It seemed like the perfect toy: a hand-puppet with extra padding and a squeaky, so that Parker could play with our hands and (a) not really compute that hands are involved and (b) not bite our hands to shreds. When finished with the toy, we put it back in Parker's toy basket.
Well, last night, Parker decided to play with the toy, and as is his wont, he disemboweled it:
Maybe if it had a Kevlar coating it might have lasted longer...
It turns out, despite a brief plateau in January, Parker continues to grow by about 600 g per week. He's now up to 22.4 kg:
I feel much better now about getting him the "large breed" puppy food. But he still seems so small next to the labs at the play group...
Ordinarily I would not be happy to wake up at 5:15am. Today, however, I was overjoyed, because except for a brief moment around 1:30 when I had to shove Parker's fuzzy butt out of my space (he was laying across the bed almost completely), we both slept through the night.
My hypothesis from yesterday confirmed, I will now spend at least an hour a night running him ragged. It probably helped also that everyone—and I mean, everyone—was at last night's play group: Boo, Scotchie, Hannah, Dexter, Buck, Tucker, Rhea, Tinkerbella, Ross, Finnegan, and the little frumpy dog whose name I can never remember were all there. If Parker's buddies Paris and Brumley had been there, I think we wouldn't have left.
I love Parker. Who wouldn't? I mean, look at him, sleeping so peacefully:
But last night around 2:30am he was neither peaceful nor adorable. In fact, from 2:30 until about 4:30, he whined, chewed my comforter, squeaked a toy repeatedly, barked at random intervals, and went outside twice—without actually descending the stairs into the yard.
By the way, this is the second night in a row that Parker has confused 2:30 with 6:00. If he does it again tonight, I don't know what I'll do, since killing him seems like a bad option.
Actually, I think he's just anxious. He's in a new place, his routine is all messed up (even though I've dilligently gotten my butt, and his, to the play group every morning at 6:30, including yesterday when it was -16°C outside), and he spends all day sleeping.
I hope against all reason that he gets more comfortable in his new home. Tonight, after the 6pm play group, I think we'll just hang out at home and play. In fact, I think we will play non-stop for three hours, until his little beady eyes are rolling from exhaustion and he collapses in a fuzzy ball at the foot of my bed to sleep, like a puppy, through the entire damned night.
The smartest person in Texas, Molly Ivins, died yesterday at age 62. She knew Dubya better than he did. She will be missed.
If there was one thing Molly wanted us to understand, it's that the world of politics is absurd. Since we can't cry, we might as well laugh. And in case we ever forgot, Molly would remind us, several times a week, in her own unique style.
[T]here was more to Molly Ivins than insightful political commentary packaged in an aw-shucks Southern charm. In the coming days, much will be made of Molly's contributions to the liberal cause, how important she was as an authentic female voice on opinion pages across the country, her passionate and eloquent defense of the poorest and the weakest among us against the corruption of the most powerful, and the joy she took in celebrating the uniqueness of American culture—and all of this is true. But more than that, Molly Ivins was a woman who loved and cared deeply for the world around her. And her warm and generous spirit was apparent in all her words and deeds.
The President (for no more than 721 days and 13 hours more) signed an executive order that puts a political office in each executive department for the purpose of clearing what the department publishes. In other words, factual reports generated by the government will have to go through a political hack for approval before publication, instead of just being published by the generally apolitical civil service as they are today:
In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.
Now for the laugh line:
In an interview on Monday, Jeffrey A. Rosen, general counsel at the White House Office of Management and Budget, said, "This is a classic good-government measure that will make federal agencies more open and accountable."
Let's not forget, the Administration wants to reduce the credibility of government. This may be a good way to do just that.
I apologize for the TDP hiatus, but we had a lot going on over the past week, not least of which was moving. Even though the new place is within 1500 m (0.9 mi) of the old place, Parker has still exhibited a lot of anxiety: whining, pawing, going from peacefully gnawing on a bully stick to running and barking. At least he didn't mark his territory.
When moving with a dog, it's important to make sure he has toys and other familiar items around. Parker has a towel, which he has tailored into a flattering garment:
Once we get settled in I'll resume daily Parker photos. Bear with me for a couple of weeks.
Via Talking Points Memo, this reminder that on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog...but they do know what terminal you're using:
In late August, someone with an IP address that originated from the National Institutes of Health drastically edited the Wikipedia entry for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which operates within NIH. Wikipedia determined the edit to be vandalism and automatically changed the definition back to the original. On Sept. 18, the NIH vandal returned, according to a history of the site's edits posted by Wikipedia. This time, the definition was gradually changed, presumably to avoid the vandalism detector.
People forget about this quite a bit. On the Internet, your browser must send a request to a Web server to get a Web page. In order for the Web server to respond, it has to know where to send the page; ergo, every time you hit a Web site, you tell that site who you are. Wikipedia uses this simple fact to help determine the value of contributions. In this case, it worked perfectly.
Security expert Bruce Schneier finds some cases of appropriate and helpful security theater:
Security is both a reality and a feeling. The reality of security is mathematical, based on the probability of different risks and the effectiveness of different countermeasures. We know the infant abduction rates and how well the bracelets reduce those rates. We also know the cost of the bracelets, and can thus calculate whether they're a cost-effective security measure or not. But security is also a feeling, based on individual psychological reactions to both the risks and the countermeasures. And the two things are different: You can be secure even though you don't feel secure, and you can feel secure even though you're not really secure.
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association reports that an enormous block of airspace around Washington is off-limits to general aviation tonight because of the State of the Union Address:
During the president's speech to Congress and the nation, no flights are allowed to or from any of the 21 airports within the Washington, D.C., ADIZ, including pattern work. The special ingress/egress procedures for the "DC-3" airports inside the Flight Restricted Zone are also suspended. Only IFR flights to and from Washington Dulles International (IAD) and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) airports will be allowed.
This is what security expert Bruce Schneier calls "security theater."