blog.mignault.net

Womens’ VeloNews

About WCM:

Womens Cycling Magazine… its about time! Coming this spring taking subscriptions now.

The header on the subscription page includes “Lifestyle + Commuting + Repair + City Spotlight”, but so far the blog at least has been nothing but all racer girl all the time. Admittedly, they only launched the blog on March 22, and I figured eventually they’d start talking about something other than asking women racers dumb questions and pasting in race results from spreadsheets. Nope. It’s Bicycling 10 years ago. I showed it to L, my bike commuting wife, who said “Yuck.” Disappointing.

Update: for contrast, see That’s How I Roll, from the BUST blog:

Best of all, there are more female riders than ever. If you’re like me, though, you’re not a spandex-wearing type of lady. Luckily, the cycle chic movement has finally hit the United States…The Europeans have known what’s up for a long time, but here in the U.S., cycling is finally developing a following– and some fashion sense– outside the realm of athletics. Cycle chic even has its own Wikipedia page, defining it as ‘the culture of cycling in fashionable clothes…cycling is an everyday transport choice and many cyclists choose to wear their regular clothes, as opposed to outfits generally associated with cycle sport, such as bicycle shorts, gloves and shoes.’

“But you can’t seriously believe that. Can you?”

The Gay Fixation – Damon Linker:

OK, Rod — good for you and your socially conservative friends. But then what explains your fixation on the threat posed by the normalization of homosexuality? Why, given the myriad ways that our society and culture diverge from the long list of archaic norms, practices, and beliefs upheld in the Bible, does homosexuality inspire such anxiety, even panic? What are you afraid of? Is it that you fear that if orthodox religious communities stop denouncing gay marriage (to the faces of married gays, which seems to be what you’d like them to do) the human race will stop reproducing itself? Or is it that you worry that if your children aren’t taught in church that homosexuality is an abomination they’ll shack up with same-sex partners when they grow up? But isn’t the decision to do something like that far more a product of nature than culture? I don’t know about you, but no amount of pro-gay propaganda could tempt me to sleep with a man — because I’m by nature sexually attracted to women. Some of what you write about homosexuality leads me to believe you worry that naturally straight men and women will be seduced into being gay by watching too many episodes of Project Runway. But you can’t seriously believe that. Can you?

I’ve never seen a good answer to this question. Who the hell would go through half the crap that gay men and women routinely suffer unless they really were gay? You cannot make the gay straight nor the straight gay, at least not without causing either serious psychological damage.Read the whole article, it’s quite good.

YABR (Yet Another BBEdit Rant)

TidBITS Home Macs: Ten Surprising Uses of BBEdit:

There are undoubtedly other ways to do any or all of these things; all I’m reporting here is that I’ve noticed myself reaching for BBEdit to do them, even though, as I say, BBEdit isn’t my choice for editing text. At $125, BBEdit is pricey for just these tasks, and I’m not recommending a purchase for these reasons alone.

It’s damn pricey for any tasks, seeing as how pretty much all its “features” have been in Emacs for probably at least the last 5 years. Yet year after year, the BBEdit lists are full of ‘OMG the keywords are GREEN! BareBones iz Teh Brilliantest!’ As far as I’m concerned, Aquamacs makes BBEdit even less attractive. Given the ridiculous prices for even minor upgrades and its Dark Ages level of programmability (good luck waiting for that Processing Codeless Language Mode, I mean syntax coloring) BBEdit more and more looks mainly like the clueless Mac fanboy’s choice.

Molecular mixology

Shaken and Stirred – Creating an Irish Whiskey Cocktail, With a Twist – NYTimes.com:

Remind me not to take the Times seriously anymore. After this quite sensible advice:

YOU will be tempted, on Tuesday, to drink something green. Resist it.
I’m not referring, by the way, to the green-dyed light beer that will be flowing on St. Patrick’s Day like water from a broken fire hydrant. If you’re tempted by that, I won’t stop you: Erin go Bro, and godspeed.

