Photo of the day

From a Telegraph photos of the day gallery:

A night-time view of Europe made possible by the ‘day-night band’ of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is seen in a global composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite in 2012 and released by Nasa today.Picture: REUTERS/NASA

Which Americans’ lives?

Oh, my, this Jon Stewart segment is about as good as it gets.  A must watch:

Quick hits (part II)

1) In further asymmetry, you are just not going to find any Democrats as crazy left as these Republicans are crazy right.  And they are about to be elected to Congress.

2) John Judis‘ and Jamelle Bouie’s takes on Brownback and the Kansas GOP experiment run amok.

3) Exercise if great for your brain.  Especially if you’ve got ADHD.  And now we’ve got cool brain images to show it.

4) There are not enough female Republican officeholders because there are few Republican women in the pool of possible candidates.

5) Nice Vox piece on our over-reaction to ISIS.

6) You probably won’t be surprised to see this Reason post about Iowa state troopers stealing $100,000 in legal poker winnings.

7) I’m shocked, shocked that the anti-environmentalists put in charge of the NC environment have not taken the coal ash spill seriously.

8) The demands that the IOC makes on potential Olympic host cities are pretty amusing.

9) I didn’t know about “efficiency wages.”  And now I do.  Nice explanation for why not everyone can work at Costco.

10) Gotta love that the “Republicans are people too” campaign is all based on stock photos.

11) Nice Ruth Marcus column on the 5th Circuit decision on Texas’ abortion laws.  What never ceases to amaze me is the way judges pretend that the purpose of TRAP laws is to protect women’s health as opposed to shut-down abortion clinics.

12) Great example of campaign media just getting it all wrong (regarding chickens and the Iowa Senate race).  And speaking of chickens, love this Vox piece on our ever larger chickens: