Les Essarts to Les Essarts (14 miles)

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Some exciting eh?

Actually I missed the significant part live, but it is clear that people have a hard time keeping their wheels underneath them on the slippery cobbles of that sunken road even when parading and not racing.

Other than that not much of note until the crash at 5.8 miles out which had the effect of spliting the Peloton with Contador caught in the wrong part of it.  The second crash a mere 1.5 miles before the finish under Le Tour’s Turn Left Racing rules was of no consequence since all the riders in that group get the same time as the first finisher under the 3 km exception.

Still there’s no denying that Contador is now 82nd in the General Classification behind by about twice last year’s margin of victory and real competitors like Evans, Hushovd, and Schleck.

Today are Team Time Trials which are like Team Pursuit on a road course instead of a Velodrome.  These are the events Armstrong used to dominate to the extent that they eliminated them just to reduce his margin of victory and were it U.S. Postal and not Saxo Bank what you could expect would be a soul crushing display that didn’t just erase the time deficit, but put the championship effectively out of reach.

Can Contador do that?  I suppose we shall see.

Since the course is only slightly longer than 14 miles and elevation changes minimal most teams will be turning in sub 17 minute times so today’s action will be quick.  Because of the Armstrong induced rule changes which include the reduction of the duration of this event it’s highly unlikely tonight’s holder of the maillot jaune will not come from yesterday’s first finishing group, there’s just not enough racing to change things much.

There will be 22 teams contending today.  Saxo Bank is ranked right at the bottom, 4:58 in arrears.  Coverage starts at 8 am on Vs., 3 pm on NBC.

• Jada Yuan Previews the Hell Out of the Tour de France in the New Yorker, 7/1/11 at 2:00 PM
• Le Tour 2011 official site
• Your The Stars Hollow Gazette Le Tour coverage tags-
• Le Tour
• Le Tour 2010
• Le Tour 2011

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Medvedev restores Belarus power supplies

By Dmitry Astakhov, AFP

1 hr 5 mins ago

Passage du Gois La Barre-de-Monts to Mont des Alouettes Les Herbiers (119 miles)

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

As I mentioned  during last year’s Tour, the departure of Lance Armstrong, the United States holder of a record 7 maillot jaune will separate the jingoist fanboy wannabes from true aficionados of professional bicycle racing at its highest level.

I have to admit that I’m probably closer to a fanboy and what I don’t know about the sport is an ocean in which my drop is hardly noticeable.  It is on my list of weird sports that are wildly popular in the rest of the world and virtually ignored in the States as are Football (as opposed to Throwball), Formula One Racing, America’s Cup, Rugby, Cricket, and Curling.

Ok, so maybe Curling is not so wildly popular but it looks like it would be a hoot to play.

Equally my hands are not clean on the jingoist front though I can at least plead historic interest in the career of Greg LeMond who wore the maillot jaune on an (at the time) record 5 occasions.  Unfortunately Greg has shown himself recently the pettiest kind of jealous record holder by lending his vastly diminished credibility to the witchhunting of Lance Armstrong.

I expect that personally Lance is the arrogant jock type that it’s painful to hang around with for more than 5 seconds at a time, what I know for a fact is this- he was the most aggressively drug tested athlete in his sport, perhaps in all sports.  He never, ever tested positive.

As opposed to Alberto Contador, three time champion, twice consecutive.  On July 20th the day before the final rest day of the 2010 Tour they detected traces of blood doping in his urine and on the 21st he tested positive for clenbuterol which he blames on tainted meat.

For once I agree with Armando’s prediction (kiss of death, I know) that the likely outcome this year is another Contador victory, followed by an August hearing that strips him of his 2010 title.  Other outcomes are possible, it’s important to remember Contador only won by 39 seconds over Schleck (who lost his brother who was also his primary leadout guy to an accident in the second or third stage) and a mere 3:40 covered the top 4.

This year they’ve made some adjustments to the points.  They’ll start with a fairly long flat stage today, part of it over a bridge that is underwater at high tide.  This is intended to be a stately grand entrance, like Monster Trucks parading the Stadium before qualifying.  No racing is expected, that will happen tomorrow in the Team Time Trials.

On the other hand one of Lance’s keys to success was his Tiger Woods work ethic.  He always came to play so there could be some surprises.  Race organizers want it to be more exciting than a Prologue which are quite exciting indeed.

My Dad had the experience of visiting along the route of a race in the U.S. that featured Contador last year after Le Tour and the Peloton passed by twice.  He said it was a notable event, sucked the air right out of the street.

Coverage starts at 7 am on Vs.  Mostly nothing notable happens but there are constant repeats so I’ll try and keep track of events you might want to look for.  

