Scotty grounded

A ROCKET carrying the ashes of Scotty from Star Trek is stranded on top of a remote mountain range in New Mexico.

Link: Scotsman.com News - Entertainment - Stray rocket beams Scotty's ashes off course

This is somewhat more difficult, perhaps, than brush-clearing

A worried Bush is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for fence-mending with Moscow this week, just three weeks after a similar mission by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Link: My Way News - Analysis: U.S.-Russia Fray Under Bush

Apple

Apple, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

What she meant to say was, she thought it had all been safely hidden away, but now it seems she was wrong

“I have said on the record for several weeks now that there is no indication that the President knew about any of the ongoing discussions over the two years, nor did he see a list or a plan before it was carried out,” said White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino on March 27, 2007.

Link: The Raw Story | Gonzales testimony contradicts White House, revealing Bush 'conversation' over US attorney firings

A fond look back

Watching Republican candidates trying desperately to remain within the rigid confines imposed by the anti-science, dominionist lunatics known as “the conservative voting base,” without burning their bridges with the majority of the country, is always good for producing an unsettling mix of amusement, revulsion, and sympathy. Thursday night's debate was no exception.

Link: Daily Kos: Open Science Thread

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing

Who starts a fight at the Boston Pops?

Link: Mike the Mad Biologist

Is there any other kind?

4 injured in messy fish farm accident

TURNERS FALLS -- Four men were injured, one taken to the hospital by LifeFlight helicopter Friday afternoon, after the scaffolding they stood on to clean a filter tank at Australis Aquaculture fish farm collapsed.

Lubricating the disaster

Saturday’s papers go light on Iraq coverage after yesterday’s glut market, but not without delivering a must-read: The Times serves up a scoop about a GAO report that estimates that Iraq’s oil sector could be losing between $5 and $15 million per day to corruption and smuggling, or at least that the accounting methods for crude production are seriously out of whack.

Link: IraqSlogger: US Papers Saturday: Bleeding Oil

Afternoon

Afternoon, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Pay and display?

Pay and display?, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Do I really want to know what's going on in this parking lot?

Exactly

Basically, the problem is this: if Jean Palfrey committed a crime so did all her clients and they are not entitled to the protection they are being given. In the best of worlds, prostitution would not be a crime but under the circumstances there is only one honest choice in this matter: either drop the case or open the files. Otherwise it is fair to wonder whether there is a cover-up going on of criminal activity by prominent Washingtonians.

And given today's poisoned political atmosphere, enthusiastically abetted by the corporate press, it's almost impossible not to wonder, isn't it?

Link: UNDERNEWS: WHAT'S BEING HIDDEN IN THE DC MADAM CASE?

Whaaaat?

Although U.S. troops could eventually redeploy to forward bases in Iraq and the region, he said, a U.S. presence will be needed until Iraq builds not just an army, but also an air force and a navy, which could take decades.

And a space program would be nice.

And what's this about forward bases in the region, I'm wondering. Exactly how forward are we thinking here?

That guy talking is Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi security advisor. For more, click the link at the link.

Link: The Aristocrats: Without comment: From the Department of Really Pushing It

And please avoid the idea the Rs still think it's 1939

“Please avoid the idea that Iraq is like Oz and one day it’s going to be black and white and the next day you’re going to wake up and it’s color,” Snow said in a caution about how to measure progress in Iraq.

Moments later, “Again, don’t expect Oz. Expect a war. And you look for incremental changs that are indicators”

Link: Austin American-Statesman | Window on Washington

OK not that commander on that ground

The Petraeus letter stresses that torture and “other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy” are not only “wrong” and (unequivocally) “illegal,” but also that “history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary.”

And yet, . . .

even now, the Commander in Chief, ignoring the wisdom of General Peteraus, insists that such techniques are among “the most vital tools in our efforts to protect this country,” and there continues to be a “sharp debate” within the Administration as to whether the CIA shall be authorized to engage in such “expedient actions.”

But some commanders on some ground, more or less. Sometimes.

Link: Balkinization

To market, to market

To market, to market, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

China! Isn't that right next to Iran?

