Events

I just spent two hours removing blog spam. I hate these guys.

I like rodents, generally. As a kid I had gerbils. My college roommate Sean's wife raises angora rabbits. They're fuzzy, small, and the subject of cartoons we all grew up with. Rabbits, however, carry Cryptosporidium canis, a single-celled protozoan that causes bad butt. Parker, garbage dog that he is, finds rabbit poop as delicious as any other kind, and so he managed to give himself a lovely infection that has now cost me almost $100. (This figure includes the $10 the trainer charged me for cleaning...

I need a caption for this: Possibly, "I am never drinking again..." Parker is at day camp today, but he's not feeling great. I'm waiting to hear back from the vet on what, exactly, he ate last week. Our money is on rabbit poop, again.

From Christopher Hitchens: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

Warm morning, park, big stick. Parker is happy: And because everyone is back home, the ParkerCam is on today.

I'm visiting my Ps, nowhere near Parker: Also, some sad news. Reggie, the Aussie standing just behind my dad in the photo above, has lung cancer. He's over 12 years old, and he isn't in any pain right now, but it's only a matter of time. They're totally spoiling him for his last few months: last night, he got about a quarter of dad's steak, for example.

Princeton economist Paul Krugman, writing in today's New York Times, says Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) health care proposal has "a lot to commend" but "not as comprehensive as [he] would have liked:" You can’t be serious about health care without proposing an injection of federal funds to help lower-income families pay for insurance, and that means advocating some kind of tax increase. Well, Mr. Obama is now on record calling for a partial rollback of the Bush tax cuts. Also, in the Obama plan, insurance...

From Bruce Schnier: "At least they're honest about it this time."

I nearly forgot: Today is the 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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...