mostly palaver

Going Home

Posting will continue here.  I've combined all of the prior postings into one place, trying to get these over there as well (if anyone has any ideas...).

The Flip

OK, I finally came around and bought a Flip video camera after getting to play around with one for a couple of days during a trip to DC.  So far, I like it a lot. 

It's insanely easy to use, quick to start up, and small.  Three good features that pretty much ensure that it will always be in a bag or pocket, ready to go.  In addition, although I've never been much of a video person, the Flip is different, it's like taking talking pictures, or stills, with context.  Maybe it's the form-factor, but I find it easy to take the Flip out of my pocket and grab a quick 45 second shot of what we are doing.  I never did that with the video camera. It's a picture-taking vs. a video taking mentality and it's good.

My only complaint is that is sucks in low-light situations, but we can't have everything, can we? 

So, it's Biden

Can't really say I'm surprised.  Think it's a good choice, certainly one of the better of the names I'd heard batted around for a while.  Biden does a few key things for Obama, the primary one right now is that he is the guy who is going to go out there and aggressively push against McCain.  Biden single-handedly ended the Guiliani campaign and wasn't even in that race. 

What's going to be funny to watch is how quickly all us Democrats start to explain away his bankruptcy bill vote. 

Phelps news

Well, sort of:

Fourteen-time Olympic gold medalist and SeaWorld main attraction Michael Phelps returned to his seven-million-gallon water tank Wednesday to resume his normal schedule of performing in six shows a day for marine park crowds every day of the week.

Phelps, the 6'4", 200-pound aquatic mammal, and the first ever SeaWorld swimmer to be raised in captivity by foster swimmers (Mark Spitz and Dara Torres), was recaptured by trainer Bob Bowman in a hoop net baited with an entire Dutch apple pie following Phelps' final Olympic event last Sunday. Phelps was then tethered to the rudder of a container ship bound for St. Petersburg, guided down local waterways, and introduced back into his home habitat, the tank in SeaWorld's 5,500 seat stadium, known to park officials and visitors alike as "Phelps' Happy Harbor."

...

Beginning with the 1985's "Baby Michael Celebration," Phelps has entertained SeaWorld audiences for over 20 years. Spectators are not only enthralled with Phelps' exploits in the water, but his abnormally large torso, unusually small lower body, double-jointed ankles, gargantuan eating habits, the slurring, almost human methods of vocalization he uses to communicate, and his odd-looking goggle-covered face, all of which combine to make him the most unusual sight in all of Florida.

Gaffe of the election?

This one should hurt McCain badly.  Whether is does is another question.

John McCain said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you."

It's an amazing thing to say, worse than Bush Sr. "not knowing" how a grocery scanner works, worse than inventing the internet, worse than windsurfing.  Sure everyone aspires to be rich, but I'm certainly not sure that Americans want to be led by someone so rich that they can't keep track of their real estate portfolio.  The Democrats should make sure that this gets blown up, bigtime.

Cycling Hilarity

Locking-your-bike-up tips, from Bike Snob NYC:

You bring it inside with you. Sure, sometimes businesses treat bicycles like wet dogs, but you'd be surprised to find how often you can just walk in with your bike. This is especially true of bars, and it's particularly true of the kinds of seedy dive bars young urban riders are pioneering these days. These are the kinds of bars where, until recently, the bartender wouldn't flinch if you walked in with a 7'10" heroin-addicted transsexual, so what makes you think they care about your lime green fixie? And if someone does give you a problem, you can always throw a trenchcoat over it and pretend it's a person. "That'll be a PBR for me, and a shot of ProLink for my bony transgendered ladyfriend here."

Olympic Observation

Was watching the track and field coverage last night and something seemed odd to me, the pictures seemed... off somehow.  It took me a while but I figured out what it was - I believe they are filming the Olympics in digital and, as a result, everything is in focus - runners in the foreground, audience in the background, everything.  It made it feel green-screened to me, artificial, constructed. 

Not sure what it means, but it did feel less "real".

Joe made it easy

I've been arguing for a while that Joe Lieberman should be stripped of his committee chairs regardless of the Dem count in the Senate next year.  Thismakes it a no-brainer:

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, one of Senator John McCain’s closest confidants and a frequent companion of his on the campaign trail, has earned a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention, according to a G.O.P. official.

So long Joe.  It'll be interesting if the media still finds him as important once he becomes a Republican.  I don't think they will. Enjoy your anonymity and good luck with the re-election fight in 2012.  Perhaps retiring to Florida will be the order of the day?

Oh, and there was no way that McCain would pick him to be his VP, the speaking slot confirms it. But I'd be willing to bet that Joe would get a cabinet slot somewhere, Defense Secretary perhaps?  Joe is betting his entire political future on a McCain victory.  We'll see.

Phelps

What he's done is amazing and it was fun to watch.  I have 2 questions:

1. Will he return in 2012? I'd bet not - what else is there to do when anything less than 8 golds and 7 WR's would be a letdown?
2. Will he make millions in sponsorships? Again, I'd bet not. He's going to make money, that's for sure, but I don't see him as the global superstar I've heard some predicting. I'm thinking Mary Lou Retton, not Michael Jordan.

Which, I guess, leads to question #3, why don't Olympic champions make better livings off of sponsorships (those, unlike Kobe, without a professional sport to fall back on)?  Not enough time in the public eye?  Wrong sport? 

Thoughts on Phelps and the Olympics in general?

Easing back in

Back from vacation, instead of hitting on some of the many things that happened while I was away, I'll provide a study on excuses from my favorite bike blog, Bike Snob NYC, quoting Cadel Evans:

"With everything that's gone on in the last three months - I had tendonitis, a huge crash in the Tour de France, defending the yellow (jersey) with only one leg and breaking my anterior cruciate ligament - I was on crutches for three or four days after the Tour," he said.

Indeed, the dog days of summer have driven Cadel Evans, the John Coltrane of excuses, to finally take his excuse-making into the "sheets of sound" phase. It's one thing to blame injuries, but to flat out claim you only had one leg in the Tour de France (yes, I know he's being metaphorical, but I prefer to read it literally) is a statement bold and surreal enough to qualify as art. As time goes on, I hope Cadel adds to his exquisitely-wrought excuse canon. Perhaps he can also say he didn't have a bike, and that he was blind. Maybe he could also tell a tale of how a Succubus came to him in the night and stole his spirit, and how he was forced to waste an entire rest day journeying to the Carpathian mountains in order to retreive it.