The boys in the band

Good news from the BBC and proof that history eventually grinds all grudges to dust.

Two questions come to mind:
1) Will it take us as long to hear that the last US presence is finally pulling out of the Middle East?, and
2) Who will bands in Irish bars pass around the hat for now?

My French is pretty shaky, but...

I think this says something along the lines of, 'We're pissed three ways from Sunday, everyone cheats except these guys, and we still hate Lance Armstrong. Oh, and your George W. Bush.'

Don't bother clicking the link. Even if your French is excellent, do you care that much what they have to say? Check 'em out when they've settled down and start to wax poetic about cycling again.

The iMacintoshPowerpod

Good. Seth Godin explains what I thought was just my own inability to keep up with what Apple has been doing ever since the Apple IIe.

'Jesus Christ, I'm speechless':

Vinokourov positive, Astana out

The whole team is out. If you'd followed the story of this guy and this remarkable team, this would break your heart.

So much effort, hope, and grueling work for naught.

tl5

"...if god made something better, he kept it for himself."

- Courtney Love (in an NPR interview about her new album produced by Linda Perry from 4 Non Blondes) describing heroin.

something like a phenomenon

My buddy Mal forwards me the usual menagerie of chain emails that accumulate dubious beliefs in the neurons of those less critical like plaque in an artery. He probably pokes sleeping dogs with sticks, too. Most I delete without opening, some I skim. Of those, I whack many back to him with the debunking Snopes link attached, hoping for once he'd have the cojones to forward that back to the person who deluges him.

I've never knowingly met anyone who fabricates long emails about the wacky state of the country - does one lonely person sit down and rattle off essays of ignorant conjecture, half-truths, and winking implication, or is the process more like a Ouija board, with subsequent yahoos adding their two cents to the original kernel, eventually building an open-source tarball of perceived grievances? And do they always have that populist tone of, 'this is just common sense - it's us against the immigrants/New York liberals/activist movie stars/intellectuals/overpaid cowardly teachers/welfare queens?' (The ones that really stick in my craw are the pro-military ones written by people who know nothing about the military, like the email a couple years ago trumpeting the 'U.S helicopter gunship' painted like an eagle's head that was hunting terrorists in Afghanistan, which was really a Soviet-bloc Hind.)

Have you ever seen a chain email that's all fired-up and indignant about the flat tax, abortion clinic bombers, the corrosive effect of religious fundamentalism, or the cowards who signed the PATRIOT Act? Are liberals cooler, too busy actually having sex, or just more distracted with their Wiis? Maybe this is what Karl Rove is doing in his office at 3 a.m. If he's not, he's likely mining them for policy tips.

quality info overload

I use an RSS reader to keep up with what's going on in the world (kinda. I only have one traditional news source on it, so your definition of 'keep up' may be different from mine): Bloglines. Love it.

The problem is, I find so many things interesting (some would call it neurotically unable to focus) and there's so much available that I can never have even a remotely clean blogroll. It was in this context that I thought to myself, 'I'll just take a quick scan through these 39 new posts from Balloon Juice and then move on to the Tour de France stuff that I REALLY want to read.' Fool.

Balloon Juice (I briefly thought of using its acronym, but I don't want this blog to be picked up in certain searches, like those for bad 70s shows with orangutans) can sometimes be overwhelming in its coverage of politics. Not Glenn Greenwald overwhelming, but obvious overwhelming - I agree with much of what's said there, and agree that too many people in power shouldn't be, blah blah blah. Their insight and humor keep me coming back, though, even when I think I'll just read one or two of 39 posts and move on. What I didn't know was that this latest batch would provide me with enough really good reading to put off reading about the Tour for another day. Things like:

Losing the Terror War - "It turns out that half-finishing the war in Afghanistan and then shunting our resources to invade an irrelevant country, and then losing that war, was not the genius strategy for beating terrorism that the White House seems to think it was."

Haditha Case Unraveling - "...It just illustrates why modern armies, constrained (for good reason) by modern rules of conduct, usually lose wars of occupation."

