No surprise here:

Scientists at University College London have found the link between what we expect to see, and what our brain tells us we actually saw. The study reveals that the context surrounding what we see is all important -- sometimes overriding the evidence gathered by our eyes and even causing us to imagine things which aren't really there.

The paper reveals that a vague background context is more influential and helps us to fill in more blanks than a bright, well-defined context. This may explain why we are prone to 'see' imaginary shapes in the shadows when the light is poor.

There's so very, very many ways you can go with this . . . from "Bush Lied" to seeing actual freedom-lovers in Hillary or Barack . . . to thinking that your team will win it all next year . . .

Looks like we can "shoot down" near-Earth-orbit satellites with the best of 'em:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The missile that struck a rogue US spy satellite in space carrying toxic fuel reduced it to football-sized chunks, and the Pentagon said it had a "high degree of confidence" its fuel tank was destroyed, officials said Thursday.

General James Cartwright told reporters it would be 24-48 hours before a full confirmation would be available on the fuel tank.

The Defense Department has a "high degree of confidence we hit the tank" but "we can't say for sure," at this time, he said.

Our good and dear friend Mookie al-Sadr, "firebrand cleric" and self-appointed Shiite leader, says "um, well, OK, another six months of cease-fire with the Iraqi government and the American oppressors is a good idea" according to this story in the Long War Journal:

Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Sadrist movement and the commander of the Mahdi Army, has ordered the extension of the cease-fire, anonymous senior officials in his movement have told Reuters. The cease-fire, which was put in place after a major clash in Najaf in August 2007, will be extended by six months.

"Sadr had issued a declaration to preachers to be read during midday prayers on Friday at mosques affiliated with the cleric," Reuters reported. "The general idea is that there will be an extension," an unnamed senior official in Sadr's movement in Baghdad told the news agency. "Sayed (Sadr) has distributed sealed envelopes to the imams of the mosques to be read tomorrow. They cannot be opened before tomorrow." Another senior official in Najaf said the cease-fire would be extended by six months.

. . .

While the reporting has focused on the negative implications the US and the Iraqi government if Sadr ended the cease-fire, Sadr himself had his own problems if the truce was ended. After Sadr's political movement withdrew from the government in early 2007, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki had a greater freedom of movement to tackle Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Since then, the Iraqi military has repositioned itself to take on the Mahdi Army in the south.

The US and Iraqi security forces have demonstrated a willingness to strike at Sadr's Mahdi Army, even in his purported stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad. General David Petraeus pressured Maliki at the onset of the surge to take on the extreme elements of Mahdi Army as well as al Qaeda in Iraq, and Maliki approved. If Sadr ends the truce now, the US military is still at its peek in the number of combat brigades available for use in tackling the Mahdi Army.

By calling off the cease-fire, Sadr risked reigniting the violence in Iraq, which has dropped dramatically since last summer. Sadr risked alienating Iraqis as well as exposing his real level of support in the Shia community. The Iraqi government had the option of declaring the Mahdi Army and the Sadrist movement as illegal groups, and barring Sadrist politicians from running for political office.

Could it be that common sense is making an appearance in a Middle Eastern country?  Stay tuned . . .

She knows who she is.

Item 1:  Hayden Christensen (the young Darth Vader of the Star Wars movies) likes pigs:

Star Wars star Hayden Christensen has become the latest celebrity to take on a pair of porky pets - he now owns two Vietnamese potbellied pigs. The Canadian actor keeps the black pigs, named Buddy and Petunia, at his country farm retreat outside Toronto, and admits they've forced him to rethink his diet.

Item 2:  45 cats are too many:

The original charges followed the seizure of 45 cats from Young's home last March. Two dozen cats had to be euthanized.

Treat them kitties well.  Or else.

Both via Fark.

Isn't that a bit like "coerced affection?"

In a Delaware newspaper:

Along with an end to the botched Iraq war, and a sustainable economic rescue, the idea that Americans at some point in their lives must do a volunteer stint to improve the country is worth pursuing.

