Whew, spent the day heads' down, working on two negative time projects...  and also made time to document my Furnace Creek 508 reconnaissance from yesterday, stay tuned for that...  and probably spurred on by the knowledge that the 508 is going to be harder than I thought, I did a nice hard training ride today.  Felt good.

Okay, let's make a filter pass on the world...

From Judy at her JustEnjoyHim blog (which has transitioned from a blog about being a mother to an adopted child to a blog about being a breast cancer survivor): "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato".  I like that.  A lot. 

Salon hosts Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who discusses Who's winning the message war, Obama or McCain?  A really well balanced thoughtful take...  bottom line is Obama was winning, but McCain has turned the tide.  Interesting that each candidate is trying to make the election a referendum on the other candidate. 

So this is the big news around here: Nordstrom opening in three weeks.  Really big news. 

If you're interested in the Large Hadron Collider or particle physics, you might want to know What is the Higgs Boson?  Every time I read about particle physics I'm reminded of I.I.Rabi; upon hearing of the discovery of the neutrino he asked "who ordered that?" 

Scott Adams, author of Dilbert and blogger, delivers a trip report on Turtle Bay, Fiji.  "One of the guests reported seeing a couple that was about to leave the island, sitting on the beach weeping. I didn't understand that until it was our turn to leave. We wept too."  Wow, sounds fantastic, when can I go? 

Did you see this?  A mystery buyer paid $750 million for a house in Villefrance, overlooking the Cote d'Azur.  Wow.  I knew I was priced out of this market, but I didn't think I was that far out. 

TTAC notes GM's Olympian Hype, regarding the vaporware Chevy Volt for which they are actually running ads during the Olympics.  It seems really weird that they would advertise a car they cannot sell yet, and maybe cannot make ever.  Seems like the ads are targeting investors rather than customers; a strange practice.  Note that the Volt is already three years late, and it doesn't even exist yet. 

John Gruber: Why Apple doesn't do concept products.  Ha.  The linked article ends with Kontra's Law: "A commercial company’s ability to innovate is inversely proportional to its proclivity to publicly release conceptual products." 

And tying these two together, we have Steve Jobs on concept cars.  "You know how you see a show car, and it’s really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory!"  This would happen with the Volt if it ever exists... 

We have the first closeup pictures of Saturn's moon Enceladus from Cassini: "Cassini's first-of-a-kind sharp shooting over the south polar terrain of Enceladus to image the unusual geology there was a dazzling success, capturing, at close range, several of the 'tiger stripe' fractures that cross the south pole."  Excellent! 

And last but not least, congratulations to Fabian Cancellara and Kristin Armstrong, who won the men's and women's Olympic cycling time trials today.  They were each the odds-on favorite, and they each came through.  Levi Leipheimer got the bronze for the men, too, edging his Astana teammate Alberto Contador.