Did a great ride today - 74 miles, with 9,000' of vertical, on a beautiful Spring day... then spent the rest of the day eating...  More of the same tomorrow, I'm afraid :)

I hope you all have a fantastic Easter, hanging out peacefully with the ones you love...

Did you know that Barack Obama is considered the country's most liberal senator?  I find that remarkable.  Not that he is so liberal - that I knew, or at least am starting to figure out - but that the Democratic Party is poised to nominate the most liberal senator as their candidate for President two elections in a row!  (You may remember John Kerry was considered the most liberal senator in 2003.)  Now regardless of your personal politics, you have to admit this is not smart.  History is not on your side trying to get the most liberal senator elected.  There are a lot of conservative people in the U.S., and they vote.  I would not be surprised if the Democrats end up seeing red come November... 

The aftertaste of the Obama / Wright speech is definitely a bit bitter; Ann Althouse analyzes a Rasmussen poll taken just afterward...  "The important break in the numbers is between "excellent" and the rest, and 70% said the speech fell short of 'excellent.' This is, I think, disastrous for Obama."  I thought it was excellent and yet, I find myself more worried about him as a possible President.  I think Jeff Jacoby pinpoints the problem nicely: Wright and Wrong.

Slate writes Out-of-wedlock births are a national catastrophe.  Yeah, no kidding, more than half of all kids are born to a single parent.  Let's talk about this in the great Presidential debates, huh? 

Big cycling news: Slipstream have been invited to the Tour!  That's excellent, so the U.S. will have a team...  Well I guess High Road is a U.S. team now too (formerly T-Mobile, and formerly German).  Just too bad politics have kept Astana out, Tour Director Christian Prudhomme said "These are, I believe, the best teams in the world", but he can't mean it; clearly the team with Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer, and Andreas Kloden is the best. 

Congratulations to Fabian Cancellera; the Swiss time machine won the first "big" race of the year, Milan - San Remo, and he won it with style, powering out from the peloton with 3K to go and winning easily.  He is nasty strong, the best in the world right now. 

The Caltech News' latest issue's back page was a diagram all about the new Thirty Meter Telescope.  The TMT will be the biggest, baddest, best ground-based telescope ever built.  I scanned the diagram; please click the thumbnail at right to enlarge.  It does look really cool; I love "big science".  {One funny thing; although the design of the TMT has been worked on a lot, the location has apparently not yet been decided.  One would think that would be important, eh?} 

CIO magazine asks Should Microsoft Throw Away Vista?  Their answer is yes.  (Mine, as you know, is yes, too.) 

This is really funny: PZ Myers was Expelled from watching Expelled, a new creationist movie, presumably because he's a vocal atheist, but his companion was not.  His companion was Richard Dawkins.  You might ask why people can't see the movie if they don't agree with it, but since we're talking about creationists here, logic does not apply...