Burlingame Crit

I sucked, but lots of other people didn't.

Alison Starnes had a great solo victory in the womens race. Team Tibco was about as dominant as could be.



She went solo with 12-13 laps to go and never looked back. Shelley Olds put forth a great effort to try and chase her down ...



It looked like, with one lap left, Shelley had a chance, but she couldn't close the gap and Alison had time to celebrate her well earned victory



Tibco took 3 of the top five spots. Brooke Miller looked like she could have won the race, but with a teammate solo of the front an another on Shelley Olds wheel she had to wait to let it go, which got her 4th (trust me, that's her behind the Blackberry)



In the mens race it was a break of four that got away about half way through the race and stayed out.



That's Chad Gerlach in black. What an amazing story he is, and it's great to see him back racing.



Chad ended up taking second to Scott Zwizanski. Garmin U23 rider Daniel Hollaway was impressive, taking the field sprint for 5th.

All in all, it was some really great racing. I had a lot of fun watching, which was good since I wasn't in the best of moods after my stellar DNP.

Another Example of Stereotypes Saving Time

Russians like to drink? Yes they do.

Russians currently consume almost twice the global average, the equivalent of 6.2 liters of pure ethanol alcohol per year, the global report found.

A new study by an international team of public health researchers documents the devastating impact of alcohol abuse on Russia - showing that drinking caused more than half of the deaths among Russians aged 15 to 54 in the turbulent era following the Soviet collapse.
The 52 percent figure is compared with estimates that less than 4 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by alcohol abuse, according to the study by Russian, British and French researchers published in Friday's edition of the British medical journal The Lancet.

The King (of Pop) Is Dead

I wouldn't wish his life on anyone.

This was one of my favorites of his

Still More Neda

It seems every time Glen Greenwald posts something, I end up linking to it.

The White House Press corps loves to laugh condescendingly at Helen Thomas because, tenaciously insisting that our sermons to others be applied to our own Government, she acts like a real reporter (exactly as -- according to Politico's Josh Gerstein -- White House reporters "could be seen rolling their eyes and shifting in their seats" when Obama called on The Huffington Post's Nico Pitney, who has done some of the most tireless work on Iran, gave voice to actual Iranians, and posed one of the toughest questions at the Press Conference). The premise of Thomas' question was compelling and (contrary to Obama's dismissal) directly relevant to Obama's answers: how is it possible for Obama to pay dramatic tribute to the "heartbreaking" impact of that Neda video in bringing to light the injustices of the Iranian Government's conduct while simultaneously suppressing images that do the same with regard to our own Government's conduct?

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Wait, do I hear a Democrat speaking up and making sense?

These arguments will come from the very people who denied that the economic recovery plan created any jobs. We have a very odd economic philosophy in Washington: It’s called weaponized Keynesianism. It is the view that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.

You Get What You Pay For.

More on Neda

And I can't help noticing that, even for people who report that they were moved to tears, shakes and nightmares by the video, Neda's murder has already become abstracted. Says Ulrike Putz, writing in Der Spiegel (and republished on Salon), "she has... become an icon, a martyr for the opposition in Iran. Neda has given the regime's brutality a bloody face and a name. Overnight 'I am Neda,' has become the slogan of the protest movement." An icon, a martyr, a symbol, a slogan. Not so much a person anymore.

via Salon

"His Name Is Robert Paulsen"

Her name was Neda...

Read This

Since this doesn't involve Palin, it will probably never be reported by the main stream media.

Read and Learn

Please take the time you'd spend being frustrated or feeling compassion for Fayiz, and invest it in a phone call or e-mail to your local paper and/or Congressperson. Make a difference. Please.

Wednesday Links

Random stuff on the Nets:



A thought excercise, if nothing else-What's the Matter with San Francisco?
Are "rich liberals" who vote for Democrats and higher taxes for themselves displaying the same irrational behavior as working-class men and women who vote for Republicans and lower taxes... for the rich?

Iran on the brink?
In 15 years of writing about the Middle East, I have never encountered a situation that changed so fast that one could write an article that becomes outdated in the time it takes to write it.

