So, we survived Megan's birthday in fine style; a great time was had by all!  And yes, we did mark 12:34 5/6/7.  But as Megan pointed out, it will happen again - in the year 2100...

So, Nicolas Sarkozy is France's new President.  This is a good thing.  And he wants France to change, also a good thing (and much overdue, in my American-view-across-the-water).  Good luck to him! 

Thomas Dekker won the Tour of Romandie.  I wore my Rabobank kit today on my daily ride in celebration.  Although I must admit he looks better in it than I do :) 

And the Yankees have resigned Roger Clements.  Now that's just weird. 

The other day I was reading about the Republican candidate debates, and I noticed that three of the candidates claim not to "believe in evolution".  Kind of like they don't believe in gravity, or arithmetic, or electrons, I guess.  Weird.  Anyway the map at right shows where and how evolution is taught in the U.S. (Click the map for a larger view.)  The "red states" don't teach it at all.  Now that is really weird.  Separation of church and state, eh? 

This evolution idea is a bit tricky.  Why, Newsweek ran a cover story in which they got things pretty much exactly wrong.  I don't read Newsweek, but I read blogs written by people who do, and the results aren't always good.  Consider Scott Adams, author of Dilbert and an exceptionally smart and interesting blogger; after reading the article he got himself a bit wrapped around the axle.  Fortunately Pharyngula were standing by to, ahem, point out some of the difficulties.  "This is a case where the flaws in a popular science article neatly synergize with an evolution-denialist's misconceptions to produce a perfect storm of stupidity."  Indeed.

P.S. To the Republican debate; Dave Winer live-blogged it, and noted "They mention Schwarzenegger, and I realize none of these guys could even remotely win against Arnold."  That's what I think.  Who knows... 

Forbes has a great special report on "networking", including a column on Mixed Media by Rupert Murdoch.  "Those of us in so-called old media have also learned the hard way what this new meaning of networking spells for our businesses."  I would have to say he's an old dog who has learned a new trick.  [ via Chris Anderson, who calls him a "longtailer" ] 

Mark Pilgrim notes Silly Season: "Adobe introduced Apollo, their latest attempt to recreate the web in their own image... Meanwhile, Microsoft announced Silverlight, their latest attempt to recreate the web in their own image..."  And meanwhile, I yawn mightily.  I like Flash / Flex, don't get me wrong, but these galactic client-side development environments are too galactic.  Why can't they build on the blocks already there?  As Jeff Atwood notes, you can use Firefox as an IDE... 

Want to see something amazing?  Check this out.  (If you don't want to click through, it is a color photograph; you stare at it, then without moving your eyes mouse over the picture and it turns into black and white, but it still looks like color to your eyes.  Or maybe to your brain.)  This sort of experiment gives great insight to how eyes and brains work.  It turns out the vast majority of sensors in your eyes are black and white, yet we appear to see in full color.  A great deal of "filling in" happens in the background. 

Reminds me of this one: How to Stop Time.  Good night!