Monday, Monday

+ You're getting this whole post, for obvious reasons:

Iowa University Football

Map / Google Earth

A corn maze announcing the annual Iowa - Iowa State football game just East of Ames, Iowa. The image is on its side but you should be able to see the University of Iowa's 'Herky the Hawk' to the right and Iowa State University's 'Cy' tornado-thing to the left. Below is the date of the game - Sept 13, 2003.

It's really cool in Google Earth, where you can rotate the map (well, OK, maybe that's only marginally more cool ;-)

+ I've been meaning to link this for a while, so forgive me if it's old news to you: A new study indicates that intelligence has no relation to the one's level of happiness . Tell me something I didn't already know.

+ Bush installs Bolton as U.N. ambassador

Grrr.

'Bush blamed "partisan delaying tactics by a handful of senators" [for holding up the confirmation process].' Baloney. President Bush should have sent someone who would be somewhat agreeable to both sides instead of using his 'partisan ramrod tactics'.

+ Didn't write much about Lance's triumph because it was a little anticlimactic. Here are some articles on the science of Lance, National Geographic (via kottke) and the WSJ (which talks about other athletes, too). Notes:

• '[Lance] is the most poked, prodded, calibrated and medically researched athlete in sports history.'
• 'Scientists know that his heart is at least 20 percent larger than a normal person's, he produces one-third less lactic acid than do other top cyclists and delivers oxygen to his legs at a rate higher than all but maybe 100 of his fellow earthlings.'
• Lance is a pure machine, training wise (but we already knew that). He's the only person ever documented to have improved muscle efficiency.
• I suspect this came from improving his efficiency on the bike, knowing he wanted to ride about 105 rpms and training his body until it could do it.
  
• Lance has extremely low lactic acid production.
• There's a myth that Lance lost weight from cancer that he couldn't have lost otherwise, but he was the same weight before and after.
• However, that weight may have been differently proportioned. Lance used to have more muscle mass in his chest. Now it's all quads and hams.