The Daily Parker

The Cubs' win against Houston yesterday started early. Here's the scoreboard after Kosuke Fukudome's two-run double in the 3rd, right before Ryan Theriot got to first on a throwing error:

The inning started with back-to-back solo home runs by Jake Fox and Milton Bradley, and ended with Derek Lee striking out and Fukodome, in one of the stupidest base-running moves I've seen in a long time, running on the dropped third strike and getting caught sealing home.

Final score, Cubs 12, Astros 3:

Notice the thickening clouds. Since this was the rain-postponed May 15th game, rain would have been ironic. Instead it just rained on my cousin a couple hours later as he walked home.

Other notable moments: plate umpire C.B. Bucknor got hit in the face twice in the second inning, but stayed in the game. And immediately after the game, both teams announced changes affecting the day's starting pitchers: Cubs starter Kevin Hart got traded, and Astros starter Russ Ortiz got released.

When Chicago-based Horizon Realty sued a former tenant for defamation because of a Twitter tweet, did anyone tell them how badly this could go for them? Seriously, that's some atrocious lawyering:

"Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay," Amanda Bonnen apparently wrote in her Twitter feed May 12 at 9:08 a.m.

Horizon Group Management, which leased Bonnen's Uptown apartment, wasn't pleased.

Last week the company filed suit against Bonnen in Cook County Circuit Court, claiming Bonnen "maliciously and wrongfully published the false and defamatory Tweet."

...

Regardless of the legal merits of the case, Horizon is "inviting a PR nightmare" and drawing scrutiny well beyond the 17 followers Bonnen's Twitter feed had before it was closed, said Sam Bayard, assistant director of the Citizen Media Law Project.

(Emphasis mine.)

OK, I think we can draw two important lessons from this:

First, Twitter feeds are public, and anything you tweet (or post on Facebook or on a blog or...you get it) is most likely "publishing" for the purposes of libel and defamation law. Further, if you actually libel or defame someone on a public website, you may be exposing yourself to suit not only where you live and where they live, but in any jurisdiction with a long-arm statute where people can access the Internet. (Lawyers: New York State is one, right?)

Worse, not every jurisdiction in the world follows the U.S. rule that it's up to the person claiming libel to prove both malice and dishonesty. In the U.K., for instance, because they have a "loser-pays" system, it puts the burden of showing that the alleged libel was actually true on the defendant. I commend to your attention the destruction of Oscar Wilde, who lost his libel suit and went to jail.

But that's not the main point. Libel in the U.S. is very hard to prove. Incompetence, however, is quite easy to prove, as when a company sues someone because they think the person made them look bad. The lawsuit makes them look positively reprehensible. Any lawyer who advises a client to proceed with this case is not helping her client. Any client who doesn't listen to his lawyer in this case is plain stupid. Look, the woman had 17 followers before last week; how many people are aware of the case now? 17,000? 17 million? What do you suppose Horizon's reputation looks like now?

More reasonably, it looks like they're suing this woman to punish her, knowing they have no hope of winning. I would not be surprised, if that's the case, if she counter-sues and wins on a claim of abusing the judicial process.

The bottom line: get over it.

The Cubs, against all logic and reason, remain in first place, half a game ahead of St. Louis, thanks to Alfonso Soriano's walk-on grand slam last night in the 13th, and remained as humble and gracious as ever:

"I play nine innings all the time," Soriano said. "I had three strikeouts and was 0-for-5, but in that last at-bat, I changed my day. I got the victory tonight, and I think everybody is happy now."

But it was Soriano who looked like the goat in the 11th when he stood at the plate on a grounder to third. [Plate umpire Mike] Everitt ruled the ball was in play, though Soriano insisted it went off his foot for a foul.

"I told him, if I say the ball hit me in my foot, it hit me in my foot," Soriano said. "I don't have to lie."

Mustn't complain, mustn't complain...they did win the game after all.

The Economist's Gulliver blog sums up the unfortunate problems with Boeing's biggest project:

The latest delay looks like the most serious yet. In May, routine bending tests in the workshop showed the wing structure to have separated from its skin ("delaminated") at 120%-130% of the load limit. To pass muster with the Federal Aviation Administration and other certification bodies, wings have to sustain at least 150% of the load limit without rupturing.

