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Jul 06 2011

Le Tour 2011- Stage 5

Carhaix to Cap Fréhel (102 miles)

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Getting some exciting now, you betcha.

As I’ve said right along, my understanding of professional cycle racing is based on watching Le Tour (albeit since Greg LeMond), which is kind of like basing your perceptions of Baseball on the World Series or Throwball on the Super Bowl.  I only know what I read in the funny papers.

During the off season it’s been all Lance, all the time, with the merest mention of Contador’s actual positive doping tests and the implicit assumption that he was going to win in a walk.  Since I deal strictly in schadenfreude it’s been an agreeable experience so far.

To the extent that rivals were mentioned before Passage du Gois La Barre-de-Monts it was about 90% Schleck (who only finished 39 Seconds behind) with Leipheimer and Horner thrown in not because they are good but because the sporting press is just as lazy and mendacious as their political counterparts and twice as jingoistic (U.S.A!  U.S.A.!).

In fact I’m pretty sure the only reason Hushovd shows up on the radar at all is that his namesake is a crossdressing wedding crasher (you could look it up).

Anyway this is all by way of explanation why I’ve taken Hushovd’s overall chances more seriously than some even though he is basically a sprinter.  I’m ignorant and easily influenced.

Yesterday actually was some exciting with many of the name contenders including Contador making a big push for position if not a Stage win at the end.  It was really the first chance for climbers to make their mark.

Also in the first group were Evans (the winner by half a wheel), Gilbert (whom I’ll have to take more seriously), and Hushovd (who gets to wear the maillot jaune again today).

They all got the same time.  Slightly behind were Horner and Leipheimer (who says we’re old?) and Andy Schleck who’s making his brother look good.  In terms of the overall General Classification standings nobody moved up except in rank because of Hushovd’s presence in the zero deficit group.  Contador remains 1:42 behind, Cadel Evans is the real deal and remains a slight Second out of first.

Today’s stage includes the category 4 climb at Cote Gurunhuel which will give us an early indicator of how the day will go.  After that it’s a descending series of bumps which does not make it easy by any means.  Three more race days until serious elevation changes and a week to the Pyrenees where Contador is expecting to put it away.

Coverage starts at 7:30 am on Vs.  

Jul 06 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 ‘News’ vows action over Dowler phone hack claims

By Alice Ritchie, AFP

1 hr 29 mins ago

Britain’s top-selling Sunday tabloid vowed on Tuesday to take the “strongest possible action” if it is proven that its journalists hacked the phone of a missing teenager who was later found murdered.

Prime Minister David Cameron earlier said police should pursue their investigation into the claims about the News of the World, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, in “the most vigorous way”.

News International chief Rebekah Brooks, who was editor of the paper at the time of schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s disappearance in 2002, told staff that the allegations were “sickening” and “almost too horrific to believe”.

Jul 05 2011

Le Tour 2011- Stage 4

Lorient to Mûr-de-Bretagne (107 miles)

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Well, that was kind of odd.

I don’t mean Thor Hushovd doing leadout at the finish so that Tyler Farrar could get a Stage win on Independence Day.  That was kind of classy and arguably a team leadership move.

Nope, I mean what the hell was he doing contesting for 6th place sprinter’s points at best (5 riders in the break away) at the mid Stage checkpoint?

Those Green Jersey points don’t count a damn in GC.  Were I his manager he would have gotten an earful about his role on the Garmin squad in the debrief.  Mark Cavendish the Mad Manx took them anyway so what was the benefit?

Today’s course ends on a climb up the ‘Wall of Brittany’, terrain unsuited to sprinting and where the 3 km Turn Left Racing rule does not apply.  Fall off your bike and watch the seconds tick away.

Pre-Stage favorites include Philippe Gilbert (his birthday) and Cadel Evans, either of whom could take the maillot jaune (though Evans is much better positioned to do so).  On Contador watch the best you can say about yesterday is he moved up in rank from 75th to 69th and didn’t lose any more time to the leaders.  Frank and Andy Schleck are grouped in a 10 rider tie for 4th a mere 4 Seconds back, unless Hushovd has a great day overall leadership is poised for a change.

Don’t count him out though, the last time a similar Stage was contested in 2008 the winner was Thor Hushovd.

Coverage starts at 8 am on Vs.  

Jul 05 2011

Fireworks

A story about smoking.

