Tennis ball as photography tool

Amazing how a tennis ball elicits such focus from Labs.

Weird. Twisted. Nerdy. Funny.

I don't know what to say, but I laughed. Someone with a bit too much time on their hands over dubbed random dialog that fits the actors' lip movements.

Shredder extraordinaire

Spotted this paper shredder at work today. Someone has a good sense of humor.

Maddow calls out Hoekstra idiocy/douchebaggery

Congressman Pete Hoekstra has a quite a history of releasing info he shouldn't to the press mixed in with a fair amount of assinine comments. Rachel Maddow calls him out.

Score one for the cyclists!!!!!

Physician accused of deliberately injuring two bicyclists is convicted

A physician accused of deliberately injuring two cyclists by slamming on his car's brakes on a narrow Brentwood road was convicted Monday of mayhem, assault with a deadly weapon and other serious criminal charges.

Dr. Christopher Thompson, 60, slumped forward and held his face in his hands after the verdicts were announced in a courtroom packed mostly with supporters and cyclists.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Stone, who prosecuted the case, asked for Thompson to be jailed immediately, calling him a flight risk and a safety threat to cyclists.

"There's not a cyclist in Los Angeles who would feel comfortable with this defendant out on the road after this verdict," Stone told the court.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Scott T. Millington ordered that Thompson be taken into custody. Thompson, wearing a dark blue suit, grimaced and shook his head as a bailiff cuffed his hands behind his back.

The veteran emergency room doctor, who spent more than two decades working at Beverly Hospital in Montebello, was also convicted of battery with serious injury and reckless driving causing injury. He faces up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 3.

...Prosecutors alleged that Thompson stopped his car after passing the two cyclists and shouting at them to ride single file. The cyclists testified that they began maneuvering to ride one after the other when they noticed Thompson's car approaching fast behind them but that the driver passed dangerously close before abruptly stopping.

Ron Peterson, a coach for USC's and UCLA's cycling team, was flung face-first into the rear windshield of the doctor's red Infiniti, breaking his front teeth and nose and lacerating his face. Christian Stoehr, the other cyclist, hurtled to the sidewalk and suffered a separated shoulder.

A police officer testified that Thompson told him soon after the accident that the cyclists had cursed at him and flipped him off, so he slammed on his brakes "to teach them a lesson."

L.A. Times

Physics are cool

Wheels within wheels....
MIT stuff

On the nose

Good Times

Old school hockey

Great comment from Paul Krugman

" So what did we learn from this [Cheering at Chicago's lost Olympic bid] moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America."
NYTimes

Those were the days

A post game picture of the Vikings celebrating their defeat of the Chicago Bears in their very first game way back in 1961.

Note #24 on the right. A beer and a smoke. Wow.

Unreal. AP v Cleveland

Best back in the league. Hands down. Gotta love it when he THROWS the would be tackler out of bounds.

Some pics from Saturday's Obama Rally

Thanks to Rep. Huntley for the VIP tickets.

My old HP camera permanently died after just a few pictures. Fortunately I had brought our little Samsung with as well. I think I would have got better pictures with the HP. Oh well.

That Obama guy is sort of a good speaker.

Idiocy on parade

"Huge" turnout

Click on image to see the whole thing.

"New" Beatles release review

Chuck Klosterman wrote Fargo Rock City, which I enjoyed thoroughly. He just wrote this review of the Beatles remasters for the Onion AVClub. Super funny. Give it a read

Al Franken talking sense

Hitler and the Minnesota Vikings

This guy was the CEO of a major US company?!?!?!

Lou Pritchett used to run Proctor and Gamble. It is amazing that they are still in business. He wrote an "open letter to President Obama" so full of vacuous memes and outright fabrications that it is downright laughable. Of course this open letter has become the latest favorite for conservatives to forward to all of their friends. The fact that someone that completely clueless was in charge of a company as big as P&G is a sad mark on the U.S. But then again, I guess its not that surprising.

