Events

The very first thing I heard today was the weather forecast, calling for 34°C temperatures this afternoon. Then I heard an NPR story about Texas' war on women: For hundreds of thousands of Texas women and teens between the ages of 13 and 50, the 71 family planning clinics in the state serve as their gateway to health care, and for many of those women, visiting the clinics is the only time they see a nurse practitioner or a doctor. This year, the Republican-controlled Texas legislature and Gov. Rick...

First, he highlights the fundamentals of the President's speech this morning: The president's policy is simple, really. More stimulus now, more fiscal retrenchment later. And there is no way that we can - or should - balance the budget entirely on the backs of the poor and the middle class. There has to be some contribution from those most successful in an economy that continues to reward them more and more generously, even as the country's debt escalates. In other words, as the President said, "This is...

It's crystal-clear and 22°C, so I've spent the day walking Parker. Regular updates will resume once the weather deteriorates.

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 5-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in February, but some things have changed. In the interest of enlightened laziness I'm starting with the most powerful keystroke combination in the universe: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. Twice. Thus, the "point one" in the title. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's...

Via Sullivan, a report that members of an Amish sect in Kentucky have gone to jail over orange triangles on their buggies: The orange triangles are required on all slow-moving vehicles, according to Kentucky state law. Nine me n in the western part of the state have refused to use them. They belong to the Old Order Swartzentruber Amish. According to court documents, this sect follows a strict code of conduct, called Ordnung, which "regulates everything from hairstyle and dress to education and...

NPR reported this morning that Brazilian police arrested a man carrying packages of cocaine in his intestines adding up to a full kilo: The Irish guy was reportedly taken to the Santa Misericordia Hospital where the capsules were removed from his body. How exactly? That isn't clear from the press coverage.... Surgical removal of the packages is one option. But as doctors reported in the Canadian Journal of Surgery two years ago, surgical removal is far less likely than it used to be. Cocaine-filled...

Right-wing Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin is tired of willfully ignorant Republicans: [Perry] was trying to be self-deprecating, but it’s disturbing to see that he thinks being a rotten student and a know-nothing gives one street cred in the GOP. Is it so important to defy the MSM by flaunting affection for anti-intellectualism? Just imagine if Sarah Palin had said all that — the conservative cheerleaders who gave up on her (but are still rooting for Perry) would roll their eyes in disgust....

One of my friends, Nature Nerd Naomi, reported that she saw frost on her roof this morning. She lives about 40 km away. And Chicago Tribune meteorologist Tom Skilling says yesterday was the coldest September 14th in 37 years: Temperatures failed to reach 16°C at the city's official O'Hare observation site Thursday, topping out at 14.4°C instead. It's the coolest reading which has occurred there since late May and a temperature which equals the normal high on Oct. 28. But even more significantly, a...

Apparently my creativity isn't alone in its suffering this time of year. I'm also finding it a lot harder to learn Japanese than I expected. Anyone else feeling a little leaden the past couple of weeks?

For the last three years running—including, it seems this one—my ability to find passably-interesting topics to write about plummets in September and picks up again mid-October. Any hypotheses about why? I haven't got any, except maybe that the shortening days do something. Which is all just a longer way of saying, chirp...chirp...chirp...