Pryor Oklahoma August 2008 Part I

Workout notes Prior to leaving Peoria, I did a warm, slow 4.1 mile run (42-43 minutes?); you could hardly call it a run. I was sweating buckets when I finished and my right leg (behind the knee) ached a bit. It doesn’t like this humid weather.

On the way down we stopped by Ruby Tuesday’s in Joplin, MO, and the waiter was a college XC runner from Missouri Southern. He also told some interesting stories of his XC races (breaking a fibula during a XC 10 k).

We got to chat about running a bit; his name is Dustin Dixon.

The conversation started over his remarking on my Austin 30K shirt.

On the trip, my daughter and I talked and talked and talked…about everything it seemed.

Other chit-chat
The Fail Blog has a funny “Rule Enforcement Fail” post.

see more pwn and owned pictures

Barack Obama and NASA: he seems to be coming around.

The Orlando Sentinel (which clearly has a dog in this fight) is reporting that Obama is backing off of plans to cut NASA’s budget. The article is somewhat brief on details, but it seems clear that Obama is now willing to continue shuttle flights until 2010 and to continue the Constellation program (which he was originally going to freeze for 5 years to save money for education).

I’m all for more money for education, but one just can’t stop and restart projects that require major intellectual infrastructure. [...]

o, it sounds like he’s climbing the NASA learning curve, which can only be seen as good news. He may still ask for changes in NASA’s priorities, but he’s clearly becoming educated on what’s actually feasible. I’m not arguing that NASA necessarily should continue Constellation (since many space-related scientists would love NASA to tilt more towards becoming the NSF in space), but that in previous incarnations of Obama’s space policy, he was clearly talking as someone who didn’t have a detailed understanding of how NASA’s ~17 billion dollar enterprise operates. Now, he does.

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