The problem...has been identified in the past and recognised as a problem. The issue has arisen on other composite airplanes. Indeed, the stress point at the end of the 787 stringers showed up as a 'hot spot' in Boeing’s computer models before the delamination in the wing bend test—but for some reason was never addressed.

It's worth a read, as are the articles Gulliver linked to.

Parker and I had a great two-hour walk this afternoon, punctuated by essays on Botswana and economic institutions (Duke reading). We stopped to admire the view at North Avenue, though I think Parker was more interested in the speedboat than the skyline:

Here's the rest of the view:

Lots to do for the next, oh, 17 months, so I thought I'd get started. My first Duke box arrived today, containing 6 kg of books, course packets, handouts, and more books, all of which have to be read by August 15th. Fortunately I have a few extra hours each day to do all this (I use them to sleep right now, so they're kind of wasted).

Just a couple news stories of note today:

• President Obama gave an hour-long press conference yesterday in which he spent 50 minutes discussing the single most important domestic-policy issue in the U.S. right now, health care. Since health care policy is complex, full of compromises, difficult to understand, and absolutely imperative to fix, the network talking heads spent all their time today discussing a stupid Cambridge, Mass., police officer who made an ill-advised arrest Monday. This, in turn, is why network talking heads are useless. I can't wait to see Jon Stewart's take.
• Mark Buehrle, who plays for the other Chicago baseball team, threw a perfect game this afternoon, the 2nd club history and only the 16th time ever in the major leagues. (A perfect game is one in which none of the offensive players gets on base by any means.)
• Finally, Gidget the Chihuahua, aka the Taco Bell dog, died yesterday at 15.

Back to work...

Usually, my July visits to my family in San Francisco allow me to get away from Chicago's oppressive heat. This year, both cities are about the same, San Francisco just a little warmer than usual, and Chicago...well, it's the coolest July of my life:

July has slipped to the coolest to date here in 42 years—its 68.7°F degree average temperature running nearly 5 degrees behind the long-term (138-year) average. Friday's 70°F high was the first time in 53 years a July 17 temperature failed to rise above 70—you'd have to travel back to a 64°F high 85 years ago to find a July 17 that was cooler.

The average high for July's first 17 days has been 77.5°F—the second coolest in the 50 years of O'Hare Airport weather records dating back to 1959. Only 1967's 76.2°F tally has been cooler.

Maybe Chicago will have a super-hot August this year. Like, when I'm in London....

A few things of note happened while I was en route to San Francisco yesterday:

• The Cubs continued winning, taking their second in a row after the All-Star break and moving up to second place, though only because they've beaten up the hapless (25-63) Nationals to do it.
• Wisconsin officials announced a deal to buy new 320 km/h train sets for the Chicago to Milwaukee route. Initially plans call for allowing the trains to run at 176 km/h (40% faster than today) while a new, dedicated high-speed line is studied.
• In San Francisco, BART, the light-rail agency, averted a strike that could cripple the area's transportation system. The agency's employees unanimously rejected management's last contract offer and walked away from negotiations, but the two sides have since resumed talks.
• Finally, Walter Cronkite died last night at 92.

And that's the way it is.

Update: One more from my dad: a big weenie drove into a house in Wisconsin yesterday, no doubt because the driver was in mourning.

Even though there are more important things going on in the world, there are also better bloggers out there, so I trust sticking with entirely petty and parochial issues won't offend anyone. Like this, for instance:

Prying the Sears name off North America's tallest building was as simple as asking the leasing agent from U.S. Equities Asset Management to do it.

"I kept saying, 'Sears Tower, Sears Tower. I'd rather have it be Kmart Tower,'" said Carmine Bilardello, the Willis executive who negotiated the lease. "Then I asked them what it would take to put our name on the building, and they said that could be arranged."

Well, then, I guess that's as good a reason as any. I'm still not calling it Willis Tower. Or "Big Willie," for the love of dog.

Cubs win their first game to start the beginning of the ending of the season at 1 game over .500. Hey, it could happen.