The big place to watch fireworks is down on the beach and one year my friends and I decided to make an event of it so we packed up a couple of cases and our portable stereo- a car battery, 250 watt car equalizer/amp, a Colecovision power supply and voltage inverter, 2 Walkman CD players, mixer board, and 4 Minimus 7s.

And a blanket.

We got there early so we’d get good seats and were only 3 or 4 rows behind the Police tape and had a fun early evening waiting for the dusk to gather amusing ourselves, scaring little children, and annoying our neighbors.

Nothing like playing the feedback.

As it got darker we switched to more mellow fare, Holst’s The Planets and Pink Floyd as I recall and soon enough the show started and we were right underneath it.

Underneath as in the shells were exploding pretty much directly overhead and showering flaming debris all around us.  A blanket a couple of rows ahead caught fire causing several moments of excitement until somebody remembered that if you just shovel sand on top these things go out.

I personally was put in mind of an old Buck Rodgers comic strip where the villain, in preparation for a duel with Buck, lies down in a field and has his flunkies howitzer him with spikey mace balls to demonstrate his courage until his chief toady right next to him gets kind of, well, squished.  Think chunks of facade landing next to the Orc captain at the siege of Minas Tirith if you’re not getting the 1930s image.

Harmless good times for the most part and it seemed only fitting that when a lit fragment landed close enough to reach without straining I fished out a Kool and kindled it off the chunk.

The difficult thing was the three hours getting out of the parking lot.

Jul 05 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 British PM’s Afghan trip marred by soldier death

By Danny Kemp, AFP

1 hr 13 mins ago

British Prime Minister David Cameron was forced Monday to scrap part of a visit to Afghanistan intended to hail improved security after a soldier went missing and was later found dead.

The soldier’s mysterious death in Helmand province, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, overshadowed Cameron’s announcement that security had improved enough for Britain to soon withdraw a small number of troops.

Cameron arrived in Helmand on Monday morning on a surprise visit but quickly decided to abandon a planned trip to the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, one of a handful of towns earmarked for an early handover to Afghan forces.

Jul 04 2011

On Patriotism

(a reprint from our initial offerings)

It’s an interesting coincidence that exactly 50 years after The Declaration, Jefferson and Adams died within hours of each other.  Ironically Adam’s last words were- “Jefferson still survives.”  In fact Jefferson preceeded Adams which could have caused some embarrassment provided you believe in an afterlife and that Jefferson and Adams could have ended up in the same place.

Me?  Not so much.  People forget that our founders were revolutionaries and the establishment of The United States of America led to a string of more or less successful rebellions in Haiti, South America, and France.

It’s certainly not a historical leap of faith to call The Council of Europe and the Age of Metternich a reaction to a little fight we picked on the road between Lexington and Concord.

History is real, and not so very long ago.

These were people just like us.  Every bit as smart, twice as tough, and doing the best they could with the tools they had available.

Recently they’d been through 30 years of Civil War based on religious sectarianism and class warfare.  Fighting the French and Indians was kind of intermittent by comparison.

They were not rubes by any means though it’s a classic American gambit going back to Franklin at least to put a dead beaver on your head and pretend to be an idiot.  It makes the women want you.

My favorite Ben who is not a traitor was considered the head of the committee that composed The Declaration, but the principal Author was Thomas Jefferson whom we find recently to have made a last minute substitution of ‘citizen’ for ‘subject’ that I found reflective of his principles as a Founder.

Revolution is not all skittles and beer.

America had its Cincinattus and a Republic if we could keep it, but political feuding between the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists was little short of open warfare in the election of 1800.  People were literally shot down like dogs.

Adams had to suffer Jefferson as a Vice-President (Mr. Heartbeat) and successor.  Two Term Jefferson left his office to James “Mr. Constitution” Madison and the rest, as they say, is history until Andrew “Kingfish” Jackson (but that’s a story for another day).

The democratic impulse and enlightenment values embodied in the work of our Founders, little things like the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the institutions of the Congress, Presidency, and Court have always been under attack by powerful elites who seek to influence outcomes in their favor.

The very least honor we owe these brave and principled patriots is to resist those efforts and defend justice and the rule of law to the best of our ability.

Jul 04 2011

Why Blog?

(a reprint from our initial offerings)

I’ve always identified myself as a writer, even when it was poetry for machines and deadline dreck for newsletters, pamphlets, and flyers.

