Tour de France and general cycling
Now Playing: Dawn and Drew Show
Topic: Physical Well Being


A rest day on the Tour de France after the Hincapie win. Excellent day of racing and it was heartwarming to see the loyal Hincapie win his first stage after six plus years of working for Lance. Those two had been friends since they were 14 and 16 years old and you know it's just nice to see. The Austrian who won the day before hadn't won before either and he cried at the end of the race. He had gone wire to wire in the lead and when the race was over he could not even stand up. Every ounce of the energy he had went into that race and at the end he was completely spent. Amazing effort for him. Amazing effort for Hincapie the next day as well. Hincapie was part of a 14 man break that was about 20 minutes ahead and riders kept falling off the end but not Hincapie. He was at the front initially to be there to help Lance if and when he came to the front. Lance and his main rivals didn't get that far so Hincapie was allowed to work for himself and won in a sprint at the end. Did I mention monster mountains? Just amazing. Joyous.

Went out and biked today, 20 miles worth. Very relaxing and an opportunity for bike zen for the first half. After that I looked up and saw a big old thunderhead sneaking up. Yikes. I turned myself around and just pounded 4 miles on a high gear. And you know, that cold rush of air came over. The leading edge of a storm is a windy, cold thing. It was awesome, the trees bent over and then they were crushed again by the next wave of cold air. I was doomed. Darkness was suddenly there and so was the rain. Lord it came down. I tried to hide under some trees for a while and felt completely cut off from the world. Annoyed and getting wetter by the minute I figured it wasn't going to stop any time soon. I started hearing limbs of trees snapping off and flying through the air. Wow, a mini tornado or wind shear. Waited a minute for that big wind to die down a bit then said to heck with it and started back down the path. I heard a sound like someone ripping dry papers over some loud speakers. Figured that was a power line coming down and it was just sizzling. Yikes again. Dodging felled tree branches, big ones, and being pelted by rain I eventually quit feeling sorry for myself and just pedaled away. When I got right in my head over it I wasn't cold and miserable any longer and was just pedaling. It was great. Saw bikers hiding under trees and being miserable and I just smiled and waved as I went by. Reminded me of another time when I remember running in the pouring rain and I realize I've only ever had great moments out in the rain. All good.

The last thing of course, I'm listening to the Dawn and Drew Show, a podcast. It's grown on me and it's fun to listen to. That and TWIT, diggcast and Chris Pirillo are the ones I listen to. It's always fun to listen to others and to look for interesting and fun efforts.

No Emmy Nominations for Gilmore Girls
Now Playing: Chris Pirillo Show
Topic: Mysteries of Life
It's been a long time in my life since I've had any belief in any sort of awards as a reference for what is good and what I should think is good. Same thing goes for lists of 'Greatest Americans' or 'Best Movies of all Time' or '100 Most Beautiful People.' It's all opinion at best, blatant commercialism, issue driven support or some mixture of the three.

Nobel Peace Prizes, Nobel prizes in science. Yes indeed, that's the gold standard of awards. Well we all know Yassar Arafat got a Nobel Peace Prize and he never renounced the use of terror. A Nobel Prize was awarded to Egas Moniz in 1936. here That person got the Prize for doing and promoting lobotomies. Well so much for the worth of the Nobel Prize. The best you can say about it is that it sometimes gets the science awards wrong and it's 'Peace' prize awards are skewed to the left and toward the sensibilities of the political left. When I was young and lacking knowledge about the real nature of the world I thought a Peace Prize was something to be admired and that the winners of such a prize must be great people. Fortunately I didn't stay in the dark about these things and now I know Nobel Prizes are issue driven opinion and an opinion I don't agree with.

Things like the tripe put out by magazines and television shows where they advertise the 100 most beautiful people or funniest comedians are fairly harmless exercises in idiot entertainment. They tend to be reflections of the lack of depth and knowledge of the list builders and unfortunately they perpetuate that lack of depth and understanding. You know, any list of the funniest comedians which has Chris Rock on it is profoundly wrong. Those kind of lists as they are seen on TV involve unfunny comedians and personalities you don't know giving uneducated and uninteresting opinions about people they usually don't know and never heard of. You can imagine these lists being made by 18 year old interns who only have a bare remembrance of anything that happened in the last ten years let alone any historical or personal knowledge about whatever subject they pontificate on. Those lists can't be taken seriously at all and are best ignored.

