/it seems/to which direction did the chicken go? Bones? Scotty? Spock?

Bones

Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor, not a Colonel!

Scotty

She’s criss–crossed like a Christmas tree! I’ll need more time!

Spock

Logic suggests the chicken required itself to be on the other side of the road. For which purpose cannot be determined at this time.

Picard

Is it moral to interfere with the chicken’s choices?

Troi

I sense something from the chicken, sir. It’s definitely across the road.

Worf

Tasty.

Karl Marx

In order for the chicken to have increased meat mass, the capitalists required the chicken to cross the road several times.

Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate

Can we talk about this? I mean, I’m not so happy right now and I’d rather not answer the question.

F. Lee Bailey

Objection, your Honor. My opponent is leading the chicken.

Spike Lee

It’s a chicken thing. You wouldn’t understand.

Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally...

You know, chickens and ducks can never really be friends.

A spokesman for Pat Robertson has clarified the Rev's stance on pot:

Dr. Robertson did not call for the decriminalization of marijuana. He was advocating that our government revisit the severity of the existing laws because mandatory drug sentences do harm to many young people who go to prison and come out as hardened criminals. He was also pointing out that these mandatory sentences needlessly cost our government millions of dollars when there are better approaches available. Dr. Robertson's comments followed a CBN News story about a group of conservatives who have proven that faith-based rehabilitation for criminals has resulted in lower repeat offenders and saved the government millions of dollars. Dr. Robertson unequivocally stated that he is against the use of illegal drugs.

Yes, faith-based rehabilitation for the criminals who use the Demon Weed will surely result in less economic deadweight loss and fewer ruined lives than, say, accepting that prohibition failed. (Whoops! I mean marijuana prohibition, which is obviously and totally unlike the 18th Amendment's prohibition of alcohol. I mean, everyone knows that was a disaster. Alcohol, as everyone knows, is safer than pot and more culturally relevant, so of course drawing a general lesson about drug laws from the 1930s isn't appropriate.)

Do you know why the Senate doesn't seem to get anything done? It might have something to do with the 63 filibusters they perpetrated in the current Congress. That's more filibusters than the Senate had from 1919 to 1982 combined, and two more than the previous record, which they set in the last Congress.

Drill down into the lists of individual cloture actions in each Congress, and you get a sense of just how obstructionist the Republicans have become.

Even Pat Robertson—yes, that Pat Robertson—can no longer pretend that U.S. drug policy has in any way succeeded:

The salient part:

We're locking up people that take a couple of puffs of marijuana and the next thing you know they've got ten years—they've got mandatory sentences and these judges, they throw up their hand and say, "Nothing we can do, it's mandatory sentences." We've got to take a look at what we're considering crimes, and that's one of them. I mean, I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don't get me wrong, but I just believe criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, and that kind of thing, I mean it's just, it's costing us a fortune, and it's ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths, and they come out as hardened criminals.

Wow. Decriminilization has forded the mainstream all the way to the other side.

Strange Maps finds our state mottoes through Google:

Google any word, and the search engine will suggest a longer phrase, based on the popularity of current searches starting with the same word.

This so-called autocomplete function (1) is, like any good advice, in equal parts helpful and annoying. Also, being a clever piece of statistics, it offers a fascinating insight into the mind(s) of the Great Online Public.

The same principle of random revelation can be applied to geographic terms, which is exactly what this map does. These United States of Autocomplete have been collated simply by typing in the name of each US state, then plotting the autocompleted results on an actual map of the US.

Montana's, and Washington's are, for different reasons, the most surprising.

Gulliver follows up on the 'sno-good situation at Heathrow:

Gatwick used to be owned by BAA, like Heathrow. But under its new owners, Global Infrastructure Partners, it has coped better than its London rival and is now fully operational. Part of the problem at Heathrow, of course, is that it operates at up to 98% capacity so small problems can have massive knock-on effects. But even so, the differences between snow-fighting provisions at Heathrow and Gatwick are notable, as the BBC has reported:

Earlier this year, BAA published an investment programme of £5.1bn for Heathrow over five years, of which £500,000 was invested in snow and ice-fighting technology this year, with another £3m planned for the next four years. By comparison, reports suggest that Gatwick Airport, which is half the size of Heathrow and was sold by BAA last year, spent £1m on snow and ice this year and plans to spend another £7m next year. Heathrow's "snow fleet" is made up of 69 vehicles; Gatwick's is a reported 150.

It reminds me of a statistic I encountered in 2003, when I worked for a time in Richmond, Va. That year, as many on the East Coast remember, the mid-Atlantic states had 12 snowstorms in three months. I got trapped in DC for two days in February returning from New York; I watched panicked Virginians buy all the bread and milk they could carry upon seeing the first snowflake.

Anyway, it turned out that the Commonwealth of Virginia (area: 110,785 km²) owned the same number of snowplows as the City of Chicago (area: 606 km²). It may be an unfair comparison—after all, municipalities also have snow-removal equipment—but I swear I didn't see Richmond start plowing until the snow had gotten at least 50 mm deep.

And if you want a laugh, the title of this post harks back to this old Monty Python ditty:

Back in 1979, Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic lost re-election to Jane Byrne mostly for his failure to clear the streets of snow after the worst snowfall in the city's recorded history. His story didn't end too badly, as he ultimately became Chief Justice of Illinois; but it taught all the city's subsequent mayors to get the snowplows out before the first flake hits the ground.

The Spanish company Ferrovial—owner of the British Airports Authority, which runs Heathrow—hasn't, apparently, learned this lesson, according to Daily Beast aviation blogger Clive Irving:

[Y]ou might think that, given its importance, the ability of Heathrow not simply to wreck the holiday travel plans of hundreds of thousands of people but to undermine economies, disrupt international air cargo and, most significantly, to visit disaster on the travel industry, plans would be in place to ensure that it can function after a 13 cm snowfall. After all, terrorists would be delighted to have wrought such harm.

Here we are, though, four days after the weekend shutdown of Heathrow and even now the airport is still barely functional.

And it’s all because the people in charge of Heathrow could not muster the resources to plow two runways and clear ice and snow from terminal gates—not exactly rocket science and something hundreds of airports have to face on a regular basis in winter.

It's interesting how O'Hare manages to keep 7 runways clear (or at least the three in use at any point) during 30 cm snow events, without resorting to the army.