Salty microbe may be world's oldest
Deep in the mine, within a pocket of salt water trapped in a 250 million-year-old salt crystal, two biologists and a geologist discovered the 2-9-3 virgibacillus bacteria. This would be unremarkable save for the fact that this bacteria was 100 million years older than the dinosaurs... and it was still alive.

Tweeting the Revolution
By yesterday, half of the Twitterverse had green icons, in solidarity with the Iranian people. Efforts to block twitter and silence the Iranian twitterers were being countered by internet saavy geeks and hackers all over the world. Demonstrations were increasing. Tension was mounting. CNN was scrambling and the beat went on.

and...

Why There's No Twitter Revolution in Iran
"Social media is not at all a prime mover of what is happening on the ground," says Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society...

Not just any A-Hole, but a Fox A-Hole
Even before he was accused of dragging a cyclist through Central Park, former colleagues tell us they were afraid to be around him.

Quarter of men in South Africa admit rape, survey finds
One in four men in South Africa have admitted to rape and many confess to attacking more than one victim, according to a study that exposes the country's endemic culture of sexual violence.

Obama, Obama, Obama...
Everyone loves a parade, but we don't like being betrayed. And while gay and lesbian Americans were initially willing to cut our new president some slack, the president's now-clear reticence to follow through on even one of his many campaign promises to the gay community has put the Democratic Party on the precipice of an ugly and very public divorce with this once-solid constituency.

Woman cancels wedding after finding fiance was porn star
"The sex side is purely for the camera, but Haylie did not understand I was only acting...I am sorry and did not want to hurt her. I still love Haylie and would have stopped doing porn if she had asked me to."

Bang bang

Last week I had the opportunity to see the Felice Brothers, twice. Which brings my total to five and a half. The half being when they opened for the Truckers and I got there late. They are definately a great show, one of a handful of favorites. James Felice is about as nice a guy as you'll ever meet at a rock show.



Funny though, I listed to their albums and I'm just not moved. They just have so much energy on stage that can't be matched on a recording. I'll keep seeing them every chance I get, and buying James a shot at every opportunity.

Also saw Au Revoir Simone on Saturday. Generally not a show I would have seen, but I was already in North Beach, half drunk, and entertaining some Norwegians that wanted to see the show, so off to Bimbo's we went. It was my first time in Bimbo's and I really don't feel that I've missed out on much. The opening band was The Antlers, and they were surprisingly good. They had a nice Sigur Ros vibe that made them easy to listen to. Then Au Revoir Simone came out, three girls with synthesizers. They were cute and put on a good show. So all was fun, well putting aside that the Norwegians kept feeding me Vodka-Red Bulls. Nasty drink, that.
I think it was their way of getting even with me for making rotten fish jokes.

The Efficacy of People

In 2000, when the US election was stolen, people pouted. They wrote blog entries, they wrote books, they made documentaries, they watched The Daily Show. They complained, nothing happened. And the US was stuck with the worst administration in our history.

In 2009, the Iranian election was stolen, and the people are making shit happen. President Ahmadinejad has left the country out of fears for his safety.



Time will tell whether the Iranian people are more effective than their American counterparts, but they can't be less effective.

And yet, these people that are taking to the streets- living Democracy without living in Democracy- are our enemies because "they hate our freedoms" -George W. Bush, March 18, 2002.

Glenn Greenwald makes a great point about it.

Much of the same faction now claiming such concern for the welfare of The Iranian People are the same people who have long been advocating a military attack on Iran and the dropping of large numbers of bombs on their country -- actions which would result in the slaughter of many of those very same Iranian People.

Time will tell what happens, I'll be watching.

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This is awesome.

Hmmm, I see the thought process here -I got a tatoo, but no one likes it, so I'll sue the tatoo artist. Hard to believe it didn't happen in America.

A teenage girl is suing a tattoo artist for £8,500 after she allegedly asked him for three stars on her face - but ended up with 56.

Eighteen-year-old Kimberley Vlaminck paid £55 for 'the graffiti that has ruined my life' in her Belgian home town of Courtrai.

She claims she fell asleep while he was doing his work... and awoke to 'this nightmare'.

Rouslan Toumaniantz, who runs the tattoo parlour called The Tattoo Box in Courtrai, denies her claim.

He said she knew 'exactly what she wanted'.

He added: 'She was awake and looked into the mirror several times as the procedure was taking place.

