UC cuts; New Almodóvar movie

My alma mater (go Aggies) is being bled to death. The Texans smell the blood.

Almodóvar has a new movie! Does anyone know when it will get to us here in the hinterlands?

Bicycling, when it's not a subculture

From a New York Times piece on bikes at Stanford:

[F]ew people wear helmets, and everyone is wearing ordinary clothes — none of the sleek and gaudy costumes you see on cyclists pumping through the peninsular hills and whistling down Sand Hill Road to the Caltrain station. They are themselves on wheels.

Exactly. When riding a bicycle stops being countercultural and gains broad appeal (though: which causes which?), people ride as they are. We have to give up the exclusivity and the uniform to get there.

Also, it's funny how entrenched the Lyrca-warrior image of cyclists is in the Bay Area. Hence the almost surprised tone of the article.

Morning findings

The Senate has released their health care bill. Part of how it pays for itself is by taxing insurance policies that cost more than $8,500/yr per person. The AFL-CIO thinks this qualifies as "middle-class." Ezra Klein makes a two-birds-one-stone-argument that the tax not only funds health care, but puts pressure on costs.

It was partly the Army's fault that Katrina was so devastating. I did not know what the MRGO was before hearing this story.

I really want to go here, here, and here.

I can't get this stupid shit out of my head.