Events

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."

Pacifica, Calif.

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...