More scary food news from China: Chinese catfish have been found to contain fluoroquinolone residues. Fluoroquinolones are medically important antibiotics and include ciprofloxacin (“Cipro”) and enrofloxacin (which has been banned from agricultural use in the U.S.). Not only can fluoroquinolones be toxic and cause allergic reactions, but this means that China is probably still misusing these vital antibiotics.

OK, maybe not. But it's close. So now you see why we're so worried about Iran?

Link: Mike the Mad Biologist

Mitt hit in snit

“There's two ways to look at this guy. One is that the glass is half empty. The other is that the glass is totally empty.”

Stephen Crosby, the Republican dean of the graduate school of policy studies at the University of Massachusetts, is talking about the state’s former governor Mitt Romney.

Link: Connecting.the.Dots: Romney: Beyond Belief

Blue Gal discovers best campaign ads ever

Watch.

Link: Blue Girl, Red State: The. Best. Campaign. Ads. Ever.

Pjotro

This just in from the Seattle bureau - some guy in a musical suit. Pretty cool.

(And yes, you'll need the speakers on. Or off.)

Strong talk, weak imagination

“I have a great-great grandfather. They were trying to build a generation out there in the desert and so he took additional wives as he was told to do,” Romney, a Mormon, said in the CBS interview. “And I must admit I can't imagine anything more awful than polygamy.”

Link: CNN.com - CNN Political Ticker

But they had really slow connections

It look a century -- and all kinds of next-generation CAT scans. But finally, researchers have unraveled the mystery of the “Antikythera Mechanism.”

It turns out that the ancient Greeks were more clever than we ever dreamed. (And we dreamed they were pretty clever.) The artifact does indeed have the an amazingly precise gear train. And it's used to power what the New Yorker is calling “the world's first computer.”

This is, in fact, an extremely cool thing. The post at Danger Room has links to more.

Link: Danger Room - Wired Blogs

Colors of Spring

Colors of Spring, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Picky, picky

Paul Wolfowitz gets 'Some Leeway' and 'a Good Word' from Secretary of State Rice, as the Washington Post, in a profile of 'the Mystery Woman,' reports that it is “unclear” whether the World Bank president and “his wife of 30 years” are divorced.

Link: Cursor.org - Table of Contents page

Or maybe just a simple yellow star would work

NEWMAN: I want -- tell me if I'm wrong or tell me if I'm right. I want every Muslim immigrant to America who holds a green card, a visa, or who is a naturalized citizen to be required by law to wear a GPS tracking bracelet at all times.

OK. You're wrong.

Link: Colorado Media Matters - “Call me kooky”: “Gunny” Bob called for all Muslim immigrants to wear “GPS tracking bracelet[s],” urged government monitoring

Supporting the troops

The Army is sending a company of Europe-based soldiers back to Iraq before the unit has had a full 12 months of “dwell time,” or at-home rest....

According to [Pentagon spokesbimbo] Whitman, the 12-month rest period between deployments “is a goal,” not a guarantee.

Link: Suburban Guerrilla » You mean they lied?

And can't do graffiti either

And can't do graffiti either, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

And neither are yours, Bunky

Ames, Ia. - Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney said his wife's positions on abortion are not relevant to his campaign after news emerged Wednesday that she donated money to a pro-choice organization in 1994.

Link: DesMoinesRegister.com

Say "uncle"

Say "uncle", originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Looks like the Fr**ch are the new Brits

Blitzer and Costello's comments echoed a May 8 Washington Post article by reporters Anne E. Kornblut and Perry Bacon Jr., which asserted: “[T]he Royal campaign seemed likely to provide fodder, if not exact parallels, for analysts wondering about the role that identity politics will play in the 2008 campaign in the United States, when a woman and an African American are battling each other at the top of the Democratic field.” On his Drudge Report website, Internet gossip Matt Drudge linked to the article under the headline: “Hillary campaign: Senator is no Ségolène.” The link was accompanied by large, side-by-side photos of Clinton and Royal making similar gestures while campaigning.

Link: Media Matters - CNN's Situation Room asks: “[C]an what happened in the French election mimic our own race for president?”

the poodle says “toodles”

Link: skippy the bush kangaroo: the poodle says “toodles”

Gotta love that Chicago weather

And about time, too.