No, what I’m talking about is the cocktail equivalents of green beer, all the “obligatory Midori and crème de menthe drinks,” as Anthony Malone, the Dublin-born general manager and bartender at Puck Fair, an Irish bar on Lafayette Street near Houston, put it. “All those awful green things,” he said, such as the Everybody’s Irish, a drink that calls for Irish whiskey, crème de menthe, Chartreuse and a green olive. Everybody’s Irish? Everybody’s gagging.

We get this utterly sickening bilge:

Earlier this year, he issued a curious challenge to a select group of bartenders in New York, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. He asked them to create cocktails based upon the traditional Irish breakfast — eggs, bacon, black and white pudding, and toast. And Bushmills, of course, though Mr. Egan hesitated to cite his product as a breakfast staple. “More like brunch,” he demurred.

Here in New York, Jim Meehan of PDT responded with a drink in which bacon-infused Bushmills is combined with maple syrup, orange and lemon juice and a whole egg.

The entry from Eben Freeman, at Tailor, was more baroque: bacon-infused Bushmills, again, adorned with roasted tomato gelée squares, a slow-poached quail egg yolk, an Irish breakfast-tea foam and crispy black-pudding bits.

Shite and onions, as John Joyce would say. If you’re going to have whiskey for breakfast, leave off the garnishes.

Reading Our Own Dogfood

In Tough Economic Times, New Jersey Libraries Are Flourishing – NYTimes.com:

Jude Schanzer, the director of programming at the East Meadow Public Library, on Long Island, tells the story of a middle-class woman in her 50s who dropped in late last year after work and applied for a library card. She confided to a librarian that it was the first library card she had possessed since childhood.

“Now I don’t have to buy my books,” she told Ms. Schanzer. “This is how I’m cutting back.””

We read a lot of contemporary fiction in our house, my wife and son in particular – and when the economy first started going south, we started using the Westchester consortium. We had been a buying a lot of books that were read once and then never touched again. Now if only the catalog wasn’t so damn AWFUL.

The hen dies in the first half-hour.

Disney Eggs: They’re Eggs. By Disney.:

We have rarely been as confused or disturbed by anything in our lives as we are by the new “Disney Eggs,” which we discovered via a commercial break during the fourth hour of Today.

As you see, it’s eggs. With Disney characters stamped on the shells. Possibly selling at a markup. Is this some kind of tie-in to a movie, or further proof of the evils of agribusiness and the coming apocalypse?

Help.

Or a fruit basket

Bailed-out Wells Fargo plans lavish corporate getaway to Vegas.:

“Recognition events are still part of our culture,” spokeswoman Melissa Murray said. “It’s really important that our team members are still valued and recognized.”

Give them a fucking plaque.

(Via Think Progress.)

No silver bullet 2.0

Big Contrarian → Lies, damn lies, and the CMS.:

Beware the off-the-shelf system.

Amen. If I learned anything in my 10 years as a in-the-trenches corporate developer, it was that there is no such thing as an off-the-shelf system. Either budget to suck it up, spend the dough, and build it yourself or budget to spend a lot of time (and money) customizing, tweaking, and getting frustrated.

There is a heppy land

A Heppy Site:

Craig Arf has launched georgeherriman.com, dedicated to all things Krazy Kat. It’s got all sorts of great stuff like the biography pictured above. I have been buying all the Fantagraphics reissues as they come out, and I know I’ll be spending a lot of time exploring this site. Li’l ainjil.

(Via The Ephemerist.)

And brush your teeth

The Blog That Goes Ping » Helpful Advice From A Benevolent Guru:

In the comments to this blog post by Sten K Anderson, which addresses this phenomenon from another perspective (with respect to Joel Spolsky, who’s another Paul Grahamy type), a commenter named Chris Williams says: 

“You will look back at what you’ve written in ten years and laugh at your naivety. Stop worrying so much about what other people might think, they’re all faking it anyway – even your ‘heroes’. Also, check your spelling.”

That might be the best guru advice you can possibly get.”

What he said, especially about Kricfalusi-as-guru, though John K has really interesting and excellent taste in cartoons and comics. At least he did when I read it for awhile.