The Tour de France?

Ullrich-Out, Basso-Out, Mancebo-Out, and now Vino-Out

Wow, will there even be a race this year. The Weuth team who had been a major subject of the recent doping investigations is the latest to pull out of Le Tour.

So at the start, Le Tour is already decimated, and a probable podium is gone. Looks like we Americans can piss off the frogs and retain the Tour GC title. Other than Floyd, Zabriske, Leipheimer, hell even Hincapie, who you got?

Over the next few hours Kelly and I will fill the comment space with numerous links to backup our claim: Guitar Hero is a game you should be playing. I even have one friend who played at my birthday party and loved it so much he bought the whole setup from scratch: PS2, the game with guitar, and an extra guitar. It’s wildly addictive fun and millions of fans are eagerly anticipating the sequel. Some fans have gone so far as to start the creation of a PC based editor using Java.

All this to say that this week I achieved a personal goal that has taken a lot of hard work and practice. I scored 100% on a Medium level song:

Please continue your submission to Google by entering your credit card information for fast checkout at a variety of online stores.

This just in …

A team of experts from The Solae Company has invented a versatile new generation of concepts, applications and ingredients that will allow meat companies to produce a nutritious product with virtually the same exceptional taste and texture of traditional beef or chicken.

You’re asking yourself, “ What miracle substance are they using to create this new fake meat? Soy? Fungus? Kelp?”.

Nope. It’s made of meat. They’re taking meat (okay, and vegetable protein) and processing it to be more like meat.

I finally picked up Omnivore’s Dilemma on Monday, and am on the cusp of becoming completely insufferable on the topic of processed foods. But if it can get me to stop eating Taco Bell, and anything else made from “concepts and applications”, you’ll have to bear with me.

Holly at Hen Waller opened my eyes last week to a wrinkle in the biofuel debate I hadn’t considered — given that they aren’t making any more acres, is it more worthwhile to grow food or fuel? And this NYT article from a couple of days later breaks it down further, clarifying for me yet another problem with ethanol subsidies — it makes less economic sense to grow food when the government is sending piles of money down the ethanol production chain.

The message I’m taking home is that we could concentrate a lot more efficiently on alternative fuel and oil independence, plus free up a couple of billion dollars of government money to grant alt fuel research if we’d just bump the Iowa caucuses back a few weeks.

And a bonus question: How many miles per gallon do you get if you’re riding a bike? I’m a machine, you’re a machine, and that food we use for fuel has to get a ride to our house somehow (at least most of it does).

And for the top of the pile: New Company to Produce Biodiesel From Algae

Caveat: It feels wrong to encourage any type of violent conflict, but…

I feel like some note of acceptance should be given to the Palestinan militant group that attacked an Israeli military outpost, kidnapped a soldier and is now making demands for the soldier’s release. Not only is it an attack that didn’t involve civilians, but their request to release imprisoned women and children actually resembles a reasonable request. Both of those actions hopefully show some growth towards acceptable behavior — at least for warring societies.

It isn’t often that I get to say something nice about Orin Hatch, but the bill he’s pushing asking for more accountability on the supplement industry is a good thing. It’s especially brave of him considering his original work pushing to keep oversight away from these products…well, it’s easier now that the supplement companies are backing the bill too, but it’s still good legislation.

Thanks to a link at Lindsayism (about a short cute article by David Cross) I’m reading New York Magazine’s The Urban Etiquette Handbook and I’m really bothered by this part:

Who pays the bill on a date?
The asker pays, unless the woman does the asking—then the man should pay. … (For same-sex couples, the asker really does pay.)

WTF?!? What happened to equality? In New York, misogynism still rules unless your gay.

—of course, I always pay, but I stand up for a man’s right not to pay if the woman asked him out.—

Becky and I met up with the SmiCollums (and Mandy and her sister…and supposedly Yaqui Loco was there somewhere) to see Beck at the Frontyard (formerly known as The Backyard until they built a mall around it). The show was pretty out there, as should be expected from a master showman, including a little marionette theatre that was displayed on a screen over the band.

It’s hard to make on my tiny phone video, but the band are the undiscernable white objects on the bottom quarter of the screen and the red blob in their midst is the live marionette stage. Easier to make out is the close-up video of the Beck puppet’s head. The whole band was represented in puppet form and the puppeteers performed along with the band. They even covered for the band to introduce the band’s encore by performing “Loser”. I’m pretty sure Beck is sick of performing that particular tune…if he even remembers the words.

I’ll trade my political humor (see below) for a little vitriol, especially since it highlights more big government excess in an administration that was put in office by supposed conservative voters.

Michael Leavitt, Bush appointee as Secretary of Health and Human Services, used the HHS private jet that is assigned for emergency use to fly around the country pushing Bush’s Medicare snake oil — even, in two instances, forcing HHS to hire a seperate jet for real emergencies.

I had my first noticable impact from the immigration “crisis” this weekend. I got up early on Saturday to get a new metal cutting blade so we could work on the fence. I decided I would grab a breakfast taco while I was out. On the way to Home D’pot I took the back road which normally would have 3-4 taco stands. Now, there are none. So I took another way back to the house which has a taco stand or two occasionally. Again, no taco.

Thanks to Republican hysteria — used to misdirect the US public away from any real issues in an election year — I went hungry Saturday morning, and I bet I’m not the only person who has missed a meal because of this un-Christian and un-American attitude towards immigration.

The Republicans don’t care if regular Americans go hungry.

Check out this video from a NASA article that shows a meteoroid hitting the moon with the force of “4 tons of TNT”.

Here’s a map of the site, if you want:

Finally some reality TV I can get behind. Yes it’s corny and all of that, but hey it’s TV.

Meow Mix will sponsor a reality TV show featuring 10 cats in a New York store window where viewers will vote off the participants, who will then go to an adoption family. The show will air on Animal Planet and at www.meowmixhouse.com. Too bad I won’t be around for Sunday dinner Tivo nights. Just going off the wallpaper pictures, I have to cast my vote for Molly or Opry.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the San Francisco Bay area and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are competing to design the nation’s first new nuclear bomb in two decades.

Being a pacifist, this scares me. On the other hand I am realistic and know that bad things happen. But is this really the best way to go?

From Austinist (my favorite ist) – I thought that some of our resident dorks might be interested in Dorkbot Austin, a monthly talent show and meeting for all things dork.