Link: Chicago Sun-Times

“Conservatives” monkeying around with that Darwin thing

Scientific American's JR Minkel blogs the evolution of rightie thinking, with a blabberfest of links.

I leave it to you to decide how evolutionary theory should mix with politics. Maybe later I'll tell you what the right answer is.

Link: Are Conservatives Reading Michael Shermer?: Sciam Observations

How about those Sox?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will encourage Members of Congress on Thursday to direct their attention to areas other than the firings of US Attorneys, according to remarks prepared for his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee acquired by RAW STORY.

Link: The Raw Story | Gonzales to Congress: Let's talk about something else

Ravages

Ravages, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Queen tweaks the twerp

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The queen had the last laugh. Dispensing with protocol briefly at the formal dinner she hosted for President Bush, Queen Elizabeth said, ''I wonder whether I should start this toast by saying, 'When I was here in 1776.' ''

Link: Queen Concludes Visit With Toast, Joke - New York Times

Until now it's just been a warm-up drill

“It's game time'' in Iraq – where Americans are attempting to convince Iraqi leaders to forgo a summer vacation....

The vice president's message boils down to this, according to the official speaking on condition of anonymity: ”We’ve all got challenges together. We’ve got to pull together. We’ve got to get this work done. It’s game time.“

And as an entertaining free bonus, how about somebody from BushCo trying to tell anybody to cut down on vacation time?

Link: The Swamp - Chicago Tribune - Blogs.

Who cares about those other galaxies...they're full of foreigners anyway

Derelict rocket stages that propelled four spacecraft toward the edges of our solar system and beyond are likely carrying Earthly bacteria out into the galaxy....

“The upper stages were not required to be sterilized,” said John Rummel, senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA. There was just one big directive: “Their requirement was not to hit any of the planets in our solar system,” a caution necessary since the rocket stages would almost certainly play host to large numbers of Earthly bacteria.

Link: SPACE.com -- Old Rockets Carry Bacteria to the Stars

File under “Orwell Was Only Off By 20 Years”

The State Department and the US Agency for International Development have instructed employees to remove all references in publications and other materials to a top official who resigned after his name turned up as a former client of “DC Madam” Deborah Jean Palfrey. The news appears in Wednesday morning's edition of the “In The Loop” column at the Washington Post.

Link: The Raw Story | State Dept. erases all references to top official who quit over DC Madam list

“Lemonade...

...made in the shade, stirred with a rusty spade by an old maid.“

Somebody asked me about that rhyme today, how I remembered it, and that's how. A web search yields references from the history of Marion County, Arkansas, and from Mountain Laurel, Virginia, with minor variations. Tennessee Williams, in Glass Menagerie, rendered it, ”Lemonade, lemonade Made in the shade and stirred with a spade Good enough for any old maid.“

My dad always liked to add, ”tickles your tonsils and takes your tongue for a sleigh ride.“

But, what I started out to say here, in the process of checking out the lemonade ditty I stumbled on this nifty page from the ever-nifty Library of Congress describing the WPA's ”America Eats“ project from the 1930s. It's definitely worth a look. Some of the best American writers and photographers of the 20th Century got their start with the Federal Writers' Project and you can find a whole lot of what they did on the museum's excellent web site.

Wait! Wait! Wait!

A law firm's billboard in Chicago's “Viagra Triangle” area is drawing criticism from some area attorneys who say it makes light of divorce.

Chicago has a “Viagra Triangle”? WTF?

Must be some kind of happening place, this Viagra Triangle. An attorney named Corri Fetman just made a splash in it by putting up a billboard that read “Life is Short. Get a Divorce.”

“It's grotesque,'' said John Ducanto, past president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. ”It's totally undignified and offensive.“

Or at least as scary as the cartoons in Boston.

Apparently the billboard has now been removed (although ABC has a picture, for your edification) - by whom is unclear. ABC says the owner of a parking garage took it down, the Washington Post credits ”city workers“ (which could, in Chicago, be the same thing).

