I regret my headline from Tuesday. Apparently, the man committed suicide:
The young man who died in a pipe bomb explosion Tuesday in Evanston committed suicide after a nearly lifelong fight with depression, his family said Wednesday.
"We are devastated that our beloved son, Colin Dalebroux, lost his 15-year battle with depression," the family said in a statement from their home in Madison, Wis. "We know that Colin committed suicide."
It's one thing if he had died trying to hurt other people; quite a different thing if, as is the case, he took his own life.
Sullivan asks, "What if the Pope came to Britain and not even the Catholics showed up?"
ONLY 65,000 Catholics are now expected to take part in the papal mass in Scotland tomorrow – one third fewer than originally expected and a mere fraction of the total number in the country.
The figure falls far short of the 100,000 pilgrims it was originally hoped would flock to see Pope Benedict XVI at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow.
The Catholic Church denied that the controversy over the Pope's handling of the Church's child abuse scandal has undermined his imminent arrival.
But critics of the visit claimed the figures revealed the extent of indifference towards the first visit by a Pope to Scotland for 28 years.
The Catholic Church says more than 250,000 attended the mass in Bellahouston Park when Pope John Paul II visited in 1982.
I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles away from Ratzinger.
This caught my eye this morning only because it occurred directly across the street from where I lived during most of 2007. Parker used to chase tennis balls in the tennis courts right near the scene:
A man walking his dog this morning near an Evanston middle school discovered a decapitated body, perhaps the result of a pipe bomb explosion, and some hours later police destroyed what they suspected was an explosive device in the vicinity.
He said his dog led him to the body of a shirtless man whose head was missing and whose legs were folded behind him. A shopping bag lay nearby, and there was a strong odor of what he thought was gunpowder.
The body was near tennis courts, between a fence and a pine tree, he said.
On returning home, he said neighbors told him they had heard a loud explosion between 4 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. He said police told him they had come out earlier to investigate the sound of the explosion but were unable to find anything at that time.
Ew.
As I mentioned on Parker Day (September 1st, the day I adopted him), I've had a little too much going on to get a good portrait of the dude. It's beautiful in Chicago this morning, so I made the time today:
Did you know what goes on inside figs?
Figs are not actually fruits but a mass of inverted flowers and seeds that are pollinated by a species of tiny symbiotic wasps. The male fig flower is the only place where the female wasp can lay her eggs, at the bottom of a narrow opening in the fruit that she shimmies her way through. The baby wasps mature inside the fig into males that have sharp teeth but no wings and females ready to fly. They mate, the males chew through the special fig pollen holders and drop them down to the females, chew holes in the skin of the fig to let the females out, and then die. The females, armed with the pollen, fly off in search of new male figs to lay her eggs in. In the process some of the female wasps land on female figs that don't have the special egg receptacle but trick the female into shimmying inside. As the female wasp slides through the narrow passage in the fig her wings are ripped off (egg laying is a one-way mission) and while she is unsuccessful in laying her eggs, she successfully pollinates the female flower. The female flower then ripens into the fig that you can get at the supermarket, digesting the trapped wasp inside with specialized enzymes! For the females that managed to lay their eggs the life cycle continues with a new brood of tiny wasps ready to mate and pollinate.
Josh Marshall: "Who could have predicted that an orchestrated campaign anti-Muslim hate speech on the part of many of the country's most prominent politicians and the country's biggest news network could have led to this unfortunate situation in Florida?"
Indeed.
The Economist has picked up on Daley's departure:
After Mr Daley privatised the city’s parking meters, drivers filled coin slots with glue and docile aldermen briefly located their spines. Last year Mr Daley struggled to close a budget gap. This summer just 31% of Chicagoans thought he should seek re-election.
So who will succeed Mr Daley? The most promising contender may be Mr Emanuel. Whoever the replacement, he is unlikely to bring the dramatic changes that characterised the Daley era. But a new leader is overdue. “Simply put,” Mr Daley said, “it’s time.”
And the Guardian:
Speculation in Chicago and Washington DC quickly turned to [President Obama's chief of staff Rahm] Emanuel, who has long made public his interest in the job – while the timing could not be better from the White House's point of view. With a crushing defeat in the US midterm elections looming, the need for Obama to reshuffle his senior staff after November was growing.
Emanuel refused to comment on the speculation, saying in a statement: "While Mayor Daley surprised me today with his decision to not run for re-election, I have never been surprised by his leadership, dedication and tireless work on behalf of the city and the people of Chicago."
Note that Emanuel was my Congressman until being named Obama's chief of staff in November 2008, and he maintains a permanent residence in the city.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley will not run for re-election next spring:
Daley's public approval rating had dipped recently, with a Tribune poll earlier this summer showing that more than half of Chicago voters said they don't want to see him re-elected.
The poll found only 37 percent of city voters approve of the job Daley is doing as mayor, compared with 47 percent who disapprove. Moreover, a record-low 31 percent said they want to see Daley re-elected, compared with 53 percent who don't want him to win another term.
The mayor's administration has been buffeted by a spate of summer violence, a weak economy and a high-profile failure to land the 2016 Olympics. Dissatisfaction abounds, the survey found, over Daley's handling of the crime problem, his efforts to rein in government corruption and his backing of a controversial long-term parking meter system lease.
This isn't a big surprise, as President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has hinted he wants the job—which he would never do without knowing for sure Daley was stepping down.
(Morton's Steakhouse, the best in Chicago, has portraits of the city's mayors going back to Daley's father.)
Paul Krugman noticed this poll from 1938, in which most Americans got completely wrong what the U.S. needed to get out of the depression:
Do you think government spending should be increased to help get business out of its present slump?
Gallup Poll, Mar, 1938
37% Yes
63% No
Of course, it was massive government spending from 1942 to 1945 that actually ended the Great Depression.
I adopted Parker four years ago today. 
I'll snap his annual portrait this weekend (I'm a little overloaded today).