STUFFE

TOUR PODCASTS
The Velocast has gone daily for the duration of the tour - these are snappy little 15 minute or so 'casts reviewing the action of the day's stage, and are well worth a listen.

Also worthy of note is the latest Cyclingnews podcast, in which tour veteran (20 years!) Gary Imlach is interviewed. There are fantastic anecdotes and stories of the coverage and tour in this, and I highly recommend it.

NICE RACK
Bike Commuters reviews the Planet Bike K.O.K.O. rack - which looks nicely designed and well thought out - I particularly like the angled pannier supports, which taper in towards the seatpost from the rear. I'm not sure whether this serves a useful purpose, but it looks cool. More practically, the the rack struts will keep your panniers out of the wheel, and the light plate will come in handy for winter rides (Although I wish more manufacturers would drill these to allow the mounting of a couple of lights).

COMICS
Phil Plait looks at the work of Daryl Cunningham, who has a couple of interesting comics on his site examining Homeopathy, and the Anti-Vaccination movement. Well worth reading.

Less seriously, Nedroid.com looks at firework safety, through the medium of Reginald.

ASTEROIDS
Also from Phil Plait is a piece on Japan's Hayabusa mission, the first space flight to land successfully on an asteroid, and return to earth after doing so, an astonishing achievement, even without the trouble that plagued the mission.

MAD FIBER
Cozy Beehive has an excellent round up of links in his "Cycling Shorts" piece (see what he did there). It's very much better than this, (but includes fewer comics, so TAKE THAT, Mr. Bee). It includes, and expands on some of the misgivings I have about crabon myself, talking particularly about wheels.

THE MOST IMMORAL SPORT IN THE WORLD?
Sports Scientists have an opinion piece on this. His argument is that soccer lacks the redeeming aspects even of comprehensively tarnished sports like our own much beloved pro-cycling.

URBAN SKETCHERS
As interesting as ever, Urban Sketchers has a feature on Sports Illustrated artist Robert Weaver here. The link in the article takes you to a slideshow of Weaver's sketches. The pictures of the baseball players reminds me of the advice to "draw clear, not clean".

LE TOUR
Geraint Thomas is featured in Cycling News, sporting his new British National Champion's jersey. It looks great, and kudos to him and Sky for not doing anything wacky, or, for want of a better word, "Pippo" with it. Thomas has had a couple of good rides in his Tour debut so far, and deserves a hearty "chapeau".

Also from the Tour is the news that Mark Cavendish has been jeered by fans in Team Sky kit;

They yelled repeatedly, "Cavendish, you suck! Go home!"

With the reported arrival of the World Cup's Vuvuzelas at the Dutch stages of Le Tour, it appears some of the football fans' much admired attitude and "wit" has arrived too.

Bike Hugger, or David at Bike Hugger at least, is disillusioned with the tour. Whilst I appreciate that there are differences in the coverage between Eurosport & ITV4 here, and the seemingly very Armstrong centric Versus, I think his second point, about the doping coverage rings slightly less true with me. Although it's felt this way before (2008, anyone?) we do seem to be at something of a turning point towards a cleaner sport now. The fallout won't be pleasant, but it's fairly apparent that we can't continue looking the other way much longer.

SPACESUIT OF THE WEEK

Hunter Freeman is a photographer living and working in San Francisco. In an ongoing personal project, Freeman photographs astronauts exploring very pedestrian environments while fully dressed in Apollo Space Suits.

This, on Kitsune Noir is BRILLIANT.

MOVES
Pavé blog is now at http://www.pavepavepave.com/ , so update your bookmarks accordingly. (Oddly, feedly won't let me add the new site as a feed, must see if I can fix that that).

LOST
Lastly, Flowing Data brings us the Geography of Lost. Still no word on why I keep watching it though, sadly.