Now the entertainment awards are definitely political, commercial self promotion. The 'Best' Motion Picture of the year is usually a unwatchable bag of haggish. Shakespeare in Love - 1998. Need I say more? Proves my point. A more worthless bag of warm spit you'll never see. But, it did win the Academy Award for best picture. So it must be good right? Only if you are an Entertainment Tonight watching and obeying zombie.

Which brings me to the Gilmore Girls. A better show on TV you will never have seen. Great writing and great acting. Better than most anything you will see on the TV presently being produced. Did the show get a nomination? Ha, surely you jest. What's good isn't the criteria. Boobies and cursing of course are the most important criteria - which explains most of the HBO nominations. Which also explains the Desperate Housewives nominations. Gilmore Girls has regular women without exposed boobies so you know, nothing worthy of notice. Thank goodness I know what I like and have an idea of what is good without listening to the award shows or best of lists.

Mother Nature is actually a Beaver - Really
Now Playing: NIN - With Teeth
Topic: Physical Well Being
Personally I always pictured Mother Nature as a woman with long flowing hair. Flowers in said hair and just generally a lot of flowing stuff all around. Well, here it seems Mother Nature is Beaver of undetermined gender with some suet in one hand, birds and small fluffy animals on his/her shoulders and at his/her feet. Who knew. Saw this vision while on my 40 mile bike ride today. A very long ride on a very sore behind. The thighs were fine but you know, I think I will replace the seat with a softer, more friendly seat. Only two guys passed me by and they had some professional looking bike race jerseys on. I'm sure they bought them at the bike store but it worked for them today. Didn't see them again so they were obviously the quick and done kind of guys. I have a philosophical problem with being a quick and done kind of guy so I always try to do the distances. Keeps me from having to go so quickly. :-)

Uncle Sam Goose


Uncle Sam the Goose speaks for himself. A quiet dignity. A sense of history and accomplishment. He (or she) stands there in mute testimony to the greatness of the United States of America. Goose bless America!

Tour de France 2005 -Live Audio Feed
In my efforts to get a live video feed of the Tour de France I have found myself out of luck except that I can get the audio feed at Eurosport.com specifically right here this is the link to their Tour de France coverage. If you look about at the blue box in the center there should be a link under the picture. Right now it takes you to the 're-live' page where you can read the text feed that happened during this day's team trial. On that page will be a link to the live audio from eurosport.com. The important thing to take note of is that the live audio does not work with firefox. It does work with Internet Explorer 6 and it works well. If you know how to read Dutch you can see the same sort of live text updated during the race from their TV 2 coverage. Here Without reading Dutch you can still click on this first link Live-opdatering link Here and you will get near real time snapshots from the coverage. So even if you can't read the language you can still see the pictures while listening to the audio from eurosport.com. Now if you can read the language I'd be glad to know if I could register to get the live video feed. There is some registering to be done and it allows you to get either the audio and audio/video feed. Obviously the audio wouldn't do me much good since it's in a language I've never studied. But, still and all, if you are jumping around the net like me trying to find a way to keep in contact with the Tour de France I've given you the links to get you going.

Bo knows South America


Polish ex nun, world traveling hippie, South American visiting in time of unrest kind of person. I told her, don't go there, bad people, riots. So she goes there and gets nicely in the riots and meets bad people. But she survives and does bring back good pictures.
Bo Pics here
and here

and here

Souter's Property - a possible victim of Eminent Domain
Now Playing: Henryk G?recki - Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
Freestar Media, here which appears to be a political action organization, has released a news item about a developer who is seeking to have the home of David Souter, one of the five Justices on the Supreme Court who ruled against homeowners in the recent Kelo Supreme Court case, seized by the local government so that the land can be used to build a Hotel. It's to prove a point of course, with the Hotel to be called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" and which will feature an exibit about the lost liberties of Americans. All that is needed here is for three of the five people on it's board of Selectmen vote for it. Just like with you and I. It won't happen, but wouldn't it be great if it did?

Fascist China and War With the US
Bill Gertz continues ringing the alarm bells toward a future that nobody wants to see but a future that seems inevitable. China is using it's growing economic power to fuel it's military ambitions. As with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan of the 1930's this growth carries with it it's very own unstoppable rational which will carry China to war in the same fashion that Germany and Japan found themselves in a place where the only logical and rational course of action was war. China is putting itself there with it's rhetoric and actions. We should start the arguments of why we didn't see it coming now since it will come and we will ignore the threat until the threat becomes a reality.

