I'm feeling kind of melancholy today...  don't know why.  Just one of those blah days, I guess.  Another gorgeous summer day, got some good work in, had a great 45 mile ride with my friend Mark (up Stunt Road, and down Piuma, whew!), no reason I should feel this way, but I do...

I'm getting ready to ride the great Grand Tour Double this Saturday.  I know every inch of these roads, some of them I ride all the time, and at one point we actually pass within a few streets of my house.  I am not intimidated.  But that's bad, because it is still 200 miles in the heat, with a couple of serious climbs, not to be taken lightly. 

A question for McCain and Obama: Will they recognize Mugabe?  If they don't, will it matter?  I think it will matter if there is a financial implication.  If the people of Zimbabwe come to feel that Mugabe is standing in the way of International assistance, that would matter.  [ via Instapundit ] 

Horses's Mouth has a picture of the magnificent Crab Nebula.  The scale of this is unimaginable, but imagine looking out the window of your spacecraft and seeing that!  Wow. 

China Impressions, from Electric Daybook.  "One WTF moment after the other."  Yep, I've been to China, and I can Roger that...  Wonderful. 

Are you smart enough not to build this website?  Hint: never ever store passwords in recoverable fashion, and email is [insecure] plaintext.  It goes on from there... 

EcoGeek wonders Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines, where have you been?  I agree, they would definitely seem to make sense for a variety of reasons, and they're even prettier.  But I guess they must not be sufficiently efficient, because most wind turbines are the garden-variety horizontal kind...  this is the sort of thing the market figures out really well. 

The Long Tail: Where to run the One machine?  "In the new issue of Wired, Kevin Kelly has written another one of his patented mind grenades: the observation that the Internet has now hit approximate computational equivalence to a single human brain."  This doesn't seem like a deep observation to me, sorry.  The behavior of the Internet in no way resembles the behavior of an individual.  Much more like an anthill :) 

Should you let Instinctiv chose your next song?  I don't know, my philosopher iPod's "random" play seems to do an amazing job of foreshadowing the future, and commenting on the present.  I wouldn't want other heuristics to interfere! 

In-car WiFi is coming...  of course.  Someday soon it will be standard.  Of course with EVDO, I have Internet access everywhere already...