Good News - "Maybe the media isn't interested at (sic) letting Americans know why even 97-0 landslide bills can't make it out of Congress, maybe Democrats can't message."

Noonan on Bush - "I mean, you were OK with the incompetence, the torture, the Schiavo, the lies, and everything else, but now something has bothered you so much you just can't take it anymore?"

One Nation Under God, GODDAMNIT - "Remember who these festering scumbags are when the GOP engages in recreational gay-bashing in a few months to get their votes."

Can't Do Their Damn Jobs - just read it. Holy F-ing Christ.

Calling All Saviors - "It is like trying to drive past a 747 crashed into a train. ...They feel entitled to leaders who reflect their worldview no matter what the real-world consequences."

And also, a link to this post at Kung Fu Monkey, which is just a lot of fun to say.

There's enough really good stuff there to make you put off that other stuff you wanted to do today.

naked sea butterflies and yeti crabs

"They bear pulse-quickening names that are as if from some weird children's fable: naked sea butterflies, spookfish, pigbutt worms, cutthroat eels, helmet jellies, glasshead grenadiers and yeti crabs. Hued in pink, red, blue, orange, white and purple, these deep-sea denizens can seem repulsive, with their fangs and hooks and hooded eyes."

—Tunku Varadarajan, Wall
Street Journal

The above was taken from a review of the book, The Deep. What a cool couple of sentences. 'pulse-quickening names' - that phrase, followed by the list of said names, paired with the front cover, make this book a must-buy even though I hardly ever buy photo books.

Calling Barack

Here's how bad an idea Coal to Liquid (CTL) gasoline is: at absolute best, by capturing and sequestering the CO2 produced in the liquification process and using renewable energy sources for production, we could see a 6% reduction in the net amount of greenhouse-gases (GHG) produced by our vehicles. At worst, with no CCS and using coal electricity, expect to see a 60% jump in the accumulated GHGs coming out of your tailpipe (according to this Carnegie Mellon study via Treehugger). Compare how straight CTL compares to oil-based gasoline:

Instead of sponsoring a bill whose intent is to appear green while catering to powerful coal interests and doing something to increase U.S. energy independence, why not cut out the middle-man, in this case the gasification process? Promote plug-in or hybrid electric vehicles, power them with good old non-boat-rocking coal electricity, and keep special interests happy through the election year while still promoting energy independence. Detroit will follow the market - they may get shellacked for the first couple of years it takes to start building hybrids en masse, but they'll catch up quick. This disadvantage is the only reason I see that anyone would even bother going down the CTL road, and that support of the failing status quo flies in the face of Obama's carefully groomed image of the audacious solver of problems.

If I hadn't already lost most of my hair, just thinking about the government's love affairs with CTL and ethanol would do the trick.

Make a note, Senator: Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) co-sponsoring your bill isn't an indicator of bipartisanship, it's an indicator that you're doing something seriously wrong.

fsotD 15

In honor of the Tour (yes, I'm the girl who keeps taking her abusive boyfriend back), we have flickrs of the Day today.

Not your daddy's sports arena

This is so god-awful cool.

Some years ago my wife-to-be and I were passing an empty big box store (anyone remember HQ?) with quick on-off access to the freeway and wondering what we could do with it. We came up with the idea of an extreme sports complex complete with mountain bike trail, running trail, climbing and rappelling walls, a kayaking chute, and even a two-level driving range in the covered outside gardening section.

Seeing the same concept on a much grander scale, I'm betting that this is the shape of sports entertainment to come. It's not just plush stadiums hosting football and baseball, it's sprawling areas offering sports that would otherwise require travel outside your locality or state. The concept has gone off the deep end in Dubai (desert skiing anyone?), but what better way to revitalize otherwise empty city centers with activities that draw the young, action-loving, and affluent among us? Ubiquitous and diverse athletic centers could spring up all around us; many, like climbing facilities, anywhere there's a wide, tall face of brick. Others, anywhere water can be diverted and pumped to the top of a sluice for a kayaking run customizable to the skill of the users. Excellent.

fotD 14

Farewell, Wyandotte Theater.