The combination of a vibrant centralized economy, growing military and increasingly fervent nationalism has transformed China into what many defense officials view as a fascist state.
"We may be seeing in China the first true fascist society on the model of Nazi Germany, where you have this incredible resource base in a commercial economy with strong nationalism, which the military was able to reach into and ramp up incredible production," a senior defense official said.

Supreme Court Land Grab - Bend Over Now
Wow. I can't really believe the Supreme Court did this one but they did. Connecticut land owners who lived along a riverfront area in a non blighted residential area will in fact have their homes ripped out from them by the local government. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives assurances and a guarantee to citizens that their government cannot take their property by eminent domain except in cases of public use. That's what the Constitution said. Now it says that your government can take your property and give it to some other person, a richer person, whose use of that property will presumably provide a greater tax income for the government. What this means that you in your home are not safe if Wal-Mart wants to build on your property. In other words, your property, your land, is not your land at all. Your land belongs to you at the whim of the government and of whoever might desire your land at some future date. Unfreakingbelieable. I have to read the decision to see the scope of it but on the face of it this a very very real blow to freedom as people tend to understand it.

Air Force Academy - Born Again Rapists
A rape scandal then a religious intolerance scandal at the Air Force's Service Academy and it's a shame. Here Over four thousand cadets and most of them fine, outstanding people who go on to become fine and upstanding officers. Capt. Melinda Morton, who worked at the Air Force Academy and whose complaints brought about the scrutiny concerning the religious bigotry running rampant there has resigned her commission. It's the Air Force's way of saying thank you for bringing up this moral and ethical failure on our part, now please accept your reward of an end to your career and relentless pressure until you resign your commission. Gotta love it. The 'Report' has come out, it's what the link speaks about. And as predictably as the sun coming up in the east, the report found sure there might have been some sort of problem maybe, you know boys will be boys, mistakes could have been made, um, ah, can you say Whitewash? Yes, I knew you could. A joke really. They don't deny the general tenor of the complaints but they do their best Orwellian doublespeak to minimize the obvious. "a perception of religious intolerance" says the report. Well you know, perception is reality if it's you as a Catholic or a Jew or a Buddhist there amongst the dominant born again, in your face types.

Captain Morton resigned her commission. Her career was over and the religious bullies won. There will be token things done to appease the complaints but in the end apparently there will be nothing done. The instructors have been make 'aware' of the inappropriateness of their behavior. Made aware? They didn't have a moral or ethical background to know that religious bullying was wrong in the first place? And the 'steps being done to correct the situation' uhh, why would there need to be steps taken when what we are talking about is common decency and common sense? It's like saying, oh darn you caught us, I guess we'll try to tell the cadets to try to respect religious diversity. Since when is respect for other people something that has to be taught? Just who are they letting into the Academy that need this sort of remedial training? It's absurd and the response by the Air Force, the whitewash, the sweeping under the rug of the whole thing is something to be ashamed of.

CSS and
Now Playing: Cold Hearted Hanna - XM Radio - 'The 40's'
Sitting around trying to read through CSS tutorials, eating watermelon and listening to XM Radio. Listening to the 40's channel. Nice to hear all the words clearly and beautifully. That Bing Crosby was the man to be sure. One of my favorite actors and singers. Which reminds me that one of his offspring wrote a book way back when and basically said he was a shitty human being and a bad father. Which reminds me that Jane Fonda did the same thing with her father Henry Fonda. Which reminds me why the hell I hate Jane Fonda and Bing Crosby's children. I mean, those people sought to get back at their parents by publically smearing them. You know, too bad your dad wasn't always there for you and sorry he didn't tuck you in every night but get over it and quit whining. Jesus, it's not like your parent was Joan Crawford or anything and he did put food in your worthless ungrateful mouths. The good news is that it isn't hard to boycott anything Jane Fonda does since everything she does is lame and crappy. I really don't like that Henry Fonda besmirching hoo.

Whoa, stream of consciousness from 40's music to Bing Crosby, to unfamous ungrateful children of Bing Crosby followed by Henry Fonda and his ungrateful nasty child. Such is the train of thought and the various stations it stops at. :-)

Annoying Spam Variations
Now Playing: Los Lonely Boys
You know, my email passes through a number of filters before it gets to me. ISP's are certainly doing a much better job of filtering spam and viruses than they have ever done before. You might know that it's a sound practice to never open attachments at any time. Don't open exe files. Don't go to that fake Citibank site to verify your information. Don't send your account information to some son of some Minister in some defunct African Nation so you can help him get money out of the country. One I've been getting recently is the 'your email account has been suspended' email. Here's the usual one I get.
Dear Gadlaw Member,

We have temporarily suspended your email account gil@gadlaw.com.

