If you're in the life sciences, you have like heard of The Scientist.  After 25 years of making a go of it, they announced they are closing the doors.

It's a tough market out there, as we can attest.  If we had 2008 advertising rates and 2011 traffic, we would be making pretty darn good money.  I have no idea how companies with expensive midtown Manhattan offices do it.   Well, they have a sales force and we don't, and multiple publications.   But you get the idea.  It's always a difficult market for science; Henry Donahue, former CEO of Discover, once said to me over coffee, "I think media buyers went into that business because they hate science."

Pity Pittsburgh. The Steelers are not having a good year and don't even get me started on the Pirates.  I got to wear my baseball jersey out of pride rather than defiance for the first time since Barry Bonds left for free agency - and then the first week of August arrived and they remembered they were the Pirates.

It's not even great to be a bridge in the Steel City which, since there is really no steel any more, is more accurately a City of Bridges.

Outside the city, in North Beaver township, thieves just stole a 50-foot-long bridge.  The whole thing.  It was a private bridge and made of corrugated steel.  Value?  About $100,000.

Sarah Churman: “I had an implant put in 8 weeks ago called The Esteem Implant by Envoy Medical. I was born deaf and have worn hearing aids from the age of 2, but hearing aids only help so much. I have gotten by this long in life by reading lips. This was taken as they were activating the implant.”

Her husband recorded the moment her hearing implant is activated:

People want to live in important times and no one has more acolytes than Steve Jobs - he can do no wrong.  When he was caught illegally giving himself stock options, which other CEOs went to jail for, he simply gave them back and even his most progressively anti-corporate fans dismissed the problem because the stock did not go down.   

The more centralized the power, the easier corruption becomes.  Hu Zhicheng, a Chinese-born American scientist who returned to China to bring some entrepreneurship to the Communist world superpower, discovered the dark side of that.

Chinese companies cultivate influence with local officials and use law enforcement and a malleable legal system as competitive weapons and, because a business civil claim in the US is a criminal one in China, competitors can make sure you never get back home if you try to compete there.

There are other cases like Hu's, the US embassy said, without specifying how many.   Obviously quiet lobbying has not worked so maybe some international attention will.

Since the bulk of academic research has been taxpayer-funded, it's become increasingly silly to allow private companies to take ownership of the results.   Congress passed a law declaring NIH-funded studies must be put in a public repository and it withstood the onslaught of the Democratic House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. in 2008 but strong leadership by Elias Zerhouni at the NIH prevented them from overturning it.

When I want a popsicle, I want a popsicle, I don't need the popsicle framed through social justice issues or a world view, but if you need a certain kind of popsicle to assuage your liberal guilt that you can buy a popsicle and a woman in Arabia cannot (or is it just driving, voting, and wearing clothes of their choosing they cannot do?) , San Francisco - Frisco as local people love to call it - is the place to go.

All joking aside, this is cool stuff, literally and figuratively; need a single-malt Scotch popsicle?  They have it. Vegan popsicles?  Right there in the Bomb Truck.  Like buying your popsicles from strangers on tricycles instead? Want one that tastes like corn?  You're in luck.
 

In Morocco, the native Tamri goats love the berries of Argan trees they literally climb into the branches to get them.

Multi-purpose circle of life bonus; the feces of the Tamri contain Argan seed kernels which local farmers then grind into an oil used in cooking and cosmetics.

It is more shocking to read about San Francisco residents wanting less government busybody interference than about gay nudists, but that's Frisco for you.

The Castro district, home of the gay rights movement starting in the 1960s, which included desiring more government involvement in securing their rights, has a contingent who don't always think they should be told to wear pants. Maybe that is why gay marriage got voted down in California but not New York - no one in New York is going to insist they can attend church in the nude, it's too darn cold nine months out of the year.