'The trouble all started when she went home and her father and boyfriend threw a fit.

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O'Bama takes two steps back for every one step forward.

If you take a good hard look at the direction Obama has taken on gay rights, I’m not sure how you can come to any conclusion other than he thinks they aren’t equal. Maybe that’s OK with you, in which case, fuck you and fuck him


Pelosi just plain sucks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House will try to muscle through a $106 billion war funding bill today, hoping to quell a rebellion among liberal Democrats against further support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The healthcare war has started.

The last president to successfully take on the giant health care lobbies was LBJ. He got Medicare and Medicaid enacted because he weighed into the details, twisted congressional arms, threatened and cajoled, drew lines in the sand, and went to war against the AMA and the other giant lobbyists standing in the way. The question now is how much LBJ is in Barack Obama.

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Alberto Contador needs a hug.

"I will have to deal with [Denis] Menchov, [Cadel] Evans, the Schleck brothers, [Carlos] Sastre and my teammates Armstrong and Leipheimer,"

As usual BKW spells it out quite nicely.

Hinault understood an important lesson about rivals that Armstrong learned well and Contador doesn’t remotely understand. Make your rivals doubt. Make them doubt themselves. Make them doubt each other. Make them doubt your words.

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Beer in a pouch? I'm intrigued. But the packaging is so much better with bottles.
Maybe I should run to the ATM so I can go buy some.

Lazy Candy

Well done India, just because times change, why should you?

Colleges in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh said Wednesday that female students would be banned from wearing jeans and other Western clothes to halt sexual harassment by male classmates.

Maybe you want to address the problem that your young men are so sexually repressed that they can't control themselves when they see a babe in jeans? Just sayin'.

Fortunately, the girls are not all relying on the powers that be to protect them.

Prostitutes in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have begun taking karate lessons to protect themselves from violent customers and pimps.

"A thug once stripped me of my clothes and told me to run naked. From now on, I think nobody can do that to me. I will kick him."

Men prefer "average sized women"

Researchers found that men preferred the shape of ordinary women, equivalent to dress size 14, than so-called super-attractive models, according to a study that compared the body shapes of ordinary women, Playboy centrefolds, models from the 1920s and 1990s and glamour girls.

Note to researchers- having girlfriends stand over the guys shoulders while taking the survey is likely to skew the results.

Oh, nevermind, it was a study of Austalian men.

Professor Rob Brooks at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues, asked 100 male students to judge the attractiveness of 201 line drawings of female torsos ...

The Anne Frank House is one of the most powerful places I've ever been, and it's about to get even moreso.

The Anne Frank House museum says it will put the teenage Holocaust victim's diaries and other writings on permanent display to commemorate what would have been her 80th birthday on Friday.

I wish someone could dish out the straight story on health care. I know two things: 1) Everyone should have access to health care and 2) The same people that brought you the DMV are not capable of providing Health insurance.

Adding more layers of BS between patients and doctors is not helpful and will only serve to make everything more expensive and restrict patient choices.

You go Oregon!

Because the Oregon Supreme Court has prohibited regulating any speech on the basis of content, strip clubs are allowed to operate in any commercial zone regardless of local opposition.

And finally, we end with this.

Instead, a teacher she confided in about the torrid relationship asked her out, while another stopped into the Centerfolds club where she works for a lap dance.

Nice work. Teachers everywhere should be proud.

We're Below Ohio

I just created Kentucky's new state motto.

Word

Until a public option is passed, I don't want to hear about the latest hate and idiocy spewing from Limbaugh, or Tancredo, or Palin, or Gingrich, or whoever. And to tell you the truth, I don't want to attack them for it, either. Because, right now, Republicans are not the obstacle to progressive governance. Instead, Democrats who refuse to support a public option are the obstacle.

More

I mentioned this before, and know the Guardian has a piece, appropriately titled "Is fascism on the march again?"


I feel a little silly for my reaction to North Korea's treatment of American Journalists. While it can't be condoned, it's hard to deny that North Korea had a good teacher.

Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian (and Bosnian citizen) who, while living in Bosnia and working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to be released — in January, 2002 — he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured.


