It has been two months since I started my extended vacation, with one left.  Whew!  The time had seemed to pass so slowly, all the way up to and through our most excellent trip to Europe.  But the two weeks since have flown by...  good thing we just had a long lazy weekend, I needed it :)

I decided this morning its time to get *serious* about training for the Furnace Creek 508.  I have two months to prepare, and must use them wisely.  Riding every day, cross training by working out, eating properly, and sleeping, punctuated with some longer rides when I can...  and I am going to stop drinking entirely.  Tough to do, but I think I can make it.  That Sea Smoke we had yesterday will be my last bottle until I finish the 508 - and then I can have another to celebrate!

Onward, let's see what the world was up to over the weekend, shall we?

Getting a clue: UK Prime Minister David Cameron: 'This is not about poverty, it's about culture'.  So true, but who would have thought to hear that said out loud? 

Powerline: Death throes of the welfare state.  Indeed.

Elsewhere: Dutch not so hot on multiculturism these days.  Nor the French either; this was lightly apparent in both Paris and Amsterdam when we visited this summer.

Meanwhile, back in the US: Government pays for empty flights to rural airports.  Sigh.

Cool: the Rutherford model of the atom is 100 years old.  And the Bohr model was proposed just four years later, and proved to be largely correct.  1915 was a banner year for physics :) 

Awesome: Dark matter may be an illusion caused by the quantum vacuum.  In addition to deploying some of the coolest buzzwords in science, it makes sense; dark matter always had that "and then magic happens" feel to it. 

[ Update: jwz comments: "Dark matter may be an illusion caused by gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum." - there's nothing about this sentence that isn't awesome ]

Man is this cool: Mobius, an optical illusion interactive public sculpture.  Click through to see the time-lapse movies; people move the pieces around to create the illusion of motion. 

Huh, Google bought Motorola's phone business.  Must be for the patents.  This cannot make sense any other way.  Might be good for Google, but I suggest, bad for Android.  Certainly it is good for the tech punditry who are having a field day in the blogosphere. 

Meanwhile: Jean-Louis Gassee thinks Apple should buy T-Mobile :) 

Orangutans love playing with their iPads.  I predict this picture will be repeated ... a lot :) 

What do you think?  Why Apple is done inventing new devices.  I grant that they've created an incredible new ecosystem, but I'm not sure there are no new devices to create.  Who would have thought the iPad would be so successful? 

Saw this: Apple looking to get rid of printer drivers.  I don't blame them, printer drivers are the bane of everyone's existence.  When WiFi printers came along I thought we might be rid of drivers, but I was wrong.  In the future, everyone will send email to a printer, and it will just print the attachments, no questions asked.  That future is hopefully close. 

Excellent: horrible movies cliches.  All of them are great; example: in the movies, computer geeks: a) hack into the alien mother ship's system, b) crack the CIA security password in only two attempts, c) fix the office printer. 

James Lileks thinks Diesel's "Stupid" ad campaign is, well, stupid:  "Remember: it’s not wise to buy jeans that cost $285. It’s stupid. And they're admitting as much. For that, I'll give them credit."  It is pretty typical of today's ad ethic to imply you're smart for being stupid.  

The invisible man paints himself to hide in plain sight.  Wow.  Just when you think you've seen it all, you realize "it all" is so much more than you thought... 

Do you Yelp?  I have been using it more and more, and finding it more and more useful.  It's one of those network effect things, the more other people use it, the more valuable it has become for me.  Almost the first thing I do now to find something is "Yelp" for it, depending on what "it" is, I might even do that before Googling...