I like words and written communication better than verbal or theatrical presentations because of the random access you have to the information as a reader.  With a speech, or Radio, or a Play, TV, or Movie the information is under control of the deliverer, not the audience.  It’s inherently a serial exposition, a sales pitch, designed by arrangement and order to lead you from reasonable premises to a predetermined conclusion without allowing you to revisit the path of the argument unless you repeat the experience from scratch.

You may call reading the last chapter to find out ‘who done it’ cheating, I suggest instead that it’s a challenge every Author should be willing to face.  If you can’t make your middle memorable it’s probably better suited for a Short Story than a Novel.

So that’s what’s in it for me.  It’s a form of self expression in a broadly accessible format that’s not really very expensive except in terms of the time it takes to produce the content.

What’s in it for you?

There are 2 parts to this answer.

As a Reader only, you get to bask in my brilliance and wallow in my words and if passive entertainment suits your style I’m grateful for your eyeballs.  By that I mean you’ll get a lot more of me if you can stand it and love or hate it I don’t really give a rat’s ass what you think about me as long as you pay attention.

But the beauty part of a blog is that you can have your voice heard too.  It’s called a Vent Hole for a reason and it accepts both positive and negative feedback.  If your ambition exceeds a Tweet or two you can contribute longer pieces that I will be more than happy to evaluate and feature.  There is nothing that gives me more pleasure than promoting the work of others.

I hope that The Stars Hollow Gazette will develop into a Group Blog where regular participants as well as muse driven Authors will provide a stream of fresh content that will make us a several time a day destination.

Activism

I think that blogs are both more and less powerful platforms than conventionally recognized.  Many people have a nostalgic affection for storming the Bastille and I don’t despise those who are willing to wear no pants.

My legs are not what they once were, though that doesn’t mean I won’t ‘kilt up’ if the occasion calls for it.

I don’t think a failure to summon musket armed militia is an indication of weakness.  The information battlefield has numerous hedgerows, stone walls, and trees to snipe from behind of.  If you think it doesn’t hurt you’re not listening to the howls of outrage from the ego struck elite you ungrateful cur.

My activist brother thinks the most important function of blogs is as a source of information and a historical record, an alternative to the monopolistic media with its competitive barriers.  I think it’s equally as important to amuse and distract.  Your eyeballs are money.  Your passive consent, complicity.

I call you to a life of resistance in the small and easily done things.  Move your money.  Use cash when you can.  Turn off your lights when you leave the room and properly inflate your tires.

If just two people do it, in harmony, they’ll think they’re both faggots and won’t take either of them.

I’ve been called worse things than a stick.  Whom would fardels bear to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all and the native hue of resolution is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought, and enterprise of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.

In thy orisons be all my sins remembered.

Civility

No one has any obligation to treat you any particular way on the internet.

Indeed, one of the things I most despise about our inbred Versailles Village political/media culture is their false politeness and evasion of the truth.

Calling people liars and cowards and idiots is not ‘hate speech’.

Saying that Jew controlled financial, media, and political elites are stealing victory from our brave troopers and using the blood of Christian babies to make Matzoh IS.

If you can’t tell the difference between those things it’s simply useless to talk about subtleties and I won’t bother to do so.

In general however you may attribute to me personally any vice- I claim them all, particularly sloth.  If you have something new and inventive you’d care to share I’m always interested in novelty.  On the other hand you can hardly complain when I return the favor and if I happen to do it bigger and grander than you and you leave impressed…

That’s envy, my dear.  There’s a little bit of envy in the best of us.

Evolution

If you’d bother to learn anything about me at all you’d know I’m not a great believer in it.  It seems to me contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation. – Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

But change is only to be expected, and while most of it is merely increasing entropy, intermittently self organizing systems emerge and flourish for a time.

And if you’re lucky you can be a part of it.

Jul 04 2011

Happy Anniversary

So a year ago The Stars Hollow Gazette went public and since then we’ve published 3,396 pieces or an average of 9.3 a day.  We’ve had some 40,27 visits and 216,845 views for an average of 111 and 468 daily during the course of our initial year, not so bad for a start up with minimal linkage and whoring.  Considering most political commentary community sites perish well before this I consider it an auspicious omen.

On that first day I had 4 posts, punching a little above my average-

I’ll be republishing Why Blog? and On Patriotism because it’s always good to remember where you came from.  Now might be a good time for members and potential members to visit the FAQs and refresh your memories though they haven’t changed a bit.