I was going to do a point by point commentary, but then I found someone else did a much better job than I would have. Enjoy:

Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub

Nature Valley Grand Prix

Friday night after battling a week of bad backs and head colds I made my way to Uptown to watch a stage of the Nature Valley Grand Prix. This was actually the first time I had gone to see a bike race in person. It was impressive to see how many spectators had gathered to see the Uptown Criterium. I got to check out the new Dura Ace electric shift system at the Penn Cycle tent. Pretty cool idea, but I'm not sure if it makes enough of a difference to be worth so much money.

The NVGP is actually a pretty big deal as far as US Cycling goes and draws some fairly big names and gets quite a bit of coverage from cycling media.

The Race started on Wednesday with a Time Trial along the Mississippi followed by a Criterium in downtown St Paul that afternoon. When the day was done Tom Zirbel was leading the men and Olympic gold medalist and last years winner Kristen Armstrong (no relation to that other Armstrong biker guy) was leading the women.

Day two was a 66.5 mile road race that started and finished in Canon Falls. Zirbel and Armstrong still held the GC leads after it was done.

Day three was the Uptown Criterium

A criterium (crit for short) is generally multiple laps on a short course with a bunch of sharp corners. In this case it was a 1k circuit with 6 90 degree turns. Throw a few dozen cyclist on this course going as fast as they can in a tight group and you can imagine it can actually get quite exciting.



We planted our selves at the first turn at the corner of 32nd and Hennipen and had a great view as the cyclists roared past inches away from us lap after lap.

Kristen Armstrong enters the first turn:


Some guy named Floyd Landis at the apex of turn 1:




Sebastien Haedo and Brooke Miller won the day while Zirbel and Armstrong held their overall leads.

It was a great time sitting and watching these riders FLYING around the course. After a couple of laps some riders were dropped off the back and were just limping along at a much, much slower pace. Q and I joked that these riders who had popped (to quote Mr Liggit)were still riding faster than us on our best days.

Saturday was an 80 mile road race in the Mankato area. Zirbel and Armstrong still held their leads.

Today is the final stage. A crit in super hilly Stillwater. With the top GC poitions seperated by only a few seconds there could be a shakeup. It is up in the air who is going to win this thing.

Right Wing Blowhard Admits the Truth

And so it went Friday morning when WLS radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller decided to subject himself to the controversial practice of waterboarding live on his show.

Mancow decided to tackle the divisive issue head on -- actually it was head down, while restrained and reclining.

"I want to find out if it's torture," Mancow told his listeners Friday morning, adding that he hoped his on-air test would help prove that waterboarding did not, in fact, constitute torture...

With a Chicago Fire Department paramedic on hand, Mancow was placed on a 7-foot long table, his legs were elevated, and his feet were tied up.

Turns out the stunt wasn't so funny. Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop. He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.

"It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke,"Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. "It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back...It was instantaneous...and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture."

"I wanted to prove it wasn't torture," Mancow said. "They cut off our heads, we put water on their face...I got voted to do this but I really thought 'I'm going to laugh this off.' "

Torture

Pretty Funny

A Five Second Film

The Bod sums it up nicely

I can't believe I am quoting Jesse Ventura, but damn!

Ventura:I was water boarded, so I know — at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence — every one of us was water boarded. It is torture.

KING: What was it like?

VENTURA: It’s drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you — I’ll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

One of many gems in his Larry King interview last night

Some stuff

Haven’t posted much in a while, so this will be a “things that caught my eye” during the day kind of a deal.

A softball coach douching it up.

The right wing engaging in their latest round of manufactured outrage

Joe the Plumber really is a bigot.

You know it’s a fun day when it takes three tries with two different logons to do an ipconfig/ release

This is truly frightening, but unfortunately not all that surprising. Texas. 'Nuf said?

Yet another commute home with mother nature fiercely blowing in my face. Ugh.

Mother Nature just kicked my ass

Holy headwind Batman! The seven and a half mile ride home from work today was straight into what I am positive was hurricane force winds. Two days ago my average speed on the same route was a blazing 15.4 mph. Today? 12.5 mph.

