Thanks to JohnO for this link.

It would be cool. Call it the original carbon fiber. But it’s old news. Bamboo bikes were around as long as bikes have been around. No lie. But yeah, bamboo rocks. My favorite fly rod is an old bamboo model from the ’60s.

The name of David Cross’s new album is not family friendly, so don’t click the “Continue…” link below if you want to be friendly to your family — then again, if they aren’t around click away!

David(II)”>David Cross is the funny guy who was half-responsible for HBO’s under-recognized “Mr Show” and he played Donnie, the cousin of Elliot DiMauro (the photographer), on “Just Shoot Me” who pretended to be mentally challenged to avoid responsibility. Sub-Pop is the label that blessed us with the bands (like Nirvana) that were eventually forced into the spotlight of fad-dom as “grunge”.

Again, stealing an entry from one of my new favorite blogs:

I will have to pull some of my 3D images and try this technique. He’s just taking the left and right images and flipping them with what appears to be about a 200-250ms delay. It kinda works. (Some images may require adult supervision for the overly conservative.)

There are some ideas that just shouldn’t be bandied around in public. The DARPA Futures market was one of them. That’s not to say it wasn’t a brilliant idea; IMO it was. However, it’s an idea that is going to seem nearly as cruel to the average American as clubbing baby seals.

NRO ran a pretty decent bit on this today; I just wanted to throw in my two cents.

Right HERE. Suck it, folks who doubted the President.

Sweaty, skinny men wander around France for three weeks bumping into each other and breathing heavily. Every morning they wake up with sore asses but still ask for more. Paris celebrates when an American named Lance rides up the Champs Elysees before some German (History repeats itself?)

“Felix Baumgartner has become the first person ever to fly across the English Channel without the benefit of an aircraft, gliding from England to France wearing only a specially designed flying suit.”

I gotta get more info on this baby.

Scrappleface.

Even cartoonists seem to feel threatened by instant punditry. (image from today’s strip at Dilbert.com

Tom the Dancing Bug is a usually far-left leaning comic strip but today’s release is awfully balanced. I suppose the artist, Rueben Bolling, is as sick of the political back-fighting as the rest of us.

This AP photo shows the last traditional VW bug to roll off the line in Mexico. It was a great little car and I’ve often thought about getting one as my third car. (Is that bourgeois of me? to want a third car?) I have, also, considered an old monster like a Plymouth Fury or just buying my friend’s old Buick.

I stole this from my new favorite blog. It appears from the video that the man is pointing a gun at the police officers. Turns out it was a cell phone. It breaks my heart that this has to happen at all and it is even worse that it happened in Shreveport.

I received an email from BT on his honeymoon. He sent it to most of the people he knows, but it’s such a great piece that I wanted to post it for posterity.

I’ve got a couple of subcontractors I get quotes from for various functions. There is one whose quotes end up all over compared to the actual costs we incur when we use them. Sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes right on. Then there’s another sub whose quotes are always 10% lower than what we pay them. I prefer the second sub since I can adjust the quotes to what the actual cost is going to be.

The LA Times has a decent opinion column by their resident right-winger on NPR.

I agree much with his sentiments. I, too, can be counted on pretty regularly to cut the check to my local NPR station. I’m not quite so full of venom as Rob Long, though. While in no way would I call ATC or Morning Edition balanced, at least they have open and consistient bias while putting out somewhat deeper reporting and analysis than anywhere else on the radio. And I’ve never really developed a taste for regular FM jocks, or AM talk (with the exception of a certain harmless fuzzball for which I expect to catch crap).

NPR’s like the second contractor I use; consistiently biased, but useful.

A new article at Salon evenly highlights the issues around MDMA and reflects my current feelings on the subject.

I like to refer to the summer of ’94 (or was it ’95?) as the Summer of X. For 12 weeks I spent almost every Friday night scoring X at the local version of an opium den. A dark club packed full of people who were either young enough to be my accidental little brother or sister or old enough to know better, where the line on the street led to a side door near the alley (god forbid you go to a club where people came/went by the front door) and the owner prowled that line genially berating the bored but expectant club kids and techno-trippers — this club was a warm second-home for a young man who was crossing over from the college community into work-a-day adulthood. The first few weeks on X were amazing experiences that I wish everyone could experience. Paraphrasing the pastor who raised me (God rest his sould and forgive mine), “Explaining to someone the feeling of doing X is like describing chocolate pie to someone who’s neither had chocolate nor pie.” However, the last few trips I’ve taken were big let-downs.

If I had known what the cummulative effect of MDMA was, I would have done it much less often — saving up my trips for special occasions. In the aforementioned article Dr Julie Holland is quoted “In essence the government said, since people are sniffing paints, therapists couldn’t use the paint…a huge branch of medicine has been denied a powerful tool.” I would take this one step further and say that because of the government placing MDMA on Schedule 1 many people have taken this drug without knowing the full impact of it’s use. Only a couple more year’s research in the mid-80s and it would not have to be the 21st century before we learn of this impact. Besides, the Libertarian in me sees the banning of MDMA as a puritanical reaction to a citizen having more fun than the politicians. Ultimately, a person should be respnsible for what they do to their body.