Josh McHugh

Oscar Pistorius can run!

Link: The Times - Oscar Pistorius wins his appeal.

Now for the sweaty part - Oscar has to cut a second off his best time.

I think he can do it.

iPhone - I hardly knew ye

During a trip with my son to the allergist's today (he's fine - no allergies, just parents who need to slather him with yak butter and Crisco more often) my iPhone fell out of my pocket and under a chair in the waiting room. At the same time, Finn was initiating an investigation the stash of chemicals beneath the waiting-room fish tank. Figuring the iPhone was the less immediate poisoning risk at that moment, I lunged for him instead.

Not sure, in retrospect, that was a good call.

Wine for corn on the cob and hot dogs

A six-minute clip from the Conan O'Brien show featuring the excellent wine tutelage of Gary Vaynerchuk, beloved of the Web 2.0 3.0 set. I recently attended a wine tasting he hosted at Six Apart, which makes this blog system. He's like that in real life, too.

My Better Nature, by Peter Singer

Just came across an essay by the ethics powerhouse Peter Singer. To read his work is to sign up for some serious soul-searching. This gem packs in ethics, evolutionary psychology, determinism, gene-hacking and (thus) transhumanism.

Link: My Better Nature, by Peter Singer.

Marx once wrote: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is, to change it." He was not thinking of genetic change, but his comment will soon apply to that area, too. Within the present century, we are likely to learn how to change the genes of future generations to make human nature flow in the direction we want it to flow. That knowledge will bring an awesome responsibility, a responsibility that some think should never be exercised: the responsibility of deciding to improve human nature.

Strong Finish

This here is a shout out to my man Jeff Curran, which is not easy for me to do, seeing as he has spent the last 20 years breaking and spraining my bones and ankles with bizarre, unorthodox, aggressive moves on the lacrosse field and in the pub.

But Jeffy pulled off something sort of amazing on Sunday in his first Ironman triathlon. he finished the swim in 505th place, got on his bike and lost a little ground, starting the marathon in 515th place. Then this freak of nature proceeded to pass 307 other tough motherscratchers in the marathon, which he finished in 3:40.

Here's the breakdown : Arizona - IRONMAN.com.

My Muxtape

View from Grotto Office

Colbert on wiretap immunity

Private Air

In the midst of the madcap rewrite of the Wired scraping story, I made a weekend run to Maui to impersonate a guy with the kind of money to be able to stay at the Kapalua resort and charter a helicopter to surf the far side of Molokai, all by way of doing this story for Private Air magazine.

Sorry about the required sign-up, but it might be worth it: you'll get to see the bigger version of the picture above, my first on-wave photo, published or otherwise. If you look closely enough, you'll note the fresh Quiksilver boardshorts. [Tom Taylor - I'm waiting for my sponsor check...]. You'll also, unfortunately, be able to see my kooked-out, stiff-legged backside turning style.

-excellent action photos by Michael Darter, snapper extra-ordinaire

Bush, wiretapping and your phone company

If you have 10 minutes and a spittle shield, check out Keith Olbermann's rant on the administration's craven attempt to immunize AT&T, Verizon, and the other telecom giants from prosecution for selling you and me out to the NSA. Two amazing factual nuggets in here:

1. The son of Bush's new attorney general, Mukasey, works for a law firm representing Verizon; thanks, Senator Feinstein!

2. Ground Zero for the wiretapping-of-the-American-people initiative is a block away from my office, at the scary AT&T building at 2nd and Folsom, a.k.a. the Death Star.