I am tired now, and I need a beer.

Swine Flu

Best comment on the Teabaggers yet!

Thursday pic

Montalcino

Good quotes on the teabaggers

You know what really irritates me about the tea parties? The basic fact that if right now, it were President John McCain and not President Obama, and nothing else had changed, these tea parties wouldn’t exist. You know it, I know it, and even the teabaggers know it. It is just such transparent bulls**t that it is offensive. The most these guys ever did during the last lost eight years was put a limp Porkbusters logo on their website, but now that we have President Malcom X George McGovern Shabazz, they are freaking out like there is no tomorrow. So absurd.

John Cole

"Crowd at Boston Tea Party=7,000, equal to 46% of population of Boston

Crowd at Boston Teabaggers's Party= 500, equal to 0.08% of population of Boston.

BTW, the original Boston Tea Party didn't have free advertising from Fox News."

Dana Houle on Daily Kos

This new Holy Trinity of right-wing basket cases has been pushing all sorts of crazy hallucinations of late, from Bachmann warning that the Americorps program would eventually be turned into a regime of forced re-education for American youth, to Beck’s meanderings about Obama creating FEMA-run concentration camps to warehouse conservative dissidents, to Norris and Beck stirring up talk of secessionist movements. And a lot of people are having fun with this, because, well, it’s funny. It’s like a Farrelly Brothers version of right-wing political agitation.

Matt Taibi

Obama chips away at yet another idiotic policy

Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of a decades old exercise in stupidity.

Obama to allow travel, money transfers to Cuba

By JENNIFER LOVEN – 4 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama directed his administration Monday to allow unlimited travel and money transfers by Cuban Americans to family in Cuba, and to take other steps to ease U.S. restrictions on the island, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

The formal announcement was being made at the White House Monday afternoon, during presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs' daily briefing with reporters. The official spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to upstage the president's announcement.

With the changes, Obama aims to create new space for the Cuban people in their quest for political freedom and a democratic government, in part by making them less dependent on the Castro regime, the official said.

Oops

LOON WATCH: Right-wing bets against U.S. in pirate standoff



How does that crow taste? Maybe a little Tabasco will help.

Congrats to Boonen on #3

I have known about, read about and followed the results of The Paris-Roubaix race for years. Yesterday was the first time I sat down and watched coverage of this classic cycling event on TV.

One word: Insane!

This isn't a race where the peloton cruises down the road all day swallowing up the occasional breakaway. Paris Roubaix is brutal madness. The racers are absolutely hammering down narrow, muddy, cobblestone roads that would make you slow down in your SUV. There were bikes and bodies flying everywhere. This race is nicknamed "The Hell of the North" for good reason.

A couple of pics from years past:
Hincapie wearing the road. I wonder how much of that mud is pigshit.


Yes, that's Bobke in the ditch!

Yesterday Tom Boonen simply powered away from the field in an impressive win. I am sure the folks at Specialized are licking their chops about the ad campaign they are about to unleash.

Finally got a ride in

I managed to kick off my five day weekend with an all day long splitting headache on Friday. Because of the icepick like pain in my noggin, I decided to abandon my plans to take the Enduro out for a spin before taking it over to Q's place to replace a very worn out headset. I guess I can be happy when a part like that lasts for eight years, it only connects the fork to the bike-nothing major.

So around 8 I headed over to Q's tool filled garage and we started our little project (ie-excuse to have a few beers). The install went nice and smooth and the old warhorse now has a nice new Cane Creek headset. Funny thing-after a couple of beers the headache was gone.

Today was another nice Minnesota spring day so I went tooling around St Louis Park, Hopkins and Minnetonka enjoying the sunshine while cursing my lack of stamina caused by a winters worth of hibernation...err...beer drinking.



Took the hounds out for a walk but kept it short because Surly got the old snip snip on Thursday. He seems to be doing fine. It probably hasn't sunk in yet ;)

Italian ArtCrank?

Pic from an artist's show in the Forteza in Montalcino. All of the paintings were cycling related.

