Continuing with the dog theme: this cute little sign is in a park in Boston that was created by the Big Dig (an über-expensive project to put the city centre’s main freeway underground).

• I am very late to this link, but if you haven’t seen this comic explaining why Obama won a Nobel Prize, you should!
• I’m also late to tell the story of the first (and only) rain the San Francisco area has had this season: basically, it was a piddling mid-size shower, and yet it shut down major roads and cut power to thousands of homes
• In other San Francisco news, the foggy city’s mayor dropped his bid to run for California governor next year. Gavin Newsom has made plenty of people unhappy already (city residents complain about things like crime and homelessness, for instance) — but even after losing his Mr Sheen status, he still stood out amongst a fairly lacklustre field. There seems depressingly little hope for a leader who can drive home the changes California needs to, y’know, function properly.
• Speaking of the governor — the current one, that is — there’s been plenty of chatter online about the hilarious letter he wrote to exercise his veto on a recent bill.
• And speaking of San Francisco, allow me to put small worries like an ill-planned triathlon in Perth into context. Until yesterday, the main bridge into the city was closed for almost a week — dumping n00b riders on an already-busy subway system, and throwing egg on the face of the state agency responsible for its (still-delayed) reconstruction. Nobody’s happy that it took so long to fix a crack that was already supposed to be fixed, at least until it got windy …
• And finally, I’m saddened that it took an (admittedly spectacular!) fire to draw attention to the great big oil spill off the West Australian coast. It’s clearly screwed up the ocean environment (hopefully temporarily, if the oil is cleaned up), so I assume there’ll be consequences for the company involved? So far all they’ve had is part of the bill and some bad PR, and I don’t see strong signs there’s anything more to come.

So, @thesixthbaron was in SF, on his way back from a conference. We met up, wandered the Haight-Ashbury and Golden Gate Park, and it was cool.

Then I went to catch the bus back to my train station. At first I was entertained by staring out the window and listening in on the two Aussie tourists sitting opposite me who couldn’t quite figure out how to convert time zones. But then we stopped in North Beach, they got off, and a hipster girl came on and took their spot.

And then she motioned to her dog, which jumped up on the seat next to me.