The wheels on the trend go round and round

There seems to be fad for introducing children to bicycle riding not with training wheels, but with a pedalless version called a run bike or balance bike. What amuses me about this is that the things basically seem to be identical to the early-19th-century draisine or dandy horse.

Oh, and when I Googled for "run bike" I got this page (warning: embedded movie with sound), which hawks a sort of low-impact-jogger's dandy horse called a RunBike that was actually invented by a guy named Dandy.

Saturn update

Cassini has finished its latest time near the equatorial plane and is back at high inclinations, mostly photographing the rings and Saturn itself. Some nice images of Saturn are coming out of this, and surprising science results--Saturn's poles both turn out to be relatively hot, for reasons that are not understood. Eventually Cassini will be taking pictures from an orbit closer to polar than has ever been achieved before. If you browse the most recent raw images, you'll also see some nice medium-distance shots of Dione (comparable to Voyager images) and what's apparently the star Antares seen through the rings.

This is the last phase of Cassini's primary mission, as planned (in the broadest outlines) prior to arrival at Saturn; when this is done, the mission will be considered a complete success, but I believe Cassini is already funded for an extended mission with planning based on primary-mission results.

Also:

Eight days to Mercury.

Up from the depths of Sector XIV of the Myers-Briggs-Nolan-Pournelle-Gygax Continuum

pnh, who usually posts elsewhere, makes a rare LJ post about the dangers of taking the "which presidential candidate do you match?" quiz too seriously. It's worth reading and matches my own feelings pretty closely, though you may have to adjust for your own political alignment.