“This is wonderful news, and long overdue. The US administration has never had any reason for holding Mr. Al Haj, and has, instead, spent six years shamelessly attempting to turn him against his employers at al Jazeera. We at Reprieve send him our best wishes as he is reunited with his wife and his seven-year-old son Mohammed, whom he has not seen since Mohammed was a baby.”

That's going to be the legacy of Bush. People all over the world doing unspeakable shit and holding us up as an example.

I think my Grandma used to tell me this, or maybe it was somebody elses Grandma, or even someone who may or may not have been a Grandma, but played one on the TeeVee...

"You reap what you sow."

Oh right, it was Jeebus.

GALATIANS 6: 7-9 (KJV)
7: Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
8: For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.
9: And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

Damn

It's another Monday. I spent the weekend recovering from some virus. It's a boring but seemingly unavoidable consequence to being alive. Oh well, it's not like the weather we've been having is anything worth venturing out into.

Been listening to some new music of late. The Silversun Pickups new album is growing on me. Panic Switch is the only real grabber, but some other ones are starting to grow on me. Blind Pilot has also found its way into heavy rotation. There a some new tracks from The National floating around. If they are any indication, then the next album should be really good.

While waiting for my Chicken-Cheese Steak today, I was watching what passes for TV news. As expected, I was horrified; the story about the SF Journalists sentenced to 12 years hard labor in North Korea had finished and the Bimbette was reading reviews. Apparently, this bastion of Journalistic Standards allows viewers to txt/email/Voice Msg their feedback about the story... hilarity ensues- not.

First person claims that the risk is part of the job, "Cause they can win, like, awards 'n stuff."

Second person says it really awful, but that's what they get for sneaking around.

Third person says that if you're going to leave the US, then you're taking your life into your own hands.

Fourth person says military action is the only option.

Thankfully that's when my sandwich got messed up so my attention got diverted.

Seriously, that's what you should expect if you leave the US? Ten bucks says this person can't name the Capital of Nebraska (they may actually have been from Nebraska, but the bet still stands).

So two women, US Citizens, who were working on a project to attract attention to the horrible plight suffered by some women and children in North Korea, stuff like this.

For this they "deserve what they get."

And the "News Person", who must've started with the doorman and blown every dude in her path to even be allowed to step into the studio, says nothing.

Humanity, I weep for thee.

If you want a good read, go here. It's a little long, and there are a lot of stats that could use a source, but's it's a good read still.

So, to make up for messing up my sandwich, they gave me free fries, and the messed up sandwich to bring make to the shop.

IB's is awesome, just don't be in a hurry, or come in with an attitude.

Ya Know

I try to be culturaly sensitive. Especially growing up in the US, where all our culture is stolen borrowed from everywhere else. But seriously China, WTF? Who comes up with this crap?

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese health authorities are putting a stop to restaurants serving chickens which have been bitten to death by poisonous snakes and cooked up for a supposedly detoxing meal.

followed by:

One dish, prized among some in Guangdong, is monkey brains scooped from a live animal, which has regularly upset animal rights campaigners in the West.


I think I'll just stick with beer.

Researchers at Granada University in Spain have come across a discovery that will undoubtedly please athletes and sports enthusiasts - a pint of beer post-workout or match is better at rehydrating the human body than water.

June Is Here

Time for summer, right?



Sure looks like it.


The Giro is over and Menchov won. It was a good race and I was glad that Menchov won it. I would liked to have seen a little more from Team Faded, esp Levi, but that's not the way it turned out. Though they did win the team competition, I expected Levi to at least podium, and thought Lance would be Top 10.

I had a nice ride with the team yesterday. Though I missed meeting the team until the end, it was still fun to ride from the bridge to 21st Ammendment. They're a great sponsor and they were awesome yesterday. The Watermelon beer is really good.

We celebrated E's completion of being sick by going to a really nice dinner at Foreign Cinema. Everything was good, but the Pork Chop was maybe the best one I've ever had, and the Late Harvest Viognier was the culinary discovery of the year.

And just because the World is a wacky place, have some links:

Probably should have checked with the wife first.


To hell with candlelight vigils

And Fox is right in the middle of it

Obama is shocked.

Not a day for happy news:
GM files for bankruptcy

Air France Jet Missing

North Korea Testing More Missles

But, as long as there are visionaries around to keep designing things like Bikini Jeans, the world be continue to be alright.