It was a pretty simple meal. I baked a piece of salmon after doctoring it with garlic, a little melted butter, olive oil, a few pinches of thyme, and some red pepper flakes. Wrapped in foil and baked. Also in the oven, a few mini sweet peppers. Meda put together a plate of sliced tomatoes and avocado, and a leftover artichoke heart from earlier in the week. Accompanied by a bowl of penne pasta with garlic and anchovies. And a glass or two of pinot noir. It tasted as good as it looks.
That’s really our good news of the week–Toby seems to be slowly getting better, at least that’s what his behavior would seem to indicate. He’s eating. He’s cleaning himself. His comfortable when resting. No more problem with labored breathing. I even caught him using the scratching post. But we haven’t done any tests yet to see what’s going on behind these appearances. The first is set for this afternoon when he’s scheduled for a urine test.
In the meantime, the other cats have been pretty deferential, except that they will try to nudge him away from his dish and eat his food if left unsupervised. But Romeo hasn’t been picking on him, and that’s a good thing.
Duke is joining Toby at the vet this afternoon, mostly to get expert assistance in clipping his claws. He has those thick, gnarly “old man” claws and several have grown too close to his paw pads for me to safely cut them. He’ll get a quick check-up at the same time, I suppose.
But here are the photos for the week. Just click on this picture to get started.
We had dinner last night with several new friends, most of them new to Hawaii within the past year. As the wine flowed, the discussion meandered along through various topics.
And, of course, we got to politics.
An opinion was offered: “Hawaii is one of the most corrupt places in the country.”
There was disagreement over this point, which got a bit heated before we moved on to other topics.
It prompted me to take another look at this issue, but I’d like to hear other opinions before digging into it.
Do you think Hawaii is more corrupt than elsewhere in your experience? What do you mean by the words “corrupt” and “corruption”? When do you mean when you say we’re more or less corrupt than other parts of the country? What would you point to as evidence of corruption or lack of corruption?
I’m hoping your comments will help me focus on the key elements of the disagreement.
I rewrote and updated a recent post about Toby, our cat who has is recovering (hopefully) after being hospitalized for kidney failure. Check out the latest in my Civil Beat column for the week (”
Ian Lind: Going The Distance With A Sick Pet“).
Then a few other items that caught my eye yesterday.
On Apple’s latest, the iPhone X: from The Verge, “Why Face ID won’t give you the legal protection of a passcode.” Facial recognition may be technically superior, but the law may not recognize that (yet).
And from Spiegel Online: “EU Worries Grow over U.S. Economic Chaos.”
Under Donald Trump’s leadership, the U.S. is in the process of forfeiting its position of economic supremacy. An internal EU document shows that the Europeans are worried.
And from Arc Digital: “How Russian & Alt-Right Twitter Accounts Worked Together to Skew the Narrative About Berkeley”
Platforms like Twitter provide real-time access to events going on around the world, allowing anyone to get a front-row seat for breaking news. But as much as it has opened up new channels of information, social media has also opened up new avenues for manipulating perceptions of reality. Misinformation and disinformation often spread faster than the truth, and by the time the narrative is corrected, social media has already moved on to the next “big thing.”