The power of make-up.  Via my lovely bride...

This is not how science is supposed to work...

Would you be surprised if every faucet in your house, and your shower, suddenly started spouting beer instead of water?  I sure would be!  But if someone wants to pull this prank on me, please make make it a nice Cabernet, ok?

Doesn't this just seem wrong?  Fed announces that they're going to continue to spend $85 billion each month on the “stimulus” plan.  Wall Street reacts with joy.  They're addicted to the corporate welfare...

Swiftboating those who question Benghazi.  Neo-neocon at her finest.

What?  The Navy Yard shooter wasn't a right-wing nut case?  Didn't use an assault rifle?  Drove a Prius?  Liked Obama?  You mean CNN didn't get all that right???

If I were an Oregon resident, I'd be most seriously displeased.  The Oregon state government awarded a $9.9 million contract to a PR firm to publicize its Obamacare healthcare exchange.  Some $2.3 million of it is being used on this ad.  The ad is completely content-free...

“Like walking down the street with a five year old.”  Jon Stewart rips the lamestream media for their error-filled Navy Yard coverage.

Bohemian Rhapsody.  A capella.  Physics.  String theory.  Awesome.

Starbucks: please don't bring your weapons into our stores.  Listen to their CEO here.  I think reaction will fall into two camps: Some people will simply stop going to Starbucks (that would be me, except I never go there anyway!).  Others will think they're being soft, because they're not outright banning guns.

After listening to the video of Starbucks' CEO (Howard Schultz), I think Starbucks shareholders should have another concern: this guy doesn't think his sole responsibility is to increase his company's share price – he thinks Starbucks has other social responsibilities as well.  If I were a Starbucks shareholder, I'd be looking to sell right about now – and wishing I'd done it yesterday...

I've never been to a Whole Foods store.  Friend and reader Simon M. sent me to this article, warning me to put down my drink first.  He's right.  After reading this post (hint: Kelly MacLean really doesn't like Whole foods!), it's a lot less likely that I'll ever go to one.  Sample:

I move on to the next aisle and ask the nearest Whole Foods clerk for help. He's wearing a visor inside and as if that weren't douchey enough, it has one word on it in all caps. Yup, NAMASTE. I ask him where I can find whole wheat bread. He chuckles at me "Oh, we keep the poison in aisle 7." Based solely on the attitudes of people sporting namaste paraphernalia today, I'd think it was Sanskrit for "go fuck yourself."

Namaste is a new word for me (the image at right shows the gesture). 

Another focus-merge image from Mars, taken by the Curiosity rover.  I'm jealous of the fantastic depth-of-field on these macro photos!

More about Migaloo the white whale.

And everyone who lives in California laughs out loud: “...some of the most marginal habitat in the state: a vacant lot in downtown Bakersfield...”  Spotted in a news story about newly discovered species of legless lizards – it just gets better and better!

Sounds like a Paul Simon song: Diamonds on the Skin of Their Teeth.  Scientists ponder the usefulness of nano-diamonds to promote bone growth or in dental implants...

The Pleiades are my companion each morning this time of year, when I walk the dogs before dawn.  But I can't see them quite like this.  High resolution version here, via APOD, of course...

Maureen is not happy with The One.  It's very entertaining for those of us who never fell under his spell to watch the formerly enchanted awaken from their trance.  Maureen is discovering that The One isn't the fervent progressive she thought she was supporting...

How to buy 1.2 million air miles for about $3,000.  Lots of chocolate pudding is involved.

Faster, please.  Researchers at UC San Diego have come up with a quick, relatively simple test for the mechanism of new antibiotics being investigated.  This has the potential to open the floodgates for the discovery of new antibiotics to counter the drug-resistant bacterial strains that have arisen.  I've been infected with one of these (after a surgery in the mid-'90s), but luckily a “cocktail” of several antibiotics was able to knock it down.  These days, thousands of people each year are dying because no cocktail exists that can knock the resistant strains out.  We need new antibiotics that use a different mechanism, and this new test should help researchers find them...

It's just a gesture.  Joseph Naso was sentenced to death yesterday, but he almost certainly he won't be executed.  He will just join the 725 other inmates on California's death row, where some have been for decades. 

I'd like to see the end of the death penalty, as I don't believe it's been justly applied.  Even one mistake is far too many, and there have been far more than one.  But I am not for leniency, not at all – I'd like to see incarceration be treated as punishment, not as rehabilitation.  Let Joseph Naso crush rocks until he can't crush any more, and let's have a C-Span-like channel that shows people what his life is like.  I'd also like to drastically reduce the number and kinds of crimes for which incarceration is the punishment – I'd especially like to get rid of the “morality” crimes, like drug use...

Transporter, demonstrated.  This would be fun to see in person, even if just for the audience reaction...

Where the good jobs are – and why.  Economist Enrico Moretti, writing in the Wall Street Journal.  A friend works for a company in the midst of relocating to downtown San Francisco, a move that puzzled me.  Now I know a plausible reason...

An apt portrayal, via friend and reader Simon M.

California leads the world – in failed progressive policy examples...

Unicorns and rainbows and flowers, oh my!  On wait but why, an interesting piece titled Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy.  Lots of this rings true to me, and matches experiences I've had managing such folks over the past 20 years.  Note: wait but why is headed to North Korea!

Feminism – is there anything it can't do?  According to some, there's an epidemic of clinical depression in the U.S.   Is feminism the cause of it?