Okay, Whitney survived, mind cleared, and it is back to work, although without my voice, which somehow left me during the course of yesterday and has been replaced by a chorus of frogs.  Fortunately I was able to get stuff done anyway.  Meanwhile the world hasn't stopped spinning, let's take a look...

Charles Krauthammer: The Audacity of Vanity.  He nails it; the main reason I am recoiling from Obama. 

A similar theme at the National Review: The Tautology of Hope.  ("Beliefs we can believe in..." :) 

And the Onion outdo themselves: 'Time' Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece.  "Hailed by media critics as the fluffiest, most toothless, and softest-hitting coverage of the presidential candidate to date, a story in this week's Time magazine is being called the definitive Barack Obama puff piece."  Amid heavy competition, we might add... 

Michael Barone thinks McCain should revisit 1976. 

Think things are bad in our economy?  Well you might be right, but consider poor Zimbabwe, where $1B won't buy a loaf of bread.  I believe Monopoly money is more valuable.  That's what happens when the government raises incompetence to new heights ( or I should say, lowers it to new depths).  Wow. 

I watched yesterday's Tour de France stage tonight (being otherwise occupied yesterday :), it was great!  A real shootout on the final climb, with an early breakaway staying clear, an unknown nearly winning (Danny Pate of the U.S.), plenty of spills in the rain (Oscar Periero fell over a guardrail 12' onto the pavement below, breaking his arm; later about 20 riders in two separate clumps hit the pavement at a turnabout, and on the final climb Denis Menchov fell while attacking, recovered, and ended up attacking again), and a dogfight among the leaders which closed up the standings so that six men are now within 40 seconds of the lead!  Speaking of Menchov, he looked strong...  stronger than Evans and Sastre.  Today was a rest day, but tomorrow there are more alpine fireworks, it should be excellent! 

Was it really thirty-nine years ago the first men landed on the moon?  Yes it was.  Wow.  That was definitely one giant step for mankind. 

Pete Worden, director of NASA, says "we're going back, and this time we're going to stay".  Cool!

William Tucker in WSJ: Let's have some love for nuclear power.  "All over the world, nuclear power is making a comeback.  British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has just commissioned eight new reactors, and says there's 'no upper limit' to the number Britain will build in the future.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel has challenged her country's program to phase out 17 nuclear reactors by 2020, saying it will be impossible to deal with climate change without them. China and India are building nuclear power plants; France and Russia, both of whom have embraced the technology, are fiercely competing to sell them the hardware.  And just last month John McCain called for the construction of 45 new reactors by 2030.  Barack Obama is less enthusiastic about nuclear energy, but he seems to be moving toward tacit approval."  Excellent!  This is really our only chance. 

Awesome! - here we have a lego Stephen Hawking... 

This is pretty funny: HP shatters excessive packaging world record.  Seventeen nested boxes to ship 32 pages of paper.  That's pretty good, it might put the record out of reach.  Reminds me of the time IBM mailed me a big shipping crate containing only a smaller shipping crate.  But HP has topped that... 

Well, looks like it is now possible to unlock / jailbreak your 2.0 iPhone or iPod Touch.  With the 2.0 software and the Apple App Store there is less reason to do so, but less is not none; some of the apps you can run jailbroken do things you can't do otherwise, such as continue to play music after switching to another app.  I might have to check this out :) 

Here we have the North Sails VW Toureg.  I am not making this up.
[ via Sailing Anarchy ] 

AppleWatch wonders what is Apple's mystery product?  "During Apple's fiscal third-quarter conference call this afternoon, CFO Peter Oppenheimer warned of falling margins for the next quarter and fiscal 2009. He gave three reasons, but one really stood out: a future product transition that 'I can't discuss today.'"  Huh... 

Why does race matter for women?  GNXP reports "women care much more about the race of a potential mate than men do".  Huh...