Terrorism only works if people allow themselves to be terrorized. People like, for example, shoppers in New Haven, Conn.:

Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club [the Hash House Harriers] inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.

New Haven ophthalmologist Daniel Salchow, 36, and his sister, Dorothee, 31, who is visiting from Hamburg, Germany, were both charged with first-degree breach of peace, a felony.

The siblings set off the scare while organizing a run for a local chapter of the Hash House Harriers, a worldwide group that bills itself as a "drinking club with a running problem."

...

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14. "You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know," she said. "It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We're thankful it wasn't, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out."

Maybe there's something about New England that prevents the police there from exercising common sense (see, e.g., blinking advertisements).

Update, 15:20 CDT: Security expert Bruce Schneier has declared this the "stupidest terrorist overreaction yet."

We're looking forward to another lovely day in Chicago: 25°C, sunny, light breeze, crystal-clear skies. What more perfect day to wake up with the news that, not only are the Cubs still hanging on to first place, but also Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has finally resigned, no doubt to spend some quality time with his defense lawyers:

Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said. His decision was not announced immediately announced, the official added, until after the president invited him and his wife to lunch at his ranch near here.

The official who disclosed the resignation today said that the decision was Mr. Gonzales’s and that the president accepted it grudgingly. At the same time, the official acknowledged that the turmoil over Mr. Gonzales had made his continuing as attorney general difficult.

The turmoil has made the job difficult? Kind of like someone shooting his parents and then bemoaning his lot as an orphan, isn't it?

Well, with 512 days and 3 hours (or less) remaining in the worst administration in history, the President can still do enormous harm to the country, but with Gonzales back in Houston he'll now have none of his original cronies to help.

Update, 10:25 CDT: Does anyone else find some irony in his last day being September 17th?

Yesterday storms tore through the Chicago area, generating high winds and more rain than we need. On our walk to work this morning Parker and I found our path blocked by one of the results:

I almost had to pull over this afternoon when I heard about the Orioles losing 30-3 to the Rangers last night.

Parker and I were surprised last week to come home after work and discover this in the yard:

In sum: Cubs still in first place, Cardinals slip farther into third, and the White Sox fall—or perhaps, saunter vaguely downwards—into last place.

What a great way to wake up. The Cubs have moved into first place. Only by half a game...but still, it's a nice way to wake up.

Old rug, old sock, sunbeam. Dog is happy:

Yesterday I posted about a bike that hadn't been ridden in a while. This morning the bike had gone:

The Chicago Tribune on one of the worst divisional contests in recent memory:

It could be the worst divisional race in recent memory, but someone has to win the National League Central. The Brewers blew an 8 1/2-game lead, the Cardinals are coming out of their midsummer funk and the Cubs are turning into the Cubs with another mini-meltdown after two straight months of winning baseball. What's in store for the Not-So-Big Three the rest of the month that Lou Piniella said would separate the boys from the men?

It's really kind of sad, actually.

Someone appears to have slacked off from his exercise program:

Via Bruce Schneier, a really good article about security theater:

At the time, it seemed reasonable. Richard Reid tried to ignite explosives hidden in his shoe while aboard a December 2001 flight from Paris, so Congress banned butane lighters on planes.

But in retrospect, the costs of the ban outweighed the benefits. Airport retailers had to stop selling lighters. Lighter vendor Zippo Manufacturing Co. laid off more than 100 workers in part because of the prohibition. Transportation Security Administration screeners at one point had to confiscate 30,000 lighters every day, quadrupling the amount of garbage the agency had to dispose of. TSA even had to hire a contractor to help with all the extra trash.

Welcome to homeland security, where everyone has an incentive to exaggerate threats. A Congress member whose district includes a port has little to lose and much to gain by playing up the potential for container-borne terrorism. A city with a dam talks up the need to protect critical infrastructure. A company selling weapons-detection technology stresses the vulnerability of commercial aviation. A civil servant evaluating homeland security grant applications has an interest in over-estimating dangers that might be addressed by grantees rather than denying funding and risk blame in the event of a disaster.

I think winds affect my biking regardless of what direction they're coming from. This morning, for example, in calm winds, I set three personal records on a 60 km ride: best distance over 1 hour (30.9 km); best time for 40 km (1:18:14, beating my previous PR by 4:01); and best time for 60 km (1:58:28, beating my previous by 3:22).

Next week I'm planning to ride 110—120 km as part of my North Shore Century training. Maybe another PR or two?

Newsweek just published an article laying out how oil, gas, and other similar industries have bamboozled the American public for close to 20 years about climate change:

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."

Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do."

For the record: there is no dispute among climatologists that planetary warming is mostly caused by human activities.

I'm glad Newsweek published the story, even though it's old news to people who have followed the administration's (528 days to go!) assault on science and reason. Maybe more people will realize they're being hoodwinked.

After falling 3% yesterday, followed by the Nikkei and the European indices, the Dow dropped another 1.5% within minutes of opening today.

Don't say nobody warned us: we've just started a serious economic correction, which, if history is any guide, will turn seriously ugly in October. I think once the President (529 days, 3 hours) said we had sound economic fundamentals, he might as well have written "MENE MENE TEKEL PARSIM" on the podium.

In happier news, the Cubs pulled within a half-game of the Brewers last night.

The Cubs and Brewers continue to lose games, so the Cubs remain one game back in the NL Central. The ickle Cardinals won yesterday, so they're creeping up, and are now only five games behind the Cubs. We could be looking at a real horse race this year, at least until the Cubs, Brewers, or Cardinals (or some combination thereof) choke. September will be interesting...

I'm not alone in the office today, but I may as well be: Parker is so tired he's not even getting up when I leave the room. Day camp works, I tell you.

After attending the ALS fundraiser (i.e., Lou Gehrig Day at Wrigley Field) last night, I decided to sleep past the normal play-group time and take Parker to day camp instead. Several bits of good news in this: first, the Les Turner ALS Foundation raised butt-loads of cash; second, even though the Cubs lost, so did the Brewers, so the Cubs are still only one game out of first place; third, Parker gets to hang out all day with his friends; and fourth, said hanging-out will make Parker sleep most of tomorrow when he's back here.

The only bad part is, of course, no office puppy today. Sad.

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.