Back

Got back from Italy late Friday after about 22 hours of travel. We went from views like this:



To views like this that greeted us this morning:



To say it is a bit of a letdown would be an understatement. I was hoping to get in a bike ride today. I don't think that is going to happen. Soon? Maybe? Please?

Bravo

Obama repeals stem cell research ban

One of many needed steps to get science out of the theocratic jail cell imposed by Bush and his religious whackjob masters.

Watchmen

Saw it. Its good. Go see it!

It’s been a while…

To make up for my lack of posts-which I am sure has my bazillions of readers furious-I figure I’ll just wing it and put something up, even though I have no idea where I am going with this.

Last night the lovely wife and I went and picked over the carcass of the nearest Circuit City. Not much left folks. We walked out with a Samsung digital camera (L100) for $75. Nothing fancy, but I have wanted a “little” camera for a while now. Something a little less obtrusive and obvious. There is hardly anything left in the store. I never liked CC that much, but it is kind of sad seeing a company that employs thousands nationwide go belly up.

I still want a DSLR.

How about that Rush Limbaugh? The Republican Party has always portrayed themselves as the tough guys compared to the wimpy Democrats. With that in mind, it is quite funny watching them quake in fear at the feet of one of the worlds most obnoxious windbags. Over on MNPublius a commenter actually had the gall to defend Rush as an “honorable” man. Of course this commenter’s website loudly proclaims “Whites Only”. I fail to see what is honorable about constant streams of hate, misinformation and outright lies.

I think we just may be seeing a party dying before our very eyes-at least as we know it. The Republican Party’s entire economic philosophy has been shown to be, for lack of a better word, wrong. The concept of supply side economics and trickle down that they have clung to since Reagan started the bankrupting of America has been definitively shown to NOT FRIGGIN WORK. Contrary to their claims, doing everything they could to benefit the wealthy has not helped the middle class at all. Right now the Republicans have nothing to offer except obstruction and America seems to be in on the secret:

Obama’s favorability rating is at 68% (an all-time high in our survey), 67% say they feel more hopeful about his leadership, 60% approve of his job in the White House, and 49% have a positive view of the Democratic Party (which is also near a high). On the other hand, just 26% view the GOP positively (an all-time low in the poll), respondents blame Bush and congressional Republicans for most of the partisanship in DC, 56% think the GOP’s opposition to Obama is based on politics, and Republicans lose by nearly 30 percentage points on the question about which party would do a better job of leading the country out of recession.

NBC/WSJ poll

The party of Reagan has been reduced to groveling to a fat, drug addicted egomaniac. Sweet. Bobby Jindal getting caught in a flat out lie in the party’s response to Obama’s speech didn’t help.

It seems that Republicans have been having a contest to see just who can be the most hypocritical. A couple of fine examples:

• Mitch McConnell criticizes the stimulus bill as a “spending binge” even though it contains over 51 million in earmarks added by some guy named Mitch McConnell.
• Orrin Hatch, Sam Brownback, Chuck Grassley, John Cronyn, Jeff Sessions, James Inhofe, Tom Coburn, and Pat Roberts sign a letter saying they will filibuster judicial nominees not to their liking. These same folks previously said that filibustering judicial nominees was unconstitutional. I guess they meant that filibustering a republican President’s judicial nominees is unconstitutional. If the nomination is made by a Democrat it is TOTALLY DIFFERENT!

How is this for scary? The Bush administration seriously considered suspending the First Amendment. Gotta love the GOP. Massive critics of big Government that have no issues with the government being able monitor, imprison and torture the people at will with no interference from that pesky judicial system.

Congrats to Levi Leipheimer on his third consecutive victory at the Amgen Tour of California. Team Astana had three riders finish in the top ten, including some guy named Lance Armstrong. Impressive.


Evolutionary biologist, author and pain in the ass to religious wingnuts Richard Dawkins is in town tonight at the Northrup. Go check it out if you can.

That’s all for now.

Time makes the heart grow fonder?

