Greetings blog public, this is coming to you from Washington DC, where I find myself after a busy week and a flight out yesterday.  I am in town for a DICOM Working Group 26 meeting and the U.S. and Canadian Association of Pathologists annual conference.  It will be quite a week.

So I'm looking out my hotel window, and atop a nearby hill I see this beautiful cathedral.  So I walked over.  And there it was, the National Cathedral, in all its glory, looking for all the world like an old European church from the 17th century.  Who knew?  Anyway it was cool.

And now, a filter pass!

Health Care reform passes, but at what cost?  "This bill is unlikely to achieve most of the objectives that have been set out for it.  In the end, then, we're left with a highly expensive, fiscally dangerous expansion of health insurance that locks even more people into a broken system.  That's an achievement, all right, but not a particularly good one."  What we have here is insurance reform, and although it is badly needed, this bill is badly done. 

Victor Davis Hanson says we've crossed the Rubicon.  I'm afraid he's right...

The Yike Bike, a strange new bike designed to be easily collapsed for storage.  Huh.  It doesn't look like a winner to me, somehow... 

NASA Mars Rover Getting Smarter as it Gets Older.  "NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, now in its seventh year on Mars, has a new capability to make its own choices about whether to make additional observations of rocks that it spots on arrival at a new location.  Software uploaded this winter is the latest example of NASA taking advantage of the twin Mars rovers' unanticipated longevity for real Martian test drives of advances made in robotic autonomy for future missions."  Wow, seven years.  And the original mission lifetime was 90 days! 

Yes, of course there is a Tag Heuer version of the Tesla Roadster.  And yes, of course it looks cool; dare I say, this is the best treatment I've seen...  vastly better than that weird orange that Tesla seem to like, even with the carbon fiber accents... 

John Battelle on the iPad media frenzy, and specifically Wired's 'iPad demo': "What I find interesting is the media's response to the iPad (and I include tech blogs in the category of "media").  Overwhelmingly, the media wanted to believe that a hip magazine like Wired (caveat, I was a co-founder) would, natch, have the hippest iPad demo, a demo that, natch, would prove the viability of ... the media's own threatened business model!  The truth, however, is a bit more complicated."  Indeed. 

So this is cool: the wooden Canada Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai was designed by the Cirque du Soleil!  How cool is that? 

The perfect rule for texting etiquette.  Ask permission if you would also ask permission to visit the bathroom.  One on one or small group, yes, big group, no.  I love it. 

Feeling groovy; here's a cool electronic microscope picture of a record's groove.  Be sure to check out the comments, too; I love that someone thinks they've detected Misty Mountain Hop! 

Here's a question: Is Facebook better than sex?  Here's an answer: No.  I think people use Facebook largely because of sex, however. 

Marc Cantor: the history of Avatars.  How cool; I *totally* remember mediaband.com back in the day, with the Marc Cantor theme song and his cool little avatar...  if I close my eyes and concentrate, I can hear the theme song too... 

From Google: Now it's easy to switch from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps.  "Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange is a new server-side tool that migrates your company's email, calendar and contact data from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps."  Wow.  If I was gutsier or my company was smaller, I would try this.  If. 

Congratulations to Oscar Friere for winning Milan - San Remo.  Good for him, he still has it, and good for Rabobank, who were due for a victory.  298km by the way, a war of attrition. 

This is beautiful: Nature by Numbers.  Absolutely, you *must* watch it, and you will thank me. 

Looks like Michael Lewis has created another megahit: The Big Short.  An expose of the current "financial crisis", in the same vein as his awesome Liar's Poker; Cory Doctorow loved it.  Not out for the Kindle yet however...  So I have to wait! 

Jean-Louis Gassée: Who will buy Palm?  "If you’re in a hurry: no one."  Man, this is too really too bad.  But I cannot disagree.  Still, I can love my Pre!  [ via Daring Fireball; John Gruber comments "from a man who knows what it's like" (because of Be) ] 

ZooBorn of the week: a baby squirrel monkey. 

Wrapping up (yawn); this is so true... 
Some days you make the coffee, and some days, the coffee makes you :)