”They ripped our billboard down without due process,“ Fetman said. ”We own that art. I feel violated.“

Link: ABC News: Legal Advice: 'Life's Short. Get a Divorce'

Link: Chicago Dumps Racy Law Firm Billboard - washingtonpost.com

Blue

Blue, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Contaminated fish food sold to US fish farms, but...

UPDATE: FDA refuses to reveal how many fish farms and in which states.

Right. I don't know, Bunky. Maybe one of these days we ought to sort of start thinking about taking our freakin' government back. Ya think?

Link: Crooks and Liars » Time To Become A Vegetarian

But the spoon gets nothing

But the spoon gets nothing, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Barely begins to describe it

Ok. So, the plot was: six dudes from New Jersey buy some guns and storm Fort Dix. The Fort Dix that is full of lots and lots of Army reservists with way, way more guns. And, like, extensive military training and shit. Yes, thank god these terrorists have been caught and locked up before they could be killed within minutes of deciding to carry out the dumbest fucking terrorist plot we’ve ever heard of.

Yeah I spent a little time at Ft. Dix once taking mean lessons from the US Army and I'm thinking the Wonkette's on the right track here.

Link: Feds Nix Dix Six - Wonkette

It's not what you eat, it's who you are

The scientists summarized it in their paper: “The two major findings of this study were that there was a clear relation between the body-mass index of biologic parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that genetic influences are important determinants of body fatness; and that there was no relation between the body-mass index of adoptive parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that childhood family environment alone has little or no effect.”

In other words, being fat was an inherited condition.

Link: Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside - New York Times

And those little hairs are glowing, notice that?

A Pakistani public information campaign about what to do if you stumble across stray radioactive material is raising hairs on the necks of Western arms control experts.

Link: Danger Room - Wired Blogs

Yeah, right...just woke up and there it was, huh?

A Romanian man who was woken up by a loud bang found a car had landed in his bed.

Link: Ananova - Car lands in man's bed

Closed but not forgotten

Closed but not forgotten, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

A pill from the past

Carter's Pills, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Gotta get me some of those!

Is this Plan B?

Congressional leaders from both political parties are giving President Bush a matter of months to prove that the Iraq war effort has turned a corner, with September looking increasingly like a decisive deadline.

In that month, political pressures in Washington will dovetail with the military timeline in Baghdad. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, has said that by then he will have a handle on whether the current troop increase is having any impact on political reconciliation between Iraq's warring factions.

Link: September Could Be Key Deadline in War - washingtonpost.com

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that 10 US combat brigades with 35,000 troops have received orders to deploy to Iraq later this year, enough to sustain a “surge” in forces through the end of the year if necessary....

[Pentagon spokesman Bryan] Whitman said the 10 combat brigades, all from the active duty army, have been given orders to deploy between August and December of this year.

Link: The Raw Story | Deployment orders announced for 10 more US combat brigades

Cracked wings

Yeah, that pretty much covers it. But it's still a bummer when that turns out to be more than simply metaphorical, as when it's the Air Force's wings that have the cracks.

“I don't want to write a letter, or have my successor write a letter, 'Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith, your son or daughter are dead because the wing fell off on takeoff. We knew it was going to fall off, we just didn't know when.' That's kind of what we're getting down to,” Keys said.

Over to you, Commander Guy.

Link: USATODAY.com

Peakin' Duck

Peakin' Duck, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Roadside

Roadside, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Crossing

Crossing, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Well, maybe the FDA does

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (AP) -- An energy drink called Cocaine has been pulled from stores nationwide amid concerns about its name, the company that produces it said Monday....

The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter last month that said Redux was illegally marketing the drink as a street drug alternative and a dietary supplement....

“Of course, we intended for Cocaine energy drink to be a legal alternative the same way that celibacy is an alternative to premarital sex,” Ivey [of Redux Beverages] said. “It's not the same thing and no one thinks it is.”...

Link: Cocaine energy drink pulled from shelves - CNN.com

Mini-big bang in space: astronomers atwitter

Cautioning that theorists still do not know for sure what caused the explosion announced today, Dr. Livio said, “Here we have the brightest supernova we have ever observed and we don’t know the explosion mechanism. It doesn’t get any more exciting for a theorist.”

