A mollusk told a crustacean to GFY. What happened next will terrify you
In all seriousness, self-cloning crayfish are kind of freaky:In 2003, scientists confirmed that the marbled crayfish were indeed making clones of themselves. They sequenced small bits of DNA from the...
View ArticleFile that under "B" for "Bad OpSec"
Via Bruce Schneier (and other sources), the Australian government suffered one of its worst-ever disclosures of secrets caused by not looking through used furniture:It begins at a second-hand shop in...
View ArticleWhat are the odds of this?
North suburban New Trier High School—one of the richest public schools in the world—has a world-record 44 sets of twins (and one set of triplets) in the 10th grade class alone. I'm going to ask Deeply...
View ArticlePeace in our time, canid edition
Coyotes and red foxes seldom interact in the wild, as foxes tend to give coyotes a wide berth. In urban areas, however, they seem to get along just fine:Over the years, foxes and coyotes, like so many...
View ArticleMid-week link roundup
Lots of things popped up in my browser today:New Republic's Adrian Daub reviews the new Netflix series Babylon Berlin.The Illinois State Climatologist points out that we had a cold and snowy first half...
View Article"Told you so."—George Washington, 1796
Thomas Pickering and James Stoutenberg, writing for the New York Times, point out that George Washington warned us about someone like the modern Republican Party or Donald Trump taking power in the...
View ArticleBronze age defenses, modern attacks
Via Bruce Schneier, DHS Senior Analyst Jack Anderson describes how walls are still a dominant security metaphor, and the consequences of that choice:Walls don’t fail gracefully. But there is a...
View ArticleBlogging A to Z challenge...accepted
This year, The Daily Parker will participate in the Blogging A-to-Z challenge.Since I've posted an average 1.31 times per day since the modern era* of this blog began in November 2005, and an average...
View ArticleFunction following forms
Designer Josh Gee spent two years trying to put Boston city government forms online:Getting city workers to accept online submissions rather than traditional paper ones is the bulk of this work. On...
View ArticleIt's official: The Millennial Generation is 1981-1996
At least according to Pew Research:Pew Research Center has been studying the Millennial generationfor more than a decade. But as we enter 2018, it’s become clear to us that it’s time to determine a...
View ArticleOn the radar today
I'm actually coughing up a lung at home today, which you'd think gives me more time to read, but actually it doesn't. Really I just want a nap.Andrew Sullivan's weekly column asks whether this is the...
View ArticleBlogging A-to-Z sign up tonight
I've narrowed my list down to four potential topics for the Blogging A-to-Z challenge:U.S. CivicsProgramming (with .NET)MusicPlaces I've visitedI've got 26 topics lined up for each. I think they'll all...
View ArticleWhere am I?
Via Deeply Trivial, a video that claims to be the most detailed map of the universe to date:
View ArticleOne sentence that sums everything up concisely
From Josh Marshall:[D]ecoupling the United States from the major states and economies of Western Europe has been the central foreign policy goal of Russia for about 70 years.We defeated the Soviet...
View ArticleFlorida votes to secede from the Eastern time zone
Florida's legislature has voted overwhelmingly to change the state's clocks:The Florida Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act on Tuesday, three weeks after the state’s House of Representatives, and...
View ArticleLong weekend; just catching up
Saturday and Sunday, the Apollo Chorus sang Verdi's "Requiem" three times in its entirety (one dress rehearsal, two performances), not including going back over specific passages before Sunday's...
View ArticleHell of a week
In the last seven days, these things have happened:Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (the worst Secretary of State in modern history?) got kicked out in typical Trump Administration fashion (i.e.,...
View ArticleThe Athropic Shadow
An article in this month's Atlantic points out that we humans can wonder how we got here only because we got here:After all, there are 100-mile impact craters on our planet’s surface from the past...
View ArticleLying down with dogs
The New York Times last week suggested that people who sleep with their dogs sleep just as well as those whose dogs sleep elsewhere:The dogs wore a device called a Fitbark, an activity tracker that...
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Blogging A-to-Z Challenge Topic 2018
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, The Daily Parker will participate in this year's Blogging A-to-Z Challenge. Today's the official Theme Reveal day. My topic will be: Programming Concepts using...
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