I spent last week traveling (shocker) to Houston, San Diego, Spokane, and Portland.  It was great to be home - I celebrated with a bike ride, naturally, and am trying to get a little caught up.

Yes, I know, I missed October!  It happens.  But it was quite a month, and so I posted the hunt for read October...

And in other news, this was quite a week:

In last Tuesday's election the Republican Party regained control of the House, gained substantial ground in the Senate, and also made huge gains at the State and local levels.  It was a Tsunami.  Not exactly a ringing endorsement of President Obama and the Democrats, who have succeeded in blowing away their incredible mandate. 

In California, Jerry Brown is our new [old] Governor-elect (yikes!) and Barbara Boxer was reelected, sending Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina down to defeat.  Man are we a messed up state.  Roger Simon thinks California is so hopeless only Jerry Brown is crazy enough to fix it.  It would be funnier if it were less true.

Predictably, Hitler finds out the GOP have retaken the House.

And this is cool: Ex-NFLer Runyan unseats incumbent in NJ House race.  I know nothing about Runyan's politics but he was a great tackle :)

I might have missed October, but I didn't miss the World Series; well okay, I almost missed it, but caught the last game in the company of Giants.  That was rather fun :) 

Dave Winer ponders Angry Birds on Macbook Air.  Is the Mac App Store going to be iOS Apps?  That is the question... 

Related: Quicktime vs Flash.  I, too, remember when Quicktime was *the* way to do cross-platform video online.  YouTube changed all that, featuring Flash.

Here's a question: what will be the single largest technological leap in the next twenty years?  I have my answer*, what's yours? 

Huh: Apple's new datacenter is 21st century broadcast station.  The argument here is that [third-party] applications are broadcast content.  I'm not sure I buy it. 

Darrell Etherington: "Claiming that Apple is dominating the tablet market is a little like saying Alexander Graham Bell dominated the telephone industry in 1876."  John Gruber: "If only Bell had managed to create a massive monopoly that lasted a century and ended only when the government broke it apart."  I love it! 

AC/DC's Thunderstruck on the bagpipes.  A dancing bear, but a rather marvelous one; just when you think you've seen it all... 

This looks rather interesting: Sleights of Mind: the first-ever book about the neuroscience of illusion.  Excellent.  I take it from the need for illustrations that this will NOT be available on the Kindle any time soon... 

Quote of the day, from Thomas Jefferson: "Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise, and the weather shall be little regarded. If the body is feeble, the mind will not be strong."  Wise man. 

I've been meaning to post about this: In praise of procrastination.  "Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all."  Of course, there is always blogging... 

Oh yeah, and last week was National Pathology Week.  So be it :) 

*Image search with images.  (Think "plastics" :)