Where to start?
And now, a stand-up meeting.
What a day. I thought I'd have more time to catch up on reading up to this point, but life intervened. So an hour from now, when I'm cut off from all telecommunications for 9 hours, I plan to sleep. And if I wake, I'll read these articles that I'm leaving open in Chrome:
And now, I head to my airplane.
I spent over 3 hours in my car today in principal because there were no public transit options to my remote, suburban destination. That, plus all-day meetings, means that instead of outlining what I'm planning for the weekend—I'll do that tomorrow—I'm just going to line up some articles I want to read:
I now have to pack. Parker will be unhappy with this.
The Atlantic reports on some new research in why animals all do this thing that could get them eaten:
There are a handful of substances clearly demonstrated to cause sleep—including a molecule called adenosine, which appears to build up in certain parts of the brains of waking rats, then drain away during slumber. Adenosine is particularly interesting because it is adenosine receptors that caffeine seems to work on. When caffeine binds to them, adenosine can’t, which contributes to coffee’s anti-drowsiness powers. But work on hypnotoxins has not fully explained how the body keeps track of sleep pressure.
For instance, if adenosine puts us under at the moment of transition from wakefulness to sleep, where does it come from? “Nobody knows,” remarks Michael Lazarus, a researcher at the institute who studies adenosine. Some people say it’s coming from neurons, some say it’s another class of brain cells. But there isn’t a consensus. At any rate, “this isn’t about storage,” says [Japanese researcher Masashi] Yanagisawa. In other words, these substances themselves don’t seem to store information about sleep pressure. They are just a response to it.
Unfortunately...they still haven't figured it out. But there is a cute video at the bottom of the article.
Between my company's work-from-home week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, and the excruciatingly cold weather the week after, this morning was the first time since December 21st.
It turned out that commuting by public transit took exactly the same amount of time as driving to work, but gained me 2,500 additional steps. That's helpful, because in the last 20 days I've missed my step goal 10 times.
Here's to warmer weather and better exercise habits.
People watching the big-beer industry (think: Miller Lite and Coors Light) expect a 7.1% decline in mass-market beer sales—$2.1 billion annually—as more states legalize cannabis:
"There's a ton of overlap in marijuana and domestic beer consumption among younger college males," says Rick Maturo, co-founder of Cannabiz Consumer Group, an Inverness-based research company. "This is the group that drinks beer at a heavier volume and is most likely to cut back if cannabis is legally available."
He says 27 percent of beer drinkers say they've already substituted marijuana for beer or would do so if the drug were legalized in their state. Other research predicts an even worse dip: Alcoholic beverage sales fell 15 percent after the passage of medical marijuana laws in a number of states, according to researchers at the University of Connecticut and Georgia State University.
Sales of Coors Light and Miller Lite were down 3.6 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively, through the third quarter from a year earlier, according to Nielsen data from Beer Marketer's Insights. In October, Molson Coors, MillerCoors' Denver-based parent, said its U.S. beer sales dropped nearly 3 percent in the previous quarter. And between 2010 and 2016, the light category as a whole saw volumes decline by 14 percent.
What's worse: The decline of Miller Lite and Coors Light is nearly impossible to offset through other sales—even as the brewer's Leinenkugel's and Blue Moon brands post robust results—because the two light beers represent more than half of MillerCoors' overall sales volume. They're "a major driver of our profitability," CEO Gavin Hattersley acknowledged on MillerCoors' third-quarter earnings call recently.
Two things: first, pot was criminalized in the wake of the 21st Amendment exactly for this reason. Second, I'm not sorry to see declines in the sales of horrible products.
My step count over the last week and a half has really suffered. Between Arctic temperatures and working from home (and a dog who hates boots), my average over the last 7 days of 2017 was just 8,441 steps per day. Throughout 2017, I only missed 10k steps 26 times—6 of them between Christmas and New Year's Eve.
This weekend should be warmer, and I'm back in the office this week, so I expect better results going forward. Both yesterday and Monday I hit my 10k goal, and today I'm likely to.
But wow, I hate missing it. I really do.
This time, I'm getting this in early, and posting it automatically just before midnight. So the numbers might be a tiny bit off.
2017 saw almost no significant changes over 2016, except in Fitbit numbers:
- I again only visited one foreign country (again the UK) and 8 states (Michigan, New York, Missouri, Louisiana, Virginia, D.C., Maryland, Texas, and California). I again took only 15 flights. That came out to 31,042 km in the air, one of my lowest showings ever, and the fewest flight miles since 1999. In fact, I didn't fly anywhere for almost the first seven months of 2017. So sad.
- Including this post, I wrote 456 entries for The Daily Parker, down only 3 from last year. For the second year running, it's the fewest since 2010.
- Parker got 202 hours of walks, just shy of last year's 211 hours. That's not so bad, but we can do better next year (if the old dog is up to it).
- Pending today's final step count, I got 5,106,522 steps this year, up a whopping 413,095 over 2016—a difference greater than the number I've gotten in any of the past 4 months. So, basically, my step count in 2017 was almost a month's steps better than in 2016 or 2015. No wonder I wore out a pair of shoes between May and November.
- I also gained 600 grams in 2017. Pfft.
- 2017 may be my most disappointing year for reading in a long time. I only started 17 books, and only finished 13. I've just been really busy. That said, the circumstances that encouraged me to finish 47 books in 2007 and 52 in 2008 aren't any I'd like to repeat. (Now, if I could just find a way to read a book a week without interfering with all my other activities...)
Here's 2016 in review. It was similar.
Today is the last work day of 2017, and also the last day of my team's current sprint. So I'm trying to chase down requirements and draft stories before I lose everyone for the weekend. These articles will just have to wait:
We now return to "working through lunch," starring The Daily Parker...
Every six months or so, I put together a handy chart of what Chicago's sunrise and sunset times will look like for the next 12 months. The first one was in July 2006. Today I posted what I believe is the 24th.
Share and enjoy.