I, TOO, SING AMERICA

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

  — Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967), African-American poet, novelist and playwright.

Shimano Shuns Cables for Full Electronic Shifting

Japanese parts manufacturer Shimano is launching an electronic shifting system for high-end road bikes that it claims will vastly improve performance and reduce maintenance. By replacing the conventional levers that pull wound-steel cables through protective housings with solid-state switches and rubber-coated wires, there’s no chance for road gunk to clog things up and interfere with shifting, or, for that matter, your post-ride beer.

The principle of an electronically controlled drive train is to execute perfect shifts every time, thus “reducing mental overhead,” in the words of Shimano marketing manager Devin Walton. This is a resource cyclists find in short supply during epic rides.

Thursday’s announcement that the system, called Di2, will hit shops in January 2009 settles a question first raised in 2005 when prototypes began cropping up on the bikes of select Shimano-sponsored racers in the pro peloton. The system’s development has been photographed, chronicled and Angsted over ever since.

When it makes the pages of Wired, you know it’s going to be huge amongst all the techies on bikes in Silicon Valley … pretty much guaranteeing that at least from a sales perspective, the new group is going to be a success.

Is this the “more cowbell” of the cycling world?

While Hillary Clinton crows about her victory in an essentially uncontested primary in West Virginia, better news for the Party comes out of a Republican stronghold in Mississippi.

Dem beats Republican in a race that may predict November - CNN.com

(CNN) — Based on early returns, CNN projects that Democrat Travis Childers defeated Republican Greg Davis in a Tuesday special election for an open congressional seat in northern Mississippi.

For Democrats, the decisive victory by Childers is the latest in a series of special-election wins for the party and provides a strong tailwind heading into the November elections. Republicans had held the seat since 1994.

For Republicans, Davis’ defeat is viewed as a possible preview for a widespread GOP thrashing in November, and it shows that trying to link local Democrats in conservative districts to Sen. Barack Obama and his former pastor was not a winning strategy.

It’s going to take a miracle for Clinton to wrest the nomination from Obama; and her continued fight is only doing more damage to the party.

In West Virginia, about half of the voters for each Democratic candidate indicated they would be voting for John McCain if the other candidate won the Party nomination. So, Hillary, crow all you want about the win in West Virginia; but know that you are jeopardizing the Democratic Party in the process.

Even if Hillary Clinton wins all of the remaining races by a 65/35 margin and takes 2/3 of the remaining super delegates, she still doesn’t capture the nomination … Obama would still capture enough delegates to win the nomination by almost 20 votes over the required 2,025 … and Hillary won’t beat Obama by 30-point margins in all the remaining contests. She’s just postponing the inevitable, and damaging the Party in the process.

In the interim, we can at least celebrate the fact that another Republican is out of Congress, and another Democrat is in … and hope that THIS is the attitude that carries to November, rather than the angst and anger that’s pervasive at the national level as the nomination fight keeps drawn out longer and longer.

DREAM BOOGIE

Good morning, daddy!
Ain’t you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?

Listen closely:
You’ll hear their feet
Beating out and beating out a —

You think
It’s a happy beat?

Listen to it closely:
Ain’t you heard
something underneath
like a —

What did I say?

Sure,
I’m happy!
Take it away!

Hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!

Y-e-a-h!

  — Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967), African-American poet, novelist and playwright.