Events

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...

Writing in the New York Times today, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) attempts to distance himself from natural selection theory without looking like a complete dullard. He fails, predictably, largely through setting up false or misleading dichtomies: The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God. Either you believe God created Man or you don't; how...

Nothing like a happy puppy running across a field at 6:30 in the morning... No ParkerCam until next Thursday, and possibly no Daily Parkers until then, either. Sorry. Rest assured that Parker will be having as much fun as his fuzzy butt can handle at Day Camp during his absence from the Internet. And come to think of it, with The Daily Parker around, on the Internet everyone does know you're a dog...

The Chicago Tribune published a short list of dog-friendly beer gardens this morning, but left Evanston's Tommy Nevin's Pub off the list. I guess Nevin's doesn't qualify as a beer garden per se. The omission notwithstanding, Parker and I will work our way through the list as the summer goes on.

I found myself thinking about this lilting ditty around 5 this morning: I woke early one morning,The earth lay cool and stillWhen suddenly a tiny birdPerched on my window sill, He sang a song so lovelySo carefree and so gay,That slowly all my troublesBegan to slip away. He sang of far off placesOf laughter and of fun,It seemed his very trilling,brought up the morning sun. I stirred beneath the coversCrept slowly out of bed,Then gently shut the windowAnd crushed his f@&$!!g head.

Long-time readers of The Daily Parker know that I don't usually discuss my personal life. Sometimes, however, I have an experience that doesn't involve Parker (except for putting him in his crate on a rainy weekend day), that moves me to break that rule. On Saturday, I and about 100 other alumni of Glenbrook North High School wished our choir director, Judy Moe, a happy retirement. She and David Walter (the music department chair while I was there) taught me more about music than anyone since. Their...