Events

Today's Chicago Tribune story on sodium in our diets begins with just about the stupidest lede I have read in a long time: Sodium, one of the planet's oldest substances, may be the American diet's newest enemy. I imagined it continuing: Only sodium, of all 90 naturally-occuring chemical elements, has expressed any hostility toward the American diet. In separate news conferences, spokespeople for hydrogen and helium, the planet's two oldest substances, stressed that they are essentially inert and take no...

Anne will hate that I know this now: Coffee may counteract alcohol's poisonous effects on the liver and help prevent cirrhosis, researchers say. In a study of more than 125,000 people, one cup of coffee per day cut the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis by 20 percent. Four cups per day reduced the risk by 80 percent. The coffee effect held true for women and men of various ethnic backgrounds. Not that I was ever a candidate for cirrhosis, of course. But it's nice to know that both vices work together to keep...

From the "Jeez, People, They're Not People!" category in yesterday's L.A. Times (by way of the Chicago Tribune (reg.req.): Fido Party of Four, Your Table Is Ready By P.J. HuffstutterL.A. Times Staff WriterPublished June 12, 2006 CHICAGO—Chef Didier Durand has spent months testing his restaurant's new menu on his most finicky customer: Princess, his 2-year-old French poodle. The ostrich country pate? To drool for. The bone marrow gateau? Delightfully crunchy. The grilled steak hache? Gone in a gulp....

Talking Points Memo has a list of the Senators supporting, opposed to, and dithering over S.2917, the "Net Neutrality" legislation currently winding its way through the Senate. Illinois Senator Obama is a co-sponsor; I've just sent our Senator Durbin an email asking him to do the same.

The City of Chicago has floated a plan to designate more than 800 km (500 mi) of bike lanes and paths by 2015 (reg.req.): [W]ith a strong track record of delivering for cyclists, the city is thinking big: a bike route within a half-mile of every resident; a 50-mile circuit of bike trails, with some off-road paths to be announced later this year; 185 miles of new bikeways altogether. By 2015, planners hope, 5 percent of all trips shorter than 5 miles long will be made by bike. Now, if only Mayor Daley...

Welcome to the 2006 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Our first guest: Tropical Storm Alberto, now churning in the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Hurricane Center is monitoring Tropical Depression 1, currently in the Carribean but expected to move up the Florida coast this week: AT THIS TIME...THE MAIN THREAT FROM THE DEPRESSION IS HEAVY RAINFALL. THE DEPRESSION IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAINFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 10 TO 20 INCHES OVER THE WESTERN HALF OF CUBA...WITH ISOLATED TOTALS OF 30 INCHES OVER THE HIGHER TERRAIN. THIS COULD CAUSE DEVASTATING FLASH FLOODS AND MUD SLIDES. GRAND CAYMAN ISLAND HAS REPORTED 22.72 INCHES OF RAIN...

I read every word in her column today, and I still have no idea what Maureen Dowd thinks of bloggers (sub.req.): If I had to be relegated to the Dustbin of History, I'm glad it was in Vegas. I, Old Media, came here to attend a New Media convention of progressive political bloggers aiming for a technological revolution that would dispatch mainstream media to the tumbrels. It was the journalistic equivalent of mingling with your own pod replicant in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Bemused, perhaps? I...

My father has posted his very first eBay listing: 50 decorative tea tins, mint condition. I'm so proud of him. By the way, if you need any tea tins—perhaps for a school project, or an art installation—you have until next Thursday to bid on them.

Over at Talking Points Memo Cafe, Gene Sperling lays out the problems with the proposals to repeal the estate tax: The nation is at war and troops have been having trouble getting the safest equipment. Child poverty has been on the rise for four straight years. Deficits are projected to total $4 trillion in the next ten years, our entitlement challenge is unresolved, working wages have been stagnating or declining, and fixing the estate tax for the top 3 of every 1000 estates in 2011 is what we should...