• In bed, reading Le Carré by the light of my iPod. #
• @amoghavajra You mean THE Olympic village? In Beijing? #

• In bed, reading Le Carré by the light of my iPod. #
• @amoghavajra You mean THE Olympic village? In Beijing? #

• The tree frogs are really loud tonight. #
• @Dassini Same for Newmarket. Lots of lovely sun. #

• Watched 3 episodes of Primeval now. Lightweight but enjoyable. I like the sexual tensions in the team. Henshall’s accent still puzzles. #
• Had to take Maia for a drive to get her to nap. For a small kid she has a large carbon footprint. #
• @rogerhyam Wow! I wonder if starlings can pass these things on from generation to generation — and for how long? #

As an avid devotee of Battlestar Galactica, the story of the last remnants of humankind voyaging through the galaxy, pursued by their nemesis, the Cylons, in search of the “13th colony” — Earth — I often found myself thinking “Laura Roslin for President!”

Roslin was the education secretary and the last surviving member of the cabinet when the Cylons nuked humanity’s home worlds, and so was thrust unprepared into the role of President of the Twelve Colonies, where, it must be said, she proved to be a wily and resourceful leader. Similarly, Palin (note the similarity of the names Palin and Roslin is a woman with no political experience on a national level, who may end up being thrust into the position of Vice President, or even President, should McCain be elected and should anything befall him in his term of office.

The comparison with Roslin makes me like her more (funny how the associative mind works) although I’m vastly more comfortable with the idea of Roslin as president in a scripted TV show than I am with the possibility of Palin being President or even VP in real life. The possibility in fact makes my mind reel.

We already know that Tighe is one of the eleven humanoid Cylon models that we know about — might this mean that Palin is the twelfth?

• @rogerhyam Happy birthday, Faith! #
• @Dassini I can never resist going down the tunnel in the castle when I’m in St Andrews. It’s so cool! #

• At father in law’s, eating pizza and waiting for Obama’s talk. #
• Obama. You de man! #
• Maia fell out of bed right in the middle of the alpha-male speech, so I missed a few minutes. I’ll fill in the gaps with the transcript. #

• @visuddhimati URL? #
• Watched the first episode of ITV’s “Primeval”. It wasn’t fantastic but didn’t totally suck either. Henshall’s accent? Weird. #
• Didn’t get any writing done yesterday because I was working on Wildmind’s newsletter. Very frustrating. Hoping to get more done today. #
• I love writing. I hate starting writing again after an interruption. Causes despondency. #
• Playing with SecondBrain. Still in beta - a few bugs. Looks like it might be useful. #

I hereby officially state that Gail Collins is my second-favorite columnist at the New York Times, after Frank Rich. Or maybe she’s my favorite and Frank’s in second place. Damn, I’ll get back to you on that one.

Anyway, here’s an example of why I like Gail’s writing so much:

Hillary looks 10 years younger than she did when she thought she was about to become the first woman president. She’s developed this … glow. It appears that not only does she possess superhuman resilience; she positively thrives on crushing disappointment.

Perceptive and funny.

• Soy milk. Cookies. Frasier. #
• Putting together Wildmind’s monthly newsletter. #
• @rogerhyam I find the same with my blog posts. Need to work harder at appreciation! #

• @dharmarascal RAmen to that! http://tinyurl.com/8vp3f #
• @rogerhyam Glad to hear Faith’s OK. #
• Set up Twitter feed for Wildmind at http://twitter.com/medit8. Follow if you want notification of new blog articles on meditation. #

Now we know…

• Watched Dr Strangelove for first time in 25 years. Still fantastic. #

Cows are mysterious animals:

Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction.

You’d think doing biological research by looking at Google Earth would be pretty cushy, at least compared to getting into your wellies (rubber boots) and tramping around the fields, but no:

“Sometimes it took hours and hours to find some pictures with good resolution,” said Dr Begall.

But my favorite line:

The scientists were unable to distinguish between the head and rear of the cattle, but could tell that the animals tended to face either north or south.

A wake-up call for Google Earth, surely?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Cattle shown to align north-south

• OK I give in. I’m going to go watch some of the Olympics. #
• Picnic at Aryaloka. Fun on the lawn. #
• What do you mean the Olympics are over? They just started! I guess I’ll have to watch them next year. #

• @tejananda Get hold of St Germain’s “Tourist” — it’s superb. #
• Got a gallon of fresh-squeezed OJ at Shaws for $5. Mislabeling rocks! #
• Off to Riverworks for dinner with MIL. #
• Service was, um, relaxed. Food was great. MIL is heading to Nepal on Thursday for four months! #

Two self-anointed “grammar vigilantes” who toured the nation removing typos from public signs have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic marker at the Grand Canyon.

After correcting a misplaced apostrophe and comma, Deck reported, he was aghast to discover what he described as a made-up word: “emense.”

Typo vigilantes answer to letter of the law

I’ve often been tempted to do this. In fact I corrected a sign in a prison once — fortunately not a sign of historic significance. And every time I go to my local supermarket I wish I’d remembered to bring a marker so that I could correct the “Eight items or less” sign.

• @tejananda Tripping, eh? I liked some Schnauss. Also b fleischmann. Are you into St Etienne? #
• @tejananda I meant *St Germain*! #
• @freebuddhist 1/2of them are accidental. Teething troubles! #

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is “young adult fiction” which I read on my iPod (in bed, under the covers!).

A rebellious young kid in San Francisco is indiscriminately swept up and badly mistreated by Homeland Security after a major terrorist attack, and then witnesses increasing government control and surveillance, and the “disappearing” of dissenters. He decides to help take back America by using his hacking skills to organize a campaign of civil disobedience. One teen (and his friends) against the DHS.

The premise is all too believable and should be a cautionary tale about the direction the US is headed in. The writing, in common with much sci-fi, tends to be rather didactic, with over-long descriptions of the hacking techniques used, but on the whole Little Brother is a gripping story — one I’ll be recommending to many young adults.

This and other Cory Doctorow books are available free on http://craphound.com/.

View all my reviews.

• Damn. My new tool for converting blog posts into tweets fires off if I simply open and save an old post. #
• Installed a cool tool on Wildmind last night for people to email and bookmark pages. The last version I used slowed down the site too much. #
• @dharmarascal Pandora’s awesome, especially being able to browse other people’s radio stations. Word is that it may be doomed too. #
• @freebuddhist Music’s full of surprises. I’ve found lots of artists I’d never heard of or only knew by name. And as for other ppl’s music… #