So today I am going to do a  l o n g  ride, in preparation for next weekend, on which I am planning to do a  r e a l l y  l o n g  ride, my first double, the Butterfield Double Century.  Last weekend I did a 300K, which is "only" 185 miles.  Why do I do these rides?  I'm not sure.  It isn't fun at the time, but it is fun later.  More evidence that "fun" really consists of anything that makes you feel better about yourself.  I think it is part of a hopeless endeavor to prove to myself that I'm not really getting older :)

Wow: WSJ reports Yahoo board to reject Microsoft bid.  And will propose that the company is worth $40/share.  I didn't see that coming, did you?  I guess this is their attempt to bid against themselves...  I doubt it will work, there are probably plenty of shareholders who want the deal at $31/share. 

Has the Archbishop gone bonkers?  Thank you for asking.  The answer is yes. 

Yes, traffic is bad in California, but nothing like this: A 2,000 car pileup in Wisconsin that lasted 12 hours.  Bad weather, sure, but reading the reports it seems the State Patrol's response was slow and ineffective.  Glad the sun is out here :) 

Panda's Thumb: Reconstruction of Ancestral Proteins.  "Yesterday a really cool paper came out in the journal Nature that demonstrates why evolutionary theory is so useful and fruitful in biology. A team of researchers has recreated an ancestral bacterial protein to determine that the ancestral bacteria grew in hot water around 3.5 billion years ago."  This kind of research is happening more and more often, and in addition to the valuable basic research provides a great retort to those who think evolutionary theory "isn't useful". 

It had to happen: Polaroid shutters the Polaroid.  What an amazing technology it was!  But "Polaroid failed to embrace the digital technology that has transformed photography, instead sticking to its belief that many photographers who didn't want to wait to get pictures developed would hold onto their old Polaroid cameras."  

What's fascinating is that they're still skating to where the puck used to be, here's their new strategy: "As it seeks to gain a foothold in digital photography this year, Polaroid plans to sell an 8-ounce photo printer slightly bigger than a deck of cards that requires no ink and prints business card-sized pictures. It uses thermal printing technology from Zink Imaging, founded by private investors who bought technologies from Polaroid as it was coming out of bankruptcy."  I view printing pictures as a dead-end technology; clearly we're going to end up with display screens on everything.  Who carries around snapshots when you can have an iPhone?  Weird how you can't see the forest for the [dead] trees sometimes...

Patterns in Nature!  Check out this picture of Dallol crater in Ethiopia.  Looks like something from a video game :)  The rest of the National Geographic photo series is worth checking out, too...