The Daily Parker

How about adding more useless traffic controls?

Insisting it’s about protecting children — not raising revenue — Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday made a final push for the authority he needs to use red-light cameras and cameras concealed in vans to catch motorists who speed near schools and parks.

Of course, increasing revenue is a welcome side-effect:

A study of seven red light camera intersections tracked 1.5 million vehicles and captured over 360,000 drivers (25%) violating the 30 mph speed limit. If just those speeding drivers were mailed the traditional $100 fine, it would rake in $36 million into Chicago’s nearly depleted coffers. If 75% or more of Chicago’s 190 intersections were mailing speeders $100 violation notices, the revenue could be staggering–revenue that could help Mayor Emanuel fill the city’s massive budget deficit.

But think of the children. They're going to have to find some way to buy back the parking meters.

The Commonwealth has approved gender-neutral primogeniture for the British throne. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's firstborn will become the heir apparent, whether it's a boy or girl:

"Attitudes have changed fundamentally over the centuries and some of the outdated rules — like some of the rules of succession — just don't make sense to us any more," [British Prime Minister David] Cameron told reporters in Perth.

"The idea that a younger son should become monarch instead of an elder daughter simply because he is a man, or that a future monarch can marry someone of any faith except a Catholic — this way of thinking is at odds with the modern countries that we have become," he added.

The legislation does not affect anyone currently alive, which hardly matters as the first person with an eldest daughter is so far down the list one hopes the question would never come up.

Oh, not here. Heavens. We don't have a lot of real conservatives; they're all in the U.K. Like the Prime Minister, for example:

I once stood before a Conservative conference and said it shouldn't matter whether commitment was between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and another man. You applauded me for that. Five years on, we're consulting on legalising gay marriage.

And to anyone who has reservations, I say: Yes, it's about equality, but it's also about something else: commitment. Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. So I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative.

Of course, he spouts nonsense about how to fix the economic mess we're in (blaming debt qua debt, rather than the Wild West banking environment that cause a lot of it):

Dealing with our debts is line one, clause one of our plan for growth. But it is just the start. We need jobs - and we won't get jobs by growing government, we need to grow our businesses. So here's our growth plan: doing everything we can to help businesses start, grow, thrive, succeed. Where that means backing off, cutting regulation - back off, cut regulation. Where that means intervention, investment - intervene, invest. Whatever it takes to help our businesses take on the world - we'll do it.

Perhaps if he did something to spur demand, it would help more than reducing regulations. Businesses may want lower taxes, but they'd rather have more customers.

But at least Her Majesty's Government will stay the hell out of people's bedrooms.

A few stories have gotten my attention in the past day. Each of them merits thought, but unfortunately I haven't got enough time to think today:

• Reuters reported on a new study that may have found a gene implicated in ALS. The study doesn't say whether this means ALS has a larger genetic component than previously thought. Current thinking puts inherited ALS at fewer than 10% of all cases. If it's more commonly inherited than that, I would very much like to know.
• Atlantic Cities has a history of American cul-de-sacs that will interest anyone concerned about the ways that American suburbs suck the souls from people seem less vibrant than large cities.
• Elizabeth Warren rocks. Since I can't vote for her, I will give her money instead. You should too.
• The rich are not oppressed.
• And counter my friend Celebitchy—well, her writer Kaiser, anyway—the Duchess of Cambridge is not stupid.

On this last point, apparently the future Queen Consort of the UK is getting tutored in statecraft to help her be queen someday. As I wrote to Celebitchy, "It’s not like she’s getting tutored in how many MPs there, who’s the head of the C of E, or how to pick Ed Milliband out of a crowd, which I’m pretty sure she knows already. (By the way, anyone criticizing her not knowing how English government works had better know those things cold.) Imagine if you were someday to become the symbol of the United States for all the world, wouldn’t you want to know the real ins and outs of US institutions? And if you had the opportunity to get private tutoring on those institutions from, say, Joe Biden, Ruth Ginsburg, Mitch McConnell, Hillary Clinton, Admiral Mullen, and a dozen others of their stature—don’t you think you’d take that opportunity?"

I'm not usually cock-a-whoop about royals, but in this case it seems the duchess is behaving like a conscientious adult, and wants to do her job competently, or even as well as her mother-in-law. She's not treating her marriage as a fairy tale; she's treating it as a responsibility. The future of British royalty is riding on her, after all. Another Diana and England could become a republic, and we can't have that, what what.

First, he highlights the fundamentals of the President's speech this morning:

The president's policy is simple, really. More stimulus now, more fiscal retrenchment later. And there is no way that we can - or should - balance the budget entirely on the backs of the poor and the middle class. There has to be some contribution from those most successful in an economy that continues to reward them more and more generously, even as the country's debt escalates.

In other words, as the President said, "This is not class warfare. This is math."

Also, Americans support the President's policies by overwhelming majorities.

Oh, and a quarter of the world away, our Conservative cousins in the UK have put marriage equality on the legislative agenda for next year, something the American radical right can't see how to do:

Addressing the opening day of her party's autumn conference in Birmingham, [UK Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone] spoke passionately about the need to reject prejudice and discrimination, and support the cause of women's equal rights and persecuted minorities across the world.