• Jada Yuan Previews the Hell Out of the Tour de France in the New Yorker, 7/1/11 at 2:00 PM
• Le Tour 2011 official site
• Your The Stars Hollow Gazette Le Tour coverage tags-
• Le Tour
• Le Tour 2010
• Le Tour 2011

The reason I never get tired of talking about the how part of meta is I’m hopeful that some student will learn enough for them to continue or contribute.

I must admit the Yahoo News format change on Tuesday has proven a bit of a stumper for me.  What seems to have happened is that they removed the likely categories (Top Stories, World, U.S. News, Politics, Business, Science, etc.) and dumped all their wire service stories into a big basket, in fact making it tough to distiguish which of the 3 main services- AFP, Reuters, or AP you were sampling.

Over the last 3 days I’ve been able to assemble a collection of Bookmarks that approximately cover the last 24 hours of output.  The problem is numbers.  There are too many of them.

At 25 a page there are over 1,375 headlines to look at and while I’m not sure what the current Soapblox limit is, dk could only handle 60 or so which means I need to adjust my filters somehow so I can get the cut to 4%.  It’s harder and more time consuming to write short.

Not to mention on your computer.  Ubuntu 10.4 is keeping windows open in numbers that bring my XP system on the same hardware to it’s knees, but it does slug down and I have to concentrate.

Right now I’m finding it takes 2 – 3 hours to cover a single service by starting at 24 hours ago, clicking each promising headline into it’s own window, checking for interest and length, and shrinking it to move on to the next.  Only at the end in the last 45 minutes or so am I assembling it with cut and paste and formatting, completely different from my previous practice of picking and choosing as I went along.  By starting at the end and moving forward in time I create a stack of stories that I unload into the text in roughly chronological order.

There are certainly some other interesting organizational things I can do that may ease accessibility for you, but I’m trying to disdain them because of their time wasting qualities.  I realize my News Digests are probably the most valuable thing I write, but I feel sometimes they distract me.

So below you will find some links you can turn into bookmarks for your private amusement and I shall struggle on trying to make this a manageable task.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Rockets push back rebels south of Libyan capital

By Anis Mili, Reuters

1 hr 43 mins ago

Regular Features-

• Late Night Karaoke by mishima
• Muse in the Morning by Robyn
• Six In The Morning by mishima
• Cartnoon by ek hornbeck
• Countdown with Keith Olberman by TheMomCat

Featured Essays for June 30, 2011-

• Greece Passes Raid On Public Assets by wilberforce
• Boeing Overcharging?, Hawks Yawn! by jimstaro
• "Turtles Hit The Tarmac at JFK" by TheMomCat
• The Next Civil-Rights Movement [sic] by Robyn
• The Constitutional Game of Chicken: The Debt Ceiling & The 14th Amendment by TheMomCat

DocuDharma

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Police battle rioters as Greece adopts austerity

By Roddy Thomson, AFP

18 hrs ago

You know I’m kind of ashamed at myself for even addressing a topic so jejune and banal.  There was a time when I was an avid consumer of traditional media lies and hypocrisy and let them make me feel angry and betrayed as when Chris Matthews (and I watched every night, often 2 or 3 times) passed off the now notorious Republican shill master Frank Luntz as a neutral pollster for years and years.

I’d direct those interested in charting the decline at least as far back as Murphy Brown which thoroughly documented that the only thing of importance is the names in your Rolodex and truth an inconvenient virtue rarely found.

My family is now divided about the value of viewing.  I contend that watching at all makes you measureably stupider and they insisting that it’s at least an indicator of conventional wisdom.

What wisdom is that?  These people are constantly, consistently wrong.  They’re wrong about science and economics and politics and political science and history.  They are beyond stopped clock wrong and can’t be relied on to tell the truth even twice a day.  They have proven themselves as incapable as drowning turkeys in a thunderstorm of discerning whether someone’s pissing on their leg or if it’s really raining even with the aid of a window and a Maine Weather Stick (you put the stick outside your window, if it’s wet, it’s raining).

I wish I could work up a sense of righteous outrage at Mark Halperin but he is part and parcel of the Versailles Village system that through the sheer weight of it’s own ignorance and arrogance is moving us closer to July 14th every day.

“I like irony except I find that if you just toss your clothes in the dryer for a few minutes you hardly ever have to use it.”- ek hornbeck

“Barack Obama is a Dick!”, is the truest thing Halperin has said in years.

Regular Features-

• Late Night Karaoke by mishima
• Cartnoon by ek hornbeck
• Countdown with Keith Olberman by TheMomCat

Featured Essays for June 29, 2011-

• Health and Fitness News by TheMomCat
• Inslee Running For Washington Governor, Supports Full Marriage Equality by fake consultant
• Keeping The Door Open To Torture by TheMomCat
• MBIA by ek hornbeck
• Pet Peeves by ek hornbeck

DocuDharma

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Police search Kabul hotel after Taliban attack kills 9

By Alistair Scrutton, Reuters

58 mins ago