Some memes obscure deeper truths. "Liberal" and "college town," for example, often go together, as in the lede from a story in Tuesday's New York Times:

BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 14 — Voters in this liberal college town have approved what environmentalists say may be the nation's first "carbon tax," intended to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases.

This lede bothered me for several reasons. First, I don't believe that wanting to reduce catastrophic climate change is so much a "liberal" idea as it is a "sensible" idea. Second, if Boulder is "liberal," that makes my home town (Evanston, Ill.) "socialist" and puts Cambridge, Mass., on the loony fringe. And I'm not sure Greenville, S.C. really wants the label "liberal" any more than Evanston wants the label "reactionary right-wing religious nuts."

We get this via Talking Points Memo: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) explains what's really causing global warming.

We'll be watching him lose his chairmanship as the new Congress takes office in 46 days and 20 hours.

Parker had the Big Operation yesterday and, after the drugs wore off overnight, was back to his usual puppy self by 5:30 this morning. He didn't understand why we couldn't go to the dog park this morning. Tuesday, we assured him, he could go.

Today he is once again guarding my office from productivity:

Oh, poor puppy. Today is the Big Operation. But even as the vet was leading him away, he had no idea what she was about to do to him. There are just too many interesting smells at the animal hospital. And he was probably hoping someone would feed him, since we "forgot" this morning:

Parker is at home today, so nothing new on the ParkerCam. Tomorrow is his Big Operation, which we've tried to explain to him to no avail. Poor guy. I'd like to say that this photo is him being worried about the Big Operation, but no, it's him watching a mourning dove take off:

This snapshot of Parker sniffing around the back yard was going to be today's Daily Parker:

But then he decided to help me with the laundry:

I'm trying an experiment: the ParkerCam. It may not be around long, and it's only going to be on when Parker is in my office. Still, if it's running, it will update every 60 seconds. Sometimes you'll just see my office floor; other times, such as this writing, you'll see a sleeping puppy.

I'm back in Chicago, but I'm looking forward to my next visit to San Francisco. Here's one more from our walk Saturday:

Reggie (below) gets to walk on or near a beach almost every day. Today I got to tag along.