The Daily Parker

We're looking forward to another lovely day in Chicago: 25°C, sunny, light breeze, crystal-clear skies. What more perfect day to wake up with the news that, not only are the Cubs still hanging on to first place, but also Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has finally resigned, no doubt to spend some quality time with his defense lawyers:

Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said. His decision was not announced immediately announced, the official added, until after the president invited him and his wife to lunch at his ranch near here.

The official who disclosed the resignation today said that the decision was Mr. Gonzales’s and that the president accepted it grudgingly. At the same time, the official acknowledged that the turmoil over Mr. Gonzales had made his continuing as attorney general difficult.

The turmoil has made the job difficult? Kind of like someone shooting his parents and then bemoaning his lot as an orphan, isn't it?

Well, with 512 days and 3 hours (or less) remaining in the worst administration in history, the President can still do enormous harm to the country, but with Gonzales back in Houston he'll now have none of his original cronies to help.

Update, 10:25 CDT: Does anyone else find some irony in his last day being September 17th?

Yesterday storms tore through the Chicago area, generating high winds and more rain than we need. On our walk to work this morning Parker and I found our path blocked by one of the results:

The tree missed all the houses, cars, and power lines it aimed for. Very fortunate.

I think winds affect my biking regardless of what direction they're coming from. This morning, for example, in calm winds, I set three personal records on a 60 km ride: best distance over 1 hour (30.9 km); best time for 40 km (1:18:14, beating my previous PR by 4:01); and best time for 60 km (1:58:28, beating my previous by 3:22).

Next week I'm planning to ride 110—120 km as part of my North Shore Century training. Maybe another PR or two?

Newsweek just published an article laying out how oil, gas, and other similar industries have bamboozled the American public for close to 20 years about climate change:

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."

Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do."

For the record: there is no dispute among climatologists that planetary warming is mostly caused by human activities.

I'm glad Newsweek published the story, even though it's old news to people who have followed the administration's (528 days to go!) assault on science and reason. Maybe more people will realize they're being hoodwinked.

Parker is fast asleep on my office floor, which is the first he's stopped panting since waking up this morning. Poor guy doesn't have sweat glands, and it's going to be another sticky day in Chicago, with heat indices approaching 38°C.

Perhaps the unpleasant heat has led the Cubs into first place. Yes, somehow, slowly, steadily, yea even stealthily, they have ticked up more wins than losses and last night surpassed the Milwaukee Brewers to sneak into the top spot.

Let's see if they're still there when I attend Lou Gehrig Day this Sunday...

I admit that on occasion I've bought bottled water, for example on long road-trips. But I've also found it amusing that Evian backwards spells...well, you can figure it out. The Economist this week explains why, exactly, buying bottled water shows consumers are daft:

The success of bottled water is in many ways one of capitalism’s greatest mysteries. Studies show consistently that tap water is purer than many bottled waters—not including those that contain only tap water, which by some estimates is 40% of the total by volume. The health benefits that are claimed for some bottled waters are unproven, at best. By volume, bottled water often costs 1,000 times the price of tap water. Indeed, even with oil prices sky high, a litre of bottled water can cost more than a litre of petrol. And on top of that, there are the environmental costs of transporting bottled water and of manufacturing and disposing of the bottles.

Yet sales of bottled water have been booming. In 2006 Americans spent nearly $11 billion buying 31.2 billion liters of the stuff, an increase in volume of 9.5% on a year earlier. The average American drank 104.5 L of bottled water last year, up from 63.2 L in 2000.

All of which shows the problems of the average IQ being 100.

It's time for the semi-annual update of the Evanston/Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.)

You can get sunrise information for your location at wx-now.com.

• Tonight's sunset in Chicago (8:31 pm) is the latest of the year.
• The United Nations reported this week that, for the first time, more than half of all people live in cities.

The June Solstice happens in 15 minutes, at 1:06pm CDT. Happy Summer! (Or, you know, winter, for the one-third of the world who live in the Southern Hemisphere.)

The Atlantic hurricane season began last night at midnight UTC (7pm CT), and already we have our first named storm: Tropical Storm Barry, about 100km off Key West in the Gulf of Mexico:

AT 5 PM EDT...2100 UTC... A TROPICAL STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR THE WEST COAST OF FLORIDA FROM BONITA BEACH NORTHWARD TO KEATON BEACH...AND A TROPICAL STORM WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM NORTH OF KEATON BEACH TO ST. MARKS. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS AND A TROPICAL STORM WATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS.

The NHC expects Barry to trundle up the Gulf Coast of Florida, cross over near Jacksonville, and then rumble over all the Atlantic beaches from there to the Outer Banks before going away. Have fun!