Frank Robbins: "Cross-Trainer Season"

Every year around this time, when the days get longer and the weather gets warmer, more and more people get on their bikes and ride around New York. Of them, there is a special subset who try to race me, they are the cross-trainters. The cross-trainers are the guys who have spent the winter in gyms lifting weights, running in place and sweating their asses off racing one another in spinning classes...

They usually have enourmous arms, great tans and expensive bikes. One of these guys will see me in traffic, they'll chase me with a huge burst of energy sprint and will whizz past me. Then I'll follow them for about a block just to see if they have any technique whatsoever. Then I'll pass them.

It's true, biking in the city isn't just about brawn. Yes, you need to be in decent shape and the practice is a good form of physical conditioning, but it's more than that. It's a kenesthetic exercise which requires tracking an environment with thousands of moving parts, and being able to maintain situational awareness while making quick calculations and decisions.

It requires reflexes, intelligence, experience, and more. It is a kind of seeing, a real gestalt.

The Grey Lady Gets it Right:

One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate.

Another issue aside from the "extortion problem" is that the Telcos want to sell their own rich-media services, and using the massively developed and adopted infrastructure known as "internet" makes that really easy. Except it only works (at a profit) if they're allowed to make their service some kind of special gated community, which means breaking network neutrality.

The new telco conglomorates and cable services see a future where you're "data services" include HDTV on-demand, traditional "internet", and e-commerce all through some AOL or Prodigy-like vertical silo. Which would be suxxomatic.

Action items here.

The Grey Lady Gets it Right:

One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate.

Another issue aside from the "extortion problem" is that the Telcos want to sell their own rich-media services, and using the massively developed and adopted infrastructure known as "internet" makes that really easy. Except it only works (at a profit) if they're allowed to make their service some kind of special gated community, which means breaking network neutrality.

The new telco conglomorates and cable services see a future where you're "data services" include HDTV on-demand, traditional "internet", and e-commerce all through some AOL or Prodigy-like vertical silo. Which would be suxxomatic.

Action items here.

The Girth TXTs in from Minneapolis, MN: Elissa Fountain is married.

Drupal 4.7 is released. Quoth Dries:

2005 has been explosive for the Drupal community. Drupal.org usage has almost tripled in terms of page views, downloads, and number of users, and with the release of Drupal 4.7.0 we are seeing this new found energy drive the platform development forward at an amazing pace. There have been over 338 contributors to this latest release with over 1500 patches which is almost triple our previous record with Drupal 4.6 of 523 commits by 50 developers. These new contributions are seen in the major usability improvements, new Drupal core functionality, and expansion of the Drupal development framework that will afford themers and contributing developers even greater flexibility and power.

I've been playing with the beta code (and deploying it for clients) for several months, but anyone still languishing in 4.6-land should wake up and smell the AJAX. 4.7 has some great new tools for coders too, like the Form API, which is a mind-expander, but ultimately a huge improvement.

The most exciting thing though is watching the project and the community take off. No forks (except, of course Drupus). No serious infighting. People turning pro without selling out... The hits just keep coming.

In case you didn't hear, Stephen Colbert did an awesome job at the White House Press Correspondents Club dinner over the weekend. Like something straight out of Shakespeare, we have a jester as the only one who can tell certain truths. The audience was a bit cold, but his performance was totally hot.

See the video and show some love:
http://www.thankyoustephencolbert.org

A wrap of the trial of a 23-year-old kid in Lodi, California. Kinda creeps me out:

The government had no direct evidence. The confession was vague and even contradictory. And the statements about attacking American targets came only after heavy prompting from FBI interrogators.

But what the three federal prosecutors could — and did — show convincingly was that 23-year-old Hamid Hayat of Lodi, Calif., espoused strong anti-American sentiments, supported militant Muslim political parties in Pakistan and had a romantic attachment to the idea of jihad.

In his closing comments to the jury, Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert Tice-Raskin summed it up: "Hamid Hayat had a jihadi heart and a jihadi mind."

That's what sold this kid out, possibly for 39 years in prison. There's no evidence he was going to do anything or had any plans or real connections. But that apparently doesn't matter now:

But McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said in an interview Friday that the case against Hayat was short on the standard elements of proof because the crime had not yet happened.

"In the post-9/11 context," Scott said, "law enforcement has been given a mission by the president and the attorney general to prevent deadly acts before they occur. That is the new paradigm for law enforcement."

That's fucking awesome. Have you seen Minority Report? Dude, this is totally going to work out.

New in the torrentfeed, the latest episode of Big Love and a DVD-quality copy of Flight 93 (which I have not yet gotten up the gumption to watch).

New in the torrentfeed, the latest episode of Big Love and a DVD-quality copy of Flight 93 (which I have not yet gotten up the gumption to watch).

I'm fleeing Brooklyn for the summer, and the little corner of Park Slope that I just painted yellow and call "home" is up for grabs. It's 2 blocks from the 7th Ave F train, 1 block from Prospect park, and it's already got everything you need to live: a bed, some bookshelves, and little nightstand and lights and stuff.

Really, it's quite nice. If you know anyone who's sane and looking for a furnished summer sublect (available June 1st - September, or some subsection thereof), in the $750 price range, let me know. It would be good to "keep it in the family," in case I want to come back.

On the other hand, if you just want to move in and take over my shit, you could probably do that too. Posessions are fleeting.