If you’re interested enough to take a full trip in the wayback machine this link tries to strike a moving target, we’re nothing if not prolific.

During the coming week I’ll be visiting several topics related to our past year including some experiments that didn’t work so you can point and hoot at my mistakes.

I have an agenda of change that I hope is going to make our past, present, and future content more accessible and easier to find and link to.  Soapblox has a new 2.0 platform to which we may migrate.  I’m hopeful some linux script genius will come up with one that allows us to do independent site backups based on the sequentiality of the diary urls.

TheMomCat and I are both working on making the site even more self sustaining by developing a larger community of Authors and a revenue stream to carry the hosting fees and add site improvements.  If you sell patchouli or tie dyed T-Shirts I’m sure we can come up with some reasonable rates.

We’re open to running sourced and linked pieces from advocacy groups.  Your press release isn’t a sure promotion but we’ve no objection to our readers seeing it (for the most part, editorial decisions are capricious and final).  Soapblox is capable of handling 50 member contributions a day out of the box and you can easily add extensions to handle arbitrary amounts with reasonable currency.  I think I’ll keep the Front Page no hotter than 1 every hour.

Well, you should plan for success.

And that relies on you.  I like to think The Stars Hollow Gazette has developed into a site of character and interest, a place you visit several times a day to read the latest and are proud to contribute at.  If you feel the same I urge you to send us your eyeballs and read, link, quote, comment, and recommend.

Thank you for your support.

Jul 04 2011

Le Tour 2011- Stage 3

Olonne-sur-Mer to Redon (123 miles)

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

More exciting than you thought eh?  Especially if you are rooting for or against Contador who’s team did much better than expected, finishing 8th after starting in last (22nd) position, but still didn’t advance his standing materially.

At the end of yesterday’s Team Time Trials, Contador advanced from 82nd to 75th by rank but added 22 Seconds to his time deficit.  Among the contenders ahead of him are Thor Hushovd (1st), Cadel Evans (3rd) and Andy Schleck (10th).

All the riders that got dropped managed to struggle across the finish under the +30% cutoff time so we will start all 198 of them today with no withdrawals so far.  This is actually not so bad as there’s usually a lot of early carnage.

Today’s stage is considered a sprinter’s course so you’ll see several attempted break aways most of which will be easily reeled in by the Peloton if they look likely to succeed.  There’s just the one sprint checkpoint this year so it’s barely possible that some team managers will be complacent and let things get out of hand.  The expected result is that teams will cut their best sprinters loose to finish as high in the points as they can and use the second stringers to drag their General Classification hopefuls across the line in a bunch.

Bottom line is that barring accidents you’ll see movements of 10s of Seconds or so, not earth shattering changes.  Saxo Bank might be lured into attempting something (which would be a mistake in my opinion) since they looked pretty desperate yesterday.

I’m extraordinarily pleased we’ve been joined by BruceMcF as a commenter since he seems to understand cycle racing much better than I do.  Here’s his explanation of double jerseys for the competition outside the maillot jaune General Classification/Overall lowest time-

Phillipe Gilbert wears the Green Jersey tomorrow ~ it was his today, but if you hold two or three, you wear the highest ranking, so Evans, second in the GC (Yellow) and Points (Green) competition wore the Green Jersey.

That mostly happens in the first week ~ by the time they hit the mountains, the Green Jersey contenders will be half an hour behind on the GC (Yellow) competition, and the serious King of the Mountain (polka dot) contenders will deliberately dump time so they will be allowed to get away on a breakaway through a big mountain stage.

The main “double jersey” situation in the second and third weeks is if a Young Rider (White) holds yellow, since white jersey is counted on time just like the yellow jersey.

Coverage starts at 8 am on Vs.  

Jul 03 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Syria troops press sweep for dissidents in northwest

AFP

1 hr 48 mins ago

The Syrian army made sweeping arrests in a crackdown on dissent in the northwest of the country on Sunday, as troops deployed in the hotbed central city of Hama, an activist said.

The move came as some 100 independent figures met in the capital to discuss a “third way” for Syria, which has been rocked by deadly anti-regime protests for three months.

Troops backed by 97 tanks and personnel carriers advanced late Saturday on Kfar Rumma village and made arrests in the district of Jabal al-Zawiyah, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

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