Natsuki Kojima, helping you celebrate Independence Day. The little speech bubble reads “smiles and swimsuits are free”, and she uses these freedoms well.

Jason Mitchell, professor of Social Psychology at Harvard, vigorously demonstrates Richard Feynman’s point about pseudosciences that adopt the appearance of science without the substance. By aiming the gun at his own feet:

"Because experiments can be undermined by a vast number of practical mistakes, the likeliest explanation for any failed replication will always be that the replicator bungled something along the way. Unless direct replications are conducted by flawless experimenters, nothing interesting can be learned from them."

Apparently you’ve been replaced.

Yes, I know the marketing mouthpieces are insisting that replacing male Thor with a woman isn’t just a gimmick, but yeah, it’s just a gimmick. If it weren’t, they wouldn’t have spent so much PR money to build buzz on it.

So, since it’s a gimmick, and there’s plenty of evidence of what real-life women think a female Thor should look like, I think the most important question is: will she have a thing for Sif and/or Jane Foster?

Most interesting result in that image search: Pikachu Thor.

[Update: …and in another diversity-pandering press release, Captain America will be black. Next week, I’m guessing they’ll announce that the Iron Man armor will be passed to a Thai ladyboy.]

Amazon has a peculiar idea of what your science fiction short stories are about.

Who knew you wrote chick-lit?

1. Ending the cycle of abuse.
2. Moving to a city named Gallatin.
3. Having General Manager Jeff Cooper deliver the announcement.

I’m guessing El Neil is doing a happy dance right about now.

(via Ace)

I walked into someone’s cube to deliver a new document scanner (the excellent Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500), and found this little gem attached to her monitor cable:

In a shocking turn of events, a police officer who shot a family’s dog for no good reason actually got fired for it.

Nothing says “born in Ohio” like processed meats, purchased in the middle of the night at Walmart.

And, yes, it’s one of my guilty pleasures, and after 20 years of not finding it in California groceries, a little light bulb went on and I tried the local Walmart. They also reliably stock the jalapeno bologna, so I can pretend to a more sophisticated palate.

I passed on the giant bag of Honeycomb cereal snack food, though. That’s a guilty pleasure that would earn a scolding from my doctor.

(via a google image search for Schnitzer, but no complaints. No idea where it originally came from, or I’d give proper credit; the largest size I found was here, a 4chan image-archive site)

The official Blu-ray release date for the Bodacious Space Pirates movie is November 12th.