Parker and Goldie have started playing together mornings. Goldie, until recently, never had anything nice to say to Parker, so this surprised everyone:

As a special bonus, I have some video of Parker at my office.

From this week's Economist, a strangely understated note:

The British army officially ended Operation Banner in Northern Ireland, its longest continuous operation. Soldiers were sent to the province in 1969 in what was intended to be a brief stint to quell sectarian violence. A garrison of 5,000 men will remain to offer support to the police.

More from the BBC about Tuesday's event:

The British army's operation in Northern Ireland came to an end at midnight after 38 years. Operation Banner—the Army's support role for the police—had been its longest continuous campaign, with more than 300,000 personnel taking part.

At the height of the Troubles, there were about 27,000 soldiers in Northern Ireland. From Wednesday, there will be no more than 5,000.

At 276,000 population, Belfast is about the same size as Raleigh, N.C., by the way.

The Cubs lost yesterday, but so did the Brewers, which keeps the Cubs in first place. Crazy.

Parker is fast asleep on my office floor, which is the first he's stopped panting since waking up this morning. Poor guy doesn't have sweat glands, and it's going to be another sticky day in Chicago, with heat indices approaching 38°C.

Perhaps the unpleasant heat has led the Cubs into first place. Yes, somehow, slowly, steadily, yea even stealthily, they have ticked up more wins than losses and last night surpassed the Milwaukee Brewers to sneak into the top spot.

Let's see if they're still there when I attend Lou Gehrig Day this Sunday...

I admit that on occasion I've bought bottled water, for example on long road-trips. But I've also found it amusing that Evian backwards spells...well, you can figure it out. The Economist this week explains why, exactly, buying bottled water shows consumers are daft:

The success of bottled water is in many ways one of capitalism’s greatest mysteries. Studies show consistently that tap water is purer than many bottled waters—not including those that contain only tap water, which by some estimates is 40% of the total by volume. The health benefits that are claimed for some bottled waters are unproven, at best. By volume, bottled water often costs 1,000 times the price of tap water. Indeed, even with oil prices sky high, a litre of bottled water can cost more than a litre of petrol. And on top of that, there are the environmental costs of transporting bottled water and of manufacturing and disposing of the bottles.

Yet sales of bottled water have been booming. In 2006 Americans spent nearly $11 billion buying 31.2 billion liters of the stuff, an increase in volume of 9.5% on a year earlier. The average American drank 104.5 L of bottled water last year, up from 63.2 L in 2000.

All of which shows the problems of the average IQ being 100.

What?, he's thinking, I'm being good:

(Via Bruce Schneier.) I'm really not sure what to make of this, or what, actually, they're selling:

I recently started introducing Parker to some new foods that the dog walkers recommended, and what do you know? Parker cleans his bowl of every last kibble. There seems to be a side-effect, however: he's put on more than a kilo since his last weighing on July 4th, up to 26 kg. Back to a strict feeding schedule, dude. Sorry.

A coyote hanging out at Francis Cardinal George's mansion got away from Chicago Animal Control on Monday. Repeatedly:

The wild animal played hide-and-seek with police officers and later the Animal Care and Control team for more than five hours. The last three hours were spent chasing the coyote back and forth from baseball fields at Lake Shore Drive and LaSalle Street to the yard of Cardinal Francis George's residence at North Avenue and State Street.

The coyote seems to have sought sanctuary recently on the mansion's grounds. The nuns at the residence said they were not bothered by the coyote, which they say gets rid of the rabbits that ravage their garden.

Yes, they get rid of rabbits, which have surged in Chicago since West Nile started killing all the crows a few years ago. (Crows eat rabbit kits as hors d'oeuvres.) So why bother the coyote?

"It doesn't make sense," bystander Mahlon Canete said after the coyote whipped past him. "They're chasing him with a van. That was embarrassing."

...

Shortly after the officers abandoned their hunt Monday, the coyote made its way to the middle of the cardinal's yard and lay down for the first time in hours.