And I thought I was easily amused.

But really, this is a big thing. Very big.

“It is quite possibly the most massive star that has ever been seen to explode,” said Nathan Smith of the University of California, Berkeley, who estimated the star as “freakishly massive,” about 150 times the mass of the Sun.

If a star in our own galaxy were to blow up the same way (and, as it turns out, one just might)...

The explosion would be visible in the daylight and at night you would be able to read a book by its light.

Link: Astronomers Report Biggest Stellar Explosion - New York Times

It's Chuck E. Cheese time, says JP

Years ago when the kids were small we’d take them to Chuck E. Cheese in Natick, MA. It was there that I learned an invaluable tip on parenting.

My wife would dole out two or three dollars in tokens to each of the three kids and they’d invariably pester us for more every ten or fifteen minutes. So I asked her why she didn’t give them more tokens at a time and she said, “So they’ll keep checking in.”...

Isn’t this basically what Congress has been reduced to doing with George W. Bush with the war funding bill?

Link: Welcome to Pottersville: Chuck E. Cheese Legislation

Shadow on a door

Shadow on a door, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

40,000 gallons

Of water for flushing. Per year. Per urinal. That according to the folks who run the rest stops on the Interstate in Vermont. Just mentioning.

A little marketing problem

A little marketing problem, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Duck Stop

Duck Stop, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Clever, those Canucks

an odd-looking canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind a u.s. defense department false espionage warning earlier this year about mysterious coin-like objects with radio frequency transmitters, the associated press has learned.

the harmless “poppy coin” was so unfamiliar to suspicious u.s. army contractors traveling in canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. the worried contractors described the coins as “anomalous” and “filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology,” according to once-classified u.s. government reports and e-mails obtained by the ap.

US “army contractors”? Not so much.

Thirty million of the coins were minted to commemorate Canada's war dead.

Link: skippy the bush kangaroo: canadian coin causes chaos

Don't worry, just call FEMA

GREENSBURG, Kan. (AP) -- The rebuilding effort in tornado-ravaged Greensburg, Kansas, likely will be hampered because some much-needed equipment is in Iraq, said that state’s governor.

Governor Kathleen Sebelius said much of the National Guard equipment usually positioned around the state to respond to emergencies is gone. She said not having immediate access to things like tents, trucks and semitrailers will really handicap the rebuilding effort.

Link: KCBS - Iraq War Hampers Kansas Cleanup

(Thanks to: Mike the Mad Biologist)

Midlife Crisis, the Musical...

Midlife Crisis, the Musical..., originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Liking Mike

A blogger who calls himself Mike the Mad Biologist (by which he means angry, but hey, he's a biologist not a freakin' English teacher) and who lives over Boston way if I'm not mistaken suggests linking more to science articles on the network as a way to expose more readers to interesting science, “combat the Stupid,” and just maybe learn something interesting - or even useful.

Good idea. I like.

Mike's suggestion is to post five links a week, which sounds like a good idea to me, but to kick things off we'll start with a week of one-a-days. So, from someone who, himself, lives in Red Sox Nation (although is not particularly soxy, truth be told), here's a link to a nifty piece on “Red Sox magic”:

Pronin’s findings certainly hit close to home for Boston Red Sox fans (a.k.a. Red Sox Nation), of which at least two Situationists are full-fledged members. Just go back to 2004, when the Sox, by winning the World Series for the first time since 1918, reversed what many thought was an 86-year “curse” (resulting, of course, from the team selling the contractual rights to Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920). Many commentators attributed the victory in part to the “faith” of Sox fans–their faith in the team, their wishing, their believing–it all mattered in helping to break the curse.

Link: Red Sox Magic « The Situationist

The unkindest cut

ABC: Most of 'DC madam' clients aren't 'newsworthy'

Wait! Wait!

Link: The Raw Story | ABC: Most of 'DC madam' clients aren't 'newsworthy'

There'll always be an England

A British woman has applied to become the legal guardian of a chimpanzee to protect its 'human' rights.

Link: Ananova - 'Chimps are people too'

Ya think?

