The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

New F'ing York, baby!

Last night the New York Senate passed a same-sex marriage law making the state the sixth to legalize it and effectively doubling the population of SSM-legal jurisdictions.

Connecticut, D.C., Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont now allow same-sex marriage; civil unions or domestic partnerships are recognized in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin (to greater or lesser extent).

One part of the country lurches into the 21st century while another staggers back to the 19th...

Map: Wikipedia

Holding America hostage

Fallows justly slams Rep. Eric Cantor (R-OH):

A petulant demonstration to the rest of the world that we can't meet the baseline obligation we expect of any two-bit duchy -- that it will face its financial problems and honor its sovereign debt -- would be a big, damaging step in the wrong direction. Good for John Boehner in recognizing that more than his own ambitions are at stake here. If the default actually comes, and markets panic, and interest rates for everything shoot up, keep the courageous Rep. Cantor in mind on that day.

Every once in a while, it would be nice if the Republicans in Congress did their jobs.

It was windy

Last night Chicago got hit by severe storms that included hurricane-force winds:

Violent storms raked large sections of the Chicago area Tuesday evening, knocking power out to nearly a quarter million Chicago area residents and transforming some thoroughfares into darkened obstacle courses, hard to navigate with streetlights out and debris, ranging from large trees to power poles and garbage cans, impeding if not entirely blocking travel. Police in some of the hardest hit areas were forced to light flares to mark fallen trees.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing transformers exploding at the height of the storms while others described some neighborhoods as "war zones" after the onslaught of storms.

... The storms generated gusts as high as 130 km/h at Wheeling and 120 km/h at Peru, Elmhurst and Wheaton.

I was inside, as you can imagine, as the storms ran over my part of the city, with horizontal rain and, well, lots of wind. At one point I watched the groundskeepers at US Cellular Field blown around as they tried to get the tarp over the infield.

Ah, global warming.

Photo of the Day

On the James River, just downstream of Richmond, Va.:

1 February 2003, Kodak DC4800 at ISO-140, -1 EV, 1/90 at f/3.4, 11mm, near here.

This came from from my old Kodak DC4800, which I mentioned yesterday. Like yesterday's, it looks great on the blog at 500x750, but it doesn't have much more resolution than that, and Adobe Lightroom helped it along a little.