This might be due to either of the following reasons:

1. A recent change in your personal information (i.e. change of address).
2. Submitting invalid information during the initial sign up process.
3. An inability to accurately verify your selected option of subscription due to an internal error within our processors.
See the details to reactivate your Gadlaw account.

Sincerely,The Gadlaw Support Team

+++ Attachment: No Virus (Clean)
+++ Gadlaw Antivirus - www.gadlaw.com

It's funny. You know, the attachment or click through thing doesn't even get to me. There is no 'Gadlaw Support Team' since I am he. I'm pretty sure I haven't put out a 'Gadlaw Antivirus' checker so there's another clue. Just your standard phishing attempt. You know the one where they have some inaccurate personal information which they'll be glad to relieve me/you of if you only contact their website to clear up whatever mess you might have gotten yourself into. Humm. I noticed that CNN was rearing their report about phishers and information thieves the other day. They give you the same advice I've mentioned here although the recent stories about various credit card companies losing the personal information about millions of people do tend to make one wish for the cash and carry society of days gone past. Bad people everywhere who are anxious and willing to steal from you and me. It's like the old Sgt. used to say on the television show Hill Street Blues - "Be careful out there" Good advice at all times.

Wise Words of a Mother to Daughter
Now Playing: SG1
Browsing the shelves over at Barnes and Noble the other day and I heard a mother admonishing her young daughter with these wise wise words. "You're going to have to learn patience, and learn it quickly." I blinked twice before laughing out loud. Well, it seemed funny to me.

Bye Bye EU
Now Playing: Missa Papae Marcelli: Benedictus



Good to watch the European Union fall apart. Here It's a case of everyone wanting their bit of the pie and so they argue about it as the ship they are on sinks. Typical European behavior. Typical politician behavior - taking the rule which says that all members need to ratify the treaty in order for their bureaucratically created constitution to go into effect and trying to change the rules after two countries have voted it down. Now they've given it more time and presumably will try to shove it down the throats of the French and Dutch voters at a later date. But it's all brave talk now, the thing is dead and the politicians who tried to make the European Union into a thing to challenge the United States are also done as politicians. We get to see the bitter old men who wanted to recreate a godless Holy Roman Empire as they blame each other and pretend their New Empire isn't dead. Denial is a beautiful and bickering thing.

Don't Worry - They Were Probably Guilty of Something
The Story Link HERE
Chinese woman allegedly "murdered" reappears after killer executed

A Chinese woman believed to be killed in the 1980s reappears 16 years after the alleged killer was executed, urging judicial authorities to rectify the case.

Shi Xiaorong, declared by police a "murder victim" in a April 1987 case in Mayang county in central Hunan Province, said she was actually swindled and sold to east Shandong Province as somebody's wife in March that year, one month before a dismembered body was found in a Mayang river and claimed by local police the body of " disappeared Shi".

Butcher Teng Xingshan was convicted of the murder as the police said the dismemberment technique was "very professional" and executed in 1989 despite pleas of innocence.

According to police investigation material, Teng was believed to have sexual relations with Shi and killed Shi he suspected of stealing his money.

But Shi, who is now in a Guizhou jail for drug trafficking, said she and Teng did not know each other, urging the Human judiciary to declare the trial a miscarriage of trial.

She returned to her hometown in Hunan's neighboring Guizhou Province in 1993 and Teng's relatives was told she was still alive one year later. But it took them years to verify the information and they did not have the funds and the courage to sue the judiciary until last month Teng's daughter and son lodge a lawsuit before the Hunan Higher People's court.

The 1989 verdict of the court reads that "Teng confessed his crime on his initiative and his confession conforms with scientific inspection and identification". Whether torture was used to force conviction is still unknown.

The case comes just two months after a man who served 11 years in prison for murdering his wife was declared innocent, two weeks after the victim reappeared in their hometown in central Hubei Province.

Former security guard She Xianglin claimed he was deprived of sleep during 10 days of interrogation until he signed documents pleading guilty to murder. He is now suing the government for compensation over his mistrial and torture during interrogation.

Source: Xinhua

Don't know if it's a static link or will be gone shortly so here is the article. It goes to show that the Death Penalty does whack innocent people. As sure as the sun comes up there will be mistakes made. It's just a fact of human nature that errors will occur and no matter how noble and justice minded any group of people who are in positions of authority there will be abuses of that authority. The article is from China's People's Daily Online and the story they lift is from Xinhua.