A morning coffee post, as I prepare to return from Denver...  I am in recovery mode from Sangria, Stout, and Stoli, so please calibrate this post accordingly.  (Note: if you find yourself in Denver and want a great Tapas restaurant, open the 9th Door.  You will not be disappointed :)

So Hillary Clinton is still alive!  Wow, good for her, and - dare I say - good for John McCain.  Somehow the Barack Obama bandwagon's music is turning flat for me, I actually, actually found myself thinking I might prefer Clinton to Obama.  (Slaps self in face.)  I still wish there was a Democratic candidate I could support, but it is what it is. 

Ann Althouse foresaw: "I don't see how this doesn't send us into a six-week-long battle for Pennsylvania."  I don't see how it doesn't, either.

Megan McCardle on Obama: "Well, I certainly hope he's lying, because I think he's going to be the next president of the United States. But of course, as I've said before, I do not like it that politicians seem to feel the need to lie shamelessly to the electorate."  [ via Glenn Reynolds, who comments: "Generally, you have to hope that most of what most candidates say is a lie. Fortunately, it usually is..." ]

LGF reports Wilders film to air, Dutch government terrified.  This is such a good thing.  They should be terrified of an environment in which any film terrifies a government. 

Picture of the day: The Earth and the Moon, as seen from Mars.  Wow.  This brought tears to my eye in a "pale blue dot" sort of way.  Imagine all the crap stuff going on here, and it is all contained on that little ball... 

Badness: the historic Paris-Nice cycling race starts Sunday, and it is still up in the air who will compete in it.  This race is run by the ASO, the same organization which runs the Tour de France in July, and they are at loggerheads with the UCI, pro cycling's international federation.  Both are threatening teams and riders with suspensions.  The whole thing sucks. 

Randall Parker: Low testosterone boosts depression risk.  Wow, that would be depressing :)  I must say this does not seem to be one of my problems... 

Blog title of the year (so far): Cory Doctorow says Toxic waste gets birds laid.  Yeah, go ahead, read it, but don't forget to savor the multiple meanings. 

Jeff Atwood posted a fascinating dissection of the difference between Actual Performance and Perceived Performance (in software applications :)  Inevitably the discussion shifts to Vista: "Don't make the same mistake the Vista development team did. Think more holistically than mere benchmarks alone. Consider the user's perception of the process, too."  I totally believe this; Aperio's ImageScope viewer is carefully designed to appear as fast as possible (well, it is designed to perform as fast as possible, too, within the limits of bandwidth etc.) 

I always knew Airborne was a fake, and now they've shown it.  But you knew that already, right? 

Perhaps it would have worked even better if it was more expensive?

Finally, coat hangers sound just as good as Monster cables.  But you knew that already, right?  Riight?