An article on CNN.com discussed American consumers’ thoughts on the US auto industry. Buried amongst the common sense calls for scrutiny and accountability in exchange for a bailout, and details of the benefits of buying American, there was this nugget:

By buying foreign cars, "You might as well be laying off the American autoworkers yourself and handing their paychecks to those foreign automakers personally," says Diaz.
The American auto industry can be turned around if top executives renew their focus on quality construction and better materials, says Diaz.

"I believe Americans want cars to be as durable as they were 20 years ago. No cutting corners."

Mr Diaz, I would suggest you think about that for a moment. American cars in 1989 were pretty much garbage. Poorly assembled, unappealing, unreliable dreck. Of course there were exceptions, but come on! Yeah I sure miss the good old days of cruising around in an opulent, well built Chevy Beretta. Or perhaps my old Dodge Omni with its high quality Philippine carburetor and corrosion induced passenger compartment ventialtion is more to your taste.

But hey, maybe chronic rust and engines that barely run are your idea of durability.

In my opinion it is just the last few years that Detroit has started getting some things right. Don’t get me wrong, the big three have all screwed up big time. Going all in on the SUV craze (created by their own marketing, not actual market need) proved to be a potentially fatal gambit. But they are actually producing some very good, reasonably priced cars nowdays that are very reliable. And heck, some of them actually look good too! They didn't get into the mess they are in now by making unreliable cars, they got here by making vehicles that most people do not want to buy.

Back From the Desert

The lovely wife and I just returned from an extended weekend in the Phoenix area. Unfortunately for us temps were below average the whole time we were there. Of course “below average” in Phoenix this time of the year is still in the mid fifties to mid sixties. No real complaints after dealing with this particularly cold and snowy winter in Minnesota.

My plan on Friday was to rent a bike and hit the trails in South Mountain Park. I had contacted DNA Cycles in Mesa (the city where we were actually staying) ahead of time and told them where I was from and what my plans were. They said, “come on down” and that they had plenty of bikes.

So Friday morning my father in law and I head over to the shop to get a bike. I talk to the guy at the counter and he informs me they can’t let me take a demo bike because I have an out of state driver’s license. Even though I had told them on the phone I was from Minnesota and they told me there would be no problems they stood by this “store policy”. Nice. The guy behind the counter was at least nice enough to provide the name of another shop that might be able to help me out.

In retrospect this worked out better.

We headed over to South Mountain Cycles which is, it turns out, just a mile from one of the South Mountain Trailheads. This was a really cool shop. Tons of really nice bikes and super nice people. They hooked me up with a Stumpjumper FSR Expert, drew me up a map and sent me on my way.

It was soooo nice being able to hit some singletrack after a few months of hibernation. The weather was perfect and I was on a very nice bike. Too nice actually. Noticeably better than my old warhorse. Lighter, stiffer, better climbing and better handling. Oh well. The trail system there is great. Accessing the trailhead by riding up a dry canal was kind of cool. The terrain varied from patches of sand to ultra rugged rocky sections. The bike handled everything with ease. I wish I could say the same about my lungs. Lots o’ fun. I wish I would have had more than a couple of hours to explore.



On Saturday the wife and I hit the road and headed south towards Nogales. We spent a few hours in that rather scummy Mexican town, had a great meal, then headed back into the U.S. for a night’s stay at the Esplendora resort in Rio Rico. Nice place, but I have a couple of gripes. In this day an age I find it remarkable that a place that charges $175 for a room actually CHARGES for internet access! Seems to me that a luxury resort should have the “amenities” included in the cost. They also tacked on an $8 “resort fee” for paying the security guards and grounds keepers. Ummm, what does my room fee pay for?

Now we are back in the Twin Cities counting the days until we get to skip town again.