Hilton's plethora of professional pursuits — which include a namesake perfume and handbag line, a fledgling music career and a starring role in the reality show “The Simple Life” — can probably survive 45 days without her.

Or maybe, I don't know, I'm just thinking here, 46.

Link: Paris' jail stint likely to add allure - Yahoo! News

Plastics

Plastics, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Sing it, Baby!

And thanks to Blue Gal

You bet their life

From Pottersville, a view of the Republican “debate”:

Mayor Rudy, in fact, thinks that we should send yet another 30,000 battle-ready troops that we don’t have into the breach, which, when combined with the 30,000 troop surge starting last January, is literally double what McCain was calling for late last year. It’s like watching a high stakes poker game between sociopaths where one keeps raising the ante to prove their Republican-ness except dog tags are being used instead of poker chips.

Link: Welcome to Pottersville: Too Many Kooks Spoil the Broth

Suddenly, Obama is the darling of (some) righties

SAM SMITH - Harry Truman remarked that whenever anyone said they were bipartisan he knew they were going to vote against him. Barrack Obama is the latest major politician to use this ploy, promising mushy abstractions instead of actual policies, making nice to everyone in the room while ducking the issues they raise and, in a time of historic confrontation over whether America can recover its constitutional democracy, pretending that the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Link: UNDERNEWS: WHY OBAMA ATTRACTS THE RIGHT
And More: Republicans defect to the Obama camp-News-World-US & Americas-TimesOnline

Awesome!

This is the absolutely stupidest idea ever.

Researchers are developing software that splits a computer screen in two halves, each side with its own operating system, desktop, applications, cursor and keyboard.

Hey Dude, do you have a license to look at my side? Well then don't. And keep your mouse pointer where it belongs.

Of course the guy who thought this up will probably be the new war czar next week.

Link: Discovery Channel :: News - Technology :: Split-Screen Tech Doubles Computer Use

If at first you don't succeed

If at first you don't succeed, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Yeah, I think I had a date with her once

Fern threatens to devour the Everglades

Link: Fern threatens to devour the Everglades - Los Angeles Times

A little more red

More Red, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

The new must-have accessory for politicians

When Bill Maher asks Republican Presidential Candidate Tommy Thompson to explain the answer he gave at Thursday's debate about employers being able to fire someone based on their sexual orientation, he explains that his hearing aid (conveniently) failed him.

Hearing aids! Why didn't we think of that before? By tomorrow morning every candidate will have one.

Link: Crooks and Liars » Thompson Blames Hearing Aid for Bigoted Debate Answer

Nwrdles

It once took me a whole day to figure out “nwrdles” on my grocery list meant “noodles.” And it wasn't even on a Newton, don't get me started about that.

“Handwriting is kind of obsolete anyway,” he said.

Yeah, well, my problem is my parents moved and I switched schools right in the middle of the writing-in-cursive thing, from a school that used one system to a school that used that other one where you draw the slinkies, and that was the end of that. I learned typing ASAP.

Which is what they're blaming it on now, only computers, not Remingtons.

All of which means a whole new remedial handwriting industry is springing up. Forget it, Bunky. Learn to type, or you will never buy spaghetti.

Link: In digital age, more t's are crossed poorly - The Boston Globe

Invigorating! Oh yeah!

It takes him a little longer to get to work, but the bike is more dependable, more nimble, more invigorating and just more fun than the S.U.V., he said.

Here's a guy, rides an electric bike to work. Dude! I would love to ride a bike 20 miles to work through a good New England sleet storm!

Well, no. I just made that up - I mean, about the love. I used to walk a quarter mile from the bus stop to work, along a highway, and some mornings the first thing I did when I got there was go into the bathroom, take my pants off, and wring the water out. Look, call me crazy, but 20 miles on a bike is way more invigoration than I have in mind.

Link: A Two-Wheeled Option (With a Battery) for Commuters - New York Times

The walls of Baghdad

Much of the construction is being done at night by troops wearing night-vision goggles.

Link: KRISTV.COM - Corpus Christi, TX | Gunman wounds U.S. commander at barrier wall in Baghdad