I also forgot to mention, because it happened while my office DSL was down (cutting off my Web servers from the world), that this past Friday had the earliest sunset of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

Ordinarilly at a juncture like this I would write a dissertation on why the earliest sunset precedes the latest sunrise by four weeks, or why neither coincides with the solstice, but I'll spare you for now. No, the sun is setting later now, but the sun is also rising later, until January 4th, sorry to say.

I forgot to mention: this afternoon, I got elected Sergeant-at-Arms of the Rotary Club of Evanston, "Rotary's Home Club."

This means, starting in July, I'm responsible for fund-raising at each meeting (which we accomplish by asking silly questions and then "fining" members $1 each when their table gets the answer wrong) and, in theory at least, removing people from the room if it becomes necessary.

I just have to sigh heavily when I read crap like this. New Scientist is reporting today on a "lab" in Redmond, Wash., where the "scientists" are trying to find evidence against Darwin:

The message is clear. If ID supporters can bolster their case by citing more experimental research, another judge at some future date might conclude that ID does qualify as science, and is therefore a legitimate topic for discussion in American science classrooms. This is precisely the kind of scientific respectability that research at the Biologic Institute is attempting to provide. "We need all the input we can get in the sciences," [former Biologic, Inc., director] Weber told [New Scientist]. "What we are doing is necessary to move ID along."

Riiiight.

Even an atheist like me can see the divine in the beauty and elegance of natural selection theory. Why do these people need the hand of god to create every piece of their world? Are they so wrapped up in the specific theology that they miss the deeper meaning of it?

I have to take more photos of Parker when he's not asleep. Today, however, you get another sleeping puppy shot:

I went to take a quick snapshot of Parker in his give-me-a-belly-rub pose, when he caught sight of the camera strap. The outcome was, I suppose, predictable:

I got contact lenses on Monday. I honestly have no idea why I didn't get them earlier. My vision isn't much clearer than when I had glasses, but, well, I no longer have glasses. It's weird.

Also weird is sticking my finger in my eye twice a day. I don't know how long it will take to get used to that.

That is all.

Our little puppy isn't so little any more. Here's a before-and-after in which you can actually see the difference. The "before" shot is from September 8th:

The "after" shot is from about five minutes ago...

We're back, with the ParkerCam. I didn't intend to go five days without posting anything, but the office DSL modem—a crappy 2Wire model—has sporadically dropped the internal network connection. So while the DSL worked just fine, the modem stopped communicating with the rest of the office. No blogs, no email, no weather: quelle horreur.

More later.

My laziness is your gain. Here's another shot from Parker Day 2, back in September, back when everything was new and we carried him down the steps every night at 3am.

Though, if it did have a caption, what would the caption be? (Via Talking Points Memo.)

Parker is at home this afternoon. Due to a mix-up with the dog walker, he got two walks today because I was home all morning dealing with people in the house, but he got no walks yesterday. This explains why he bounced off walls for three hours last night instead of his usual two.

Today's photo has nothing to do with any of that. It's just an average shot from two weeks ago, showing the eternal cuteness of Parker and the anything-but-eternal good weather that we had over Thanksgiving:

The Washington Post has a fascinating article on Iraq and the psychology of entrapment (via Talking Points Memo):

When you invest yourself in something, it is exceedingly difficult to discard your investment. What is devilish about entrapment is not just that it can result in ever greater losses, but that those losses get you ever more entrapped, because now you have even more invested.

[Wesleyan University psychologist Scott] Plous, a social psychologist and author of "The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making," said experiments show that psychological entrapment comes in at least four guises: the investment trap, in which we try to recover sunk costs by throwing good money after bad; the time delay trap, in which a short-term benefit carries the seed of long-term problems; the deterioration trap, in which things that started out well slowly get worse; and the ignorance trap, in which hidden risks surface suddenly.

Oh, my poor couch. We've given up on it even if Parker hasn't.