Thursday random pic

Downtown parking douchebaggery and other random thoughts

Most days I ride the bus to my job in downtown Minneapolis. On the rare occasion I do drive I usually park in a ramp about a block from my building that has a pretty good "early bird" rate. Over time that rate has fluctuated from $6 to $7 to $7.50 then back down to $6.99. Yesterday I was about to get on the bus when realized I had left my laptop at home. So I walked back to the house, grabbed the laptop and hopped in my car. As I pulled into the ramp I noticed the sign still said $6.99. When I pulled up to the paybooth, I handed the guy a twenty. He handed me back my change and I went to park. But then I realized he had given me $12.50 change. Something didn't make sense. It turns out the company that runs that ramp, and several others downtown, added a "+tax" to all their signs. So even though it said $6.99 it came to $7.50. This strikes me as technically legal, but realistically a slimy thing to do. I have NEVER seen parking ramps advertise their rates with a +tax caveat. If it is posted one buck for the first hour and you leave within an hour you pay one buck. So DAP, the company that runs these ramps, decided to raise their rates and were either to cheap to print new signs, or wanted to deceive customers by adding small print to something that has been up for months that you glance at as you are driving by. Lame.

Brewing Update
Last weekend the wife and I bottled the beer.

Ready to go (note the bottling tube attached to the spigot):



Pop in the carbonation tablets:



Bottle Away:



I ran into one dilemma after bottling-the instructions called for the bottles to be kept around 75 to 80 degrees for seven days. That is a hard thing to do in a Minnesota house in January. I ended up buying an electric blanket to put in the box with the bottles of beer. It did the trick perfectly. Today is the one week mark. Next we keep them at room temperature for another week, then I get to see what this concoction tastes like.

Good Food

The in-laws are visiting this weekend. Last night we all went out to dinner at Bali. It is the only true Indonesian restaurant in the Twin Cities. Really great food for pretty cheap, and the atmosphere is nice as well. Afterwords we walked two doors over to Salsa La Salsa to get some dessert.

Revolutionary new bike product

Ahh, this is great!!!!

YES TUBES!

MORE Zombies!!

They are everywhere!!

Zombies!

A while back I mentioned World War Z, the zombie apocalypse masterpiece by Max Brooks. The fine folks at io9 posted the above pic of some potential concept art for the movie by artist Daniel LuVisi.

Now I know Hollywood has an amazing track record of destroying good books, and it is arguable that there have been too many zombie movies already, but I have high hopes for this. The book rocks. I hope they don't blow it.

Heading back

Tuscany bound at the end of March!

Brewing

My lovely wife got me a beer brewing kit for Christmas. Since we both had Monday off we decided to start the process. The kit she got me is supposedly dummy proof-which means it was designed for the likes of me. It eliminates a lot of the steps of regular home brewing and makes it pretty simple. The steps are; sanitize everything, open the can of ingredients and dump it in the fermenter, add water, the bag of sugar they give you, and sprinkle the yeast on top. Then you screw on the lid and wait about a week. When it is done fermenting you bottle the beer. In each bottle you drop in a little tablet that provides the last bit of sugar for the yeast to create the carbonation, You then cap the bottles and wait two weeks or so. After that you have beer. I'll let you know how it turns out.

The kit:


The hopped malt concentrate:



Let the brewing begin!:

President Barack Obama

Time to get to work. The last guy trashed the place. I hope Bush doesn't get his deposit back.

Soooooooo Cold

-20F right now. I'll look at pictures like this and pretend it is warm.

Silver Sands Jamaica 2008

Damn Dogs

Dog theme for today.

Our tenacious trouble making puppy decided he really liked the salad dressing the wife made. So much that he managed to dump it all over his head. Nothing like a mix of olive oil, citrus and maple syrup to create a healthy, luxurious coat.

Went and saw "Marley and Me" over the weekend. Not a great movie, but very effective at pushing your buttons-especially if you are a dog person.

Finished reading A Dog in a Hat by Joe Parkin. Parkin is a retired American bike racer that you have probably never heard of. He spent most of his career in Belgium. The book does a great job of showing the realities of professional cycling in Europe during the late eighties and early nineties. The drugs, the rivalries, the drugs, the toiling in obscurity and the drugs. Plus it has a forward by Bobke. If you are into cycling I would highly recommend this book.

Random Pic

Example of Art Deco at the Hoover Dam