Make Magazine by O'Reilly. Do-it-yourself hacking projects!

Check out the Zoom Quilt. A very cool collaborative art project.

On one hand, I might be upset because the dogs made some trouble this morning.

On the other hand, I'm kind of proud of them for putting aside their differences and working together to maximize their troublemaking ability.

The incident in question involved the doggie treat bag being pulled off the desk and torn apart in the quest to eat delicious snacks.

It was Saturday morning and Elise was away at work. Since the dogs had been behaving recently, I decided to take down the baby gates and let them have some free rein. I went into the office and worked on my taxes. In the meantime I could hear lots of running on the stairs, playfighting, howling, and the usual canine chatter. A couple of times I took small breaks to join in the play or to break up the roughhousing. Finally, I was able to hit a good stride on my taxes and did not intervene in dog matters for about 30 minutes. At this time, I noticed the house was unusually quite. Thinking about it some more, I realized it had been this quiet for some time. It was possible that they had both fallen asleep, but the matter deserved investigation.

Tiptoeing from the office, my first order of business was to peer over the railing at the stairs. The landing on the stairs is a favorite bone-chewing location for Scout. Alas, no puppy present, but I did see a wicker basket. Hmmm, I seemed to have remembered that this belonged in the downstairs bathroom. I quietly snuck down the stairs to the landing and saw that the bathroom door was indeed open -- and a trail of toilet paper was coming out of the room. At this time Hank came out to greet me. Aha! A confession. This was a believable scenario -- Hank likes to take our things and move them around. Other than a few unusual squares of toilet paper, there was basically no damage and I felt like I got off light.

Upon further reflection, I realized that the wicker basket was not usually empty. A quick bathroom search revealed that the inventory was short one entire roll of toilet paper. Troubling, because I was short one Labrador pup. I eased my way into the family room and saw what I knew I must see: one happy Scout, a badly chewed roll of toilet paper, and a giant pile of pieces she had torn off the roll. The guilty party knew she had been caught red-pawed, and immediately rolled onto her "cute" position -- on her side, just begging for a belly rub.

My only regret is that I did not take a picture. It was the cutest thing!

who doesn't love dog cartoons?

"How widespread is Road Rage? To answer that question, researchers for the National Institute of Traffic Safety recently did a study in which they drove on the interstate highway system in a specially equipped observation van. By the third day, they were deliberately running other motorists off the road.
'These people are MORONS!' was their official report."
-Dave Barry

Gregg Easterbrook, one of my favorite writers, pontificates on SUVs and their effects, including their non-safety, poor emissions, and our dependency on Middle East oil.

Dave Barry outlines some reasons that you might want to get one!

For Dave Barry fans, it was a sad day -- the final column he posted for his newspaper readers.

One perspective on the war, summed up in a comic.