© Casey Gibson

With all the recent doping news these past few days, I am sure we will be seeing a few signs like this for the next 3 weeks.

What? Last year he won his first stage and this year after the first stage he is in the maille jaune? Way to go George! Now you get to learn about keeping it and the pressure that goes with it. I beleive he has a good friend whom he can talk to about these pressures.

From his post race interview

I was very disappointed to lose yesterday by such a small margin. I couldn’t sleep last night because I was thinking of everything that I could have done to improve on my time.
To get the yellow jersey today today is a great honour and I’m really pleased with that it all came together.
With the breakaway gone, we didn’t think about chasing time bonuses. I knew that, coming into the finish, the sprinters teams would be in control and saving themselves for the final sprint so I thought, ‘Why not try?’ And it was a good decision (to chase the time bonuses at the intermediate sprint with nine kilometers to go).
I knew I was less than a second behind in the general classification and to get two seconds was all I needed.
I started off the tour in great shape and I’ve never has the opportunity to lead a team. I don’t know what to expect but I know that anything is possible, there’s not reason to set limits. I don’t know how I’ll respond but I’ll just hope for the best.

© Graham Watson

Although Thor Hushovd's injury looked bad, current news stories are now say it is not that bad. As a result of his injuries the PMU cardboard hands are now ging to be banned in the last 2 kilometers of the race.

That is unfortunently one stain that may not come out of the maille jaune, so sad.

Be sure to check out GrahamWatson.com for his photos from Le Tour.

Breaking Away - Early on, Floyd Landis Learned the Last Shall Be First. Then Came the Tour de France. - Washington Post

Hincapie relished time in yellow - VeloNews

Big George in Yellow. An interesting thread on the BBC message board about George. There are some rather opinionated people posting there

The UCI responce to Dick Pound and Jean-Francois Lamour comments from this weekend.

© Casey Gibson

Someone offers one of the PMU green hans to Hushovd prior to stage 2. Thor has said he was actually cut by a camera.

Came across this rather humorous string about how Ekimov must be a of the undead.

Here are a couple artilces on the net neutrality issue:

Molly says: The Net needs new laws - "Molly Wood from Buzz Out Loud has finally set aside her misgivings about overregulation of the Internet. She now believes that we must have legislation to protect the open and equal nature of the Net, or the Net must be regulated as a utility, just like the highways and the water pipes--and we must have one or the other right away. Otherwise, she says, the telcos and the cable companies pushing for a tiered Internet will cheerfully turn it into a lopsided disaster filled with perfectly accessible content created by those very same telcos and cable companies."

Dvorak Online: Net Neutrality Has a Spokesperson - "What exactly is Net neutrality? Dvorak explains that there needs to be legislation to make Internet providers, such as SBC and Comcast, neutral in how they provide service. Senator Ted Stevens (R—Alaska) appears to be the front man for the telecom companies regarding Net neutrality. But is he the right man for the job?"

An expert panel convened by the BBC concludes that climate change is "real and severe", but maybe not "catastrophic".

~ Update ~

Here are a couple of related articles on Newsweek:

The President: Shades of Green - George W. Bush thinks of himself as a conservationist, but activists call his policies destructive to the environment.
Going Green - With windmills, low-energy homes, new forms of recycling and fuel-efficient cars, Americans are taking conservation into their own hands.

Check out PezCycling's look at this years TT bikes.

There is a new Circumventor site at:
http://www.ChemistryNerds.com/
(Note that unlike some other recent ones, this URL begins with 'http' not 'https'.)

This one *does* load images. They're hoping they've secured enough bandwidth to get it to work.

As always, if you find that these sites are too slow or are getting blocked too quickly, you can go to http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/simple-circumventor-instructions.html for steps to set up your own Circumventor site on your own home computer. If you are in a country where all Internet access is censored, you can send that URL to a friend outside the country and ask them to set up a Circumventor for you.

From the NYTimes

Come One, Come All, Join the Terror Target List

It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.”

But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child’s play: all these “unusual or out-of-place” sites “whose criticality is not readily apparent” are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database.

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

Read On

From NASA News:

NASA scientists have determined that the formation of clouds is affected by the lightness or darkness of air pollution particles. This also impacts Earth's climate.

In a breakthrough study published today in the online edition of Science, scientists explain why aerosols -- tiny particles suspended in air pollution and smoke -- sometimes stop clouds from forming and in other cases increase cloud cover. Clouds not only deliver water around the globe, they also help regulate how much of the sun's warmth the planet holds. The capacity of air pollution to absorb energy from the sun is the key.

Read More

Go check out this eye / brain trick. Strange stuff. http://youtube.com/watch?v=H-88wVw-1cU

© Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant - 06.29.2006 

"I should have planned ahead for a ride."
Pete Coors, head of Coors Brewing Co. and a former GOP Senate candidate, cited for drunk driving.

Floyd 'I had a very bad day on the wrong day' Landis was not the only person to have a tough day today in the Tour de France, this from VeloNews:

More than half the peloton is totally fatigued. That was confirmed on Wednesday's epic stage up the Galibier, Télégraphe, Glandon, Croix-de-Fer and Mollard passes before the death march to the 5595-foot summit of La Toussuire. If the normal time cut of 12 percent had been applied, only 67 riders would be left in the race. The other 80 finishers were outside the 40:20 time limit, so the race officials again used a little-known UCI rule to increase the time cut by 2 percent to 47:03.

Armstrong saddened by Landis's disastrous ride

From VeloNews:

In one of the most audacious and bravest rides seen in the modern era of the Tour de France, Phonak's American rider Floyd Landis turned the despair of his stage 16 implosion into a stage-winning breakaway that put him back into the role of favorite to win this extraordinary race.

Landis stunned Tour de France observers when he lost more than 10 minutes on the slopes to La Toussuire on Wednesday; but they were floored by his performance in Thursday's 200.5km stage from St. Jean de Maurienne to Morzine, the last day in the Alps.

It was an attack that stemmed from a quiet beer Landis shared with team manager John Lelangue on Wednesday night, when the pair resolved that the Tour was "not over." Landis, still glowing with a winner's look, even joked about that beer during his post-race press conference

Asked about his constant calls for extra water during Thursday's stage, run in searing conditions, he said, "It was very hot. Maybe that was the explanation or maybe it was the beer I had last night."

Read On

I can't wait to catch the time trial on Saturday. It could be a very interesting one to watch.

And as Ben Franklin said: Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.  

~ ~ ~ ~

Friday's Foaming Rant: Beer me, Floyd - an excellent report filed by Patrick O’Grady, VeloNews editor at large, asking the question we all want answered; what kind of beer did Floyd have on Wednesday evening?

As Linky and Dinky say "This Hooters chick will be world famous by this time next week.".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmqD1oRzzzc