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Monday, May 11, 2009 07:31 PM >>>


Sunday,  05/10/09  10:41 PM

I hope you had a nice weekend?  I did, a pretty unproductive weekend, but I caught up on sleep, finished Angels & Demons, started Pattern Recognition, discovered Cuco, a Spanish Yecla, and spent quality time with my family and my pool.  Doesn't get too much better than that, except my todo list isn't any shorter and I know I will pay for my sins of omission tomorrow...

Did I mention?  Alexis successfully passed her driving test and is now in proud possession of a learner's permit.  Oh no!  How exciting for her, and, um, how exciting for me, too...  If you live in Ventura County and see a blue Volvo station wagon, you have been warned :) 

So about that bailout...  Bankruptcy 'inevitable' for GM, experts predict.  The non-expert experts at TTAC have been predicting that for about three years.  Note to all: they are not victims of a bad economy, that was just the last straw.  Between their union relationships, their pension funds, and their inability to make cars people want this writing has been on the wall for a long time... 

If you think the government is immune from the same fate, check out the recent terrible treasury action.  "There are two critical consequences to the economy stabilizing. The first is that the massive liquidity injected into credit markets by the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world transforms from economic medicine to inflationary heroin.  The second dangerous consequence is that President Obama is on course to double the national debt in just four years."  Oh goody, inflation. 

Good news: US Dept of Energy kills hydrogen vehicle program.  Now we won't be wasting time and money on that dumb idea...  let's concentrate on electric cars and nuclear power, okay?  Actually, I don't think the US government should spend any money on this at all, private industry should make the investments.  That way the economics will be sound. 

The Giro d'Italia is under way, the three week Tour of Italy bike race...  favorites for the overall include Levi Leipheiper ably assisted by super-domestique Lance Armstrong...  interestingly, Alessandro Petacchi edged Mark Cavendish in the sprint finale to stage 2; wow, I didn't think anyone beat Cavendish in a sprint anymore.  Cavendish remains first overall for the moment, but when they start climbing that will change. 

This is pretty cool: hilarious ad about dirty money...  nicely done. 

This has to be the dumbest idea of all time, amid heavy competition: Twitshirt prints tee-shirts with tweets you like on them.  The next time you see a tweet which is worth printing on a shirt, let me know.  I haven't even see any worth putting in a blog post; every time a blogger tries that, it flops miserably.  Maybe I should tweet about this?  And maybe you would print it on a shirt? :) 

Fibonacci spiralThe Fibonacci Sequence illustrated by nature.  Very cool...  a must-click-through...  1..1..2..3..5..8..13.. 

And this seems to be related, the Andromeda Galaxy, a rather extended sequence over 100,000 light years in diameter...

(click through to enlarge) 

Hope your week spirals in the right direction!