Evidence that NASA scientists have neither good musical taste nor an appropriate sense of drama:

Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Press Release Images: "JPL engineers played Baha Men's 'Who Let the Dogs Out' in the control room as they watched new images confirming that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit successfully rolled off its lander platform early Thursday morning."

What ever happened to the days when these events were set to terrifying Kubrickian discordant scores, or spacy overtures to the ubermensch? They've taken the creepy "dust in the wind" spirituality out of space travel and replaced it with the marketing style of the basketball age.

Perenially optimistic non-conservative commentators don't get it: no matter what information surfaces about the Bush Administration, no meaningful change in leadership or policy will occur. The damning information is there. It always has been. No matter how nicely it's presented, no matter who endorses it, no matter if Cheney rents an ad during the Super Bowl and proclaims to the camera, "We here at the Executive Branch directly funded September 11th, the Iraq war was the result of a poker bet, and we kill puppies and rape orphans," NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. Consider Paul Krugman's op-ed piece in the Times today [here]. He talks about the Paul O'Neill revelations and Ron Suskind's new book The Price of Loyalty. He says this:

The question is whether this book will open the eyes of those who think that anyone who criticizes the tax cuts is a wild-eyed leftist, and that anyone who says the administration hyped the threat from Iraq is a conspiracy theorist. The point is that the credentials of the critics just keep getting better. How can Howard Dean's assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn't made us safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College says that the war in Iraq was a "detour" that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O'Neill's revelations?

How? Stonewalling. Don't say a thing.

Finally, a get-rich-quick scam that really works!

Yahoo! News - German Police Investigate Potato Computer Scam: "German police are investigating after an angry man returned a computer he had just bought saying it was packed with small potatoes instead of computer parts." The store replaced the computer free of charge but became suspicious when he returned a short time later with another potato-filled computer casing, police in the western city of Kaiserslautern said on Monday.