To rounds of applause, she said: "I am delighted to announce today that in March this Government will bring in a formal consultation on how to implement equal civil marriage for same-sex couples.

"And this would allow us to make any legislative changes necessary by the end of this Parliament."

So, by this time in 2012—in time for our election, wouldn't you know—the UK may have full marriage equality. Cool.

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 5-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in February, but some things have changed. In the interest of enlightened laziness I'm starting with the most powerful keystroke combination in the universe: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.

Twice. Thus, the "point one" in the title.

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.
• Photography. I took tens of thousands of photos as a kid, then drifted away from making art until a few months ago when I got the first digital camera I've ever had that rivals a film camera. That got me reading more, practicing more, and throwing more photos on the blog. In my initial burst of enthusiasm I posted a photo every day. I've pulled back from that a bit—it takes about 30 minutes to prep and post one of those puppies—but I'm still shooting and still learning.
• The weather. I've operated a weather website for more than ten years. That site deals with raw data and objective observations. Many weather posts also touch politics, given the political implications of addressing climate change, though happily we no longer have to do so under a president beholden to the oil industry.
• Chicago, the greatest city in North America, and the other ones I visit whenever I can.

I've deprecated the Software category, but only because I don't post much about it here. That said, I write a lot of software. I work for 10th Magnitude, a startup software consultancy in Chicago, I've got about 20 years experience writing the stuff, and I continue to own a micro-sized software company. (I have an online resume, if you're curious.) I see a lot of code, and since I often get called in to projects in crisis, I see a lot of bad code, some of which may appear here.

I strive to write about these and other things with fluency and concision. "Fast, good, cheap: pick two" applies to writing as much as to any other creative process (cf: software). I hope to find an appropriate balance between the three, as streams of consciousness and literacy have always struggled against each other since the first blog twenty years ago.

If you like what you see here, you'll probably also like Andrew Sullivan, James Fallows, Josh Marshall, and Bruce Schneier. Even if you don't like my politics, you probably agree that everyone ought to read Strunk and White, and you probably have an opinion about the Oxford comma—punctuation de rigeur in my opinion.

Another, non-trivial point. Facebook reads the blog's RSS feed, so many people reading this may think I'm just posting notes on Facebook. Facebook's lawyers would like you to believe this, too. Now, I've reconnected with tons of old friends and classmates through Facebook, I play Scrabble on Facebook, and I eagerly read every advertisement that appears next to its relevant content. But Facebook's terms of use assert ownership of everything that appears on their site, regardless of prior claims, which contravenes four centuries of law.

Everything that shows up on my Facebook profile gets published on The Daily Paker first, and I own the copyrights to all of it (unless otherwise disclosed). I publish the blog's text under a Creative Commons attribution-nonderivative-noncommercial license; republication is usually OK for non-commercial purposes, as long as you don't change what I write and you attribute it to me. My photos, however, are published under strict copyright, with no republication license, even if I upload them to other public websites. If you want to republish one of my photos, just let me know and we'll work something out.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy The Daily Parker.

NPR reported this morning that Brazilian police arrested a man carrying packages of cocaine in his intestines adding up to a full kilo:

The Irish guy was reportedly taken to the Santa Misericordia Hospital where the capsules were removed from his body. How exactly? That isn't clear from the press coverage....

Surgical removal of the packages is one option. But as doctors reported in the Canadian Journal of Surgery two years ago, surgical removal is far less likely than it used to be. Cocaine-filled packages can rupture during surgery, endangering patients, and there are other complications.

The NPR posting includes the guy's CT scan, which is either a lovely bit of representational art or deeply disgusting. Or both.

From the Hoboken Ferry:

27 June 1998, Canon EOS Rebel with Kodachrome 64, 35mm, about here.

The view on 20 October 2001:

I love these odd stories about time. Samoa, a small archipelago in the South Pacific, has passed a law to shift from the UTC-11 zone to UTC+13. This shift will cause them to skip December 30th entirely:

But the bill was not passed without its doubters. Faleata East MP, Aveau Niko Palamo, suggested that instead of one day for the transition to happen, it should be two days.

“What about the people who were born on that day, the weddings and anniversaries commemorated on that day,” says the MP. “The Seventh Day Adventists go to sleep on Thursday and wake up in the middle of the Sabbath.”

As for Aveau’s concern, [Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi] says; “Research shows that no one was born or married on 30 December.”

This is not true. A call to the Samoa Statistics Bureau confirmed that there are 767 births and 43 marriages registered on 30 December.

Well, with respect to the Prime Minister, no one will be born or married this December 30th, but that was a silly thing to say.

Samoa's change moves the International Date Line to the east, but it's not as extreme as Kiribati's wrenching of the IDL two hours east to ensure that it was the first place to greet the new millennium.

Since I last mentioned an annual study that reports which countries allow visa-free visitors from which other countries, the U.S. has fallen out of second place:

Scandinavians and Finns, by contrast, can travel to 173 countries or territories (out of a possible 223) without the need to fill in forms with curious questions dreamt up by bureaucrats.

The law firm Henley & Partners, which compiles the list, now has the U.S. tied at 5th with Ireland. The other top-5 countries are as follows:

When I have time, I'll try to chase down the raw data to find out, again, which countries we need visas to visit that our European and Japanese friends don't.