Tour de France 2009

Mark Cavendish, a sprinter who has been fighting for survival in the Alps, roared back into life on Friday with a staggering stage triumph against the odds that made him Britain's most successful Tour de France winner in history.

He has now won nine Tour de France stages in just 13 months, including five this year, to take him past Barry Hoban's record.

Cavendish, who could yet make it 10 stage wins on the Champs-Elysees tomorrow – has also won six stages of the Giro D'Italia during those 13 months. L'Equipe, the French sports paper, has, with good cause, dubbed him 'Le Phenomenon Anglaise' and in cycling terms he has been the only story to match that of the clash between Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong in this year's Tour.

Friday's triumph was one of the hardest earned of his career in a race ridden at a furious pace, so much so that the leaders arrived in Aubenas a full 35 minutes ahead of their estimated arrival time. That suited Cavendish and his trusty lead-out men fine but the category-two climb outside Aubenas certainly did not.

If the stage had been in the first week we would have put it down as a sprinters' stage but at the end of the third week, we weren't sure," Cavendish said. I said at the team meeting in the morning, 'Just stay with me over the climb and lets see'. I made the top of the climb my finish line and everything else after that was a bonus.

As ever, Cavendish owes a huge debt to his Columbia train, who all put in massive turns chasing down an attack lead by world champion Alessandro Ballan. The veteran George Hincapie was riding with a suspected broken collarbone while Tony Martin has flogged himself throughout the Tour in the service of Cavendish.

Although mathematically still in contention with Hushovd for the green jersey, awarded to the winner of the points competition, that can happen only if Cavendish wins Saturday's two intermediate sprints and the stage and the Norwegian finishes nowhere and then crashes out of the bunch sprint in Paris, failing to score.

Somebody who has fought for the jersey like that, I can't compete with that, it was humiliating for me the other day when he rode like he didThor is a worthy winner, he deserves to win it. I am just going to go back to my original plan and concentrate on stage wins, I got a bit carried away in the race for the green.

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Ganesha Temple,The oldest temple in America

Ganesha Temple,The oldest temple in America,for which construction began in 1977 in an unused church, is also known as the Hindu Temple Sri Maha Vallabha Ganapati Devasthanam. it has evolved into a big complex that offers classes in Hinduism for the youngsters among many of its activities.Thirty years ago, there are only few temples in US,and today, there are dozens of them.It is one of the most beautiful sights in New York, and what is more important, it is also very sacred.The feeling of pride and devotion was evident everywhere at the temple. The congregation consisted of people from across India -- one could hear more than 10 Indian languages, including Sindhi, Tamil and Bengali.
This temple belongs to Hindus from all over the world But we must make sure that they also mean something to our children and grandchildren.and as far as I know If you are caught up in illusion and not upgrading yourself, you are not connected with God anymore.

For the young Americans of Indian origin, especially, this is something of immense significance. There is still much work to be done.During the renovation, the temple was still open to the public. But only a small portion that had the metal deities while the stone deities were kept in a safe place.I want the Hindus feel that they should also visit it when they come to New York.The Temple itself is not less important more than Statue of Liberty.

Google's New Operating System

Google Inc. is working on a new operating system for inexpensive computers in a daring attempt to wrest away Microsoft Corp.'s long-running control over people's computing experience.

The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google's Web site, will be based on the company's nine-month-old Web browser, Chrome. Google intends to rely on help from the community of open-source programmers to develop the Chrome operating system, which is expected to begin running computers in the second half of 2010.

source: yahoo.com