Like Michelle Obama there have been many, many times when Americans of all political persuasions haven't been proud of their country's actions.

But enforced community service at this time in American history could bring immeasurable benefits to the nation's psyche as it grapples with housing foreclosures, doped-up national sports heroes and serious challenges to our international image as world leaders.

They're talking about "national service."  I think there's an argument that can be made that in exchange for enjoying the blessings of liberty in this "last, greatest hope for Man on Earth," there comes a requirement to in some way make our nation better.  But don't go around calling it "volunteering."  That's just dishonest.

Oddly enough, the vague uneasy sense that they've been freeloading and not carrying their weight to make the country better seems to sit heavier on left-leaning people than on many in the right.  That could be because folks on the right actually do things to make their country better (volunteer for military service, become police, etc., etc.), while the lefties sit around and talk about it instead (when they're not actively attacking the police and the military, that is).  Now of course, that's just my cynical take on it.  Yes, I continue to question the patriotism of the most extreme elements of the left.

Via Fark.

Next Big Future connects the dots--those dots being studies from Caltech:

Astronomers have discovered that terrestrial planets might form around many, if not most, of the nearby sun-like stars in our galaxy. These new results suggest that worlds with potential for life might be more common than we thought.

University of Arizona, Tucson, astronomer Michael Meyer and his colleagues used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to determine whether planetary systems like ours are common or rare in our Milky Way galaxy. They found that at least 20 percent, and possibly as many as 60 percent, of stars similar to the sun are candidates for forming rocky planets.

and from the Australian University of Sydney:

Astrophysicist Professor Bryan Gaensler led a team that has found that our galaxy - a flattened spiral about 100,000 light years across - is 12,000 light years thick, not the 6,000 light years that had been previously thought.

The Bad Astronomy blog does the math, using the pre-Sydney study total of 100 billion stars in the galaxy:

As it happens, about 10% of the stars in the Milky Way can be categorized as sun-like, which is about 10 billion stars. If 10% of them have rocky planets, as this study indicates, then there may be a billion Earths orbiting stars in our galaxy alone! And that’s only for stars like the Sun; lower mass stars also can form planetary systems, and there are far more of them then stars like the Sun. It is entirely possible that there are many billions of terrestrial planets in the galaxy… and there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the Universe.

So, the Next Big Future folks took the billion Earth-like planets suggested by the Bad Astronomy people and multiplied by two.  Voila!  Two billion Earths!  Maybe more . . .

Who's the puppeteer who seems to be increasingly pulling the strings of American politics?

George Soros.

A guy who made his billions cynically manipulating world currencies.

A guy who's money is behind MoveOn.org, People for the American Way, and a plethora of other leftist organizations.

A guy who funded John McCain's Reform Institute.

You really have to ask yourself if George Soros has the best interests of the average American citizen in mind.  I, personally, don't.  I think he's just graduated from manipulating currencies to manipulating political systems, all in order to increase his personal profit and power.  That's what I think.

Their agenda included minimum wage laws, government restrictions on profit-making, progressive taxation of capital and "rigidly secular" schools.

Is Thomas Sowell writing about the Democrats?  Well, perhaps.  In a way.  Some Republicans, too.

Also, the Italian Fascists of Mussolini:

The Fascists were completely against individualism in general and especially against individualism in a free market economy. Their agenda included minimum wage laws, government restrictions on profit-making, progressive taxation of capital and "rigidly secular" schools.

Unlike the Communists, the Fascists did not seek government ownership of the means of production. They just wanted the government to call the shots as to how businesses would be run. They were for "industrial policy," long before liberals coined that phrase in the U.S.

I hope and pray that this year's election in the U.S. will not be a choice between full-blown fascism (Democrats, either Hillary or Obama) and fascism-light (McCain Republicanism).

Well, no, actually, it was a Che Guvara flag in an Obama campaign office.

The difference between Hitler and Che was only in degree, not in kind.  Both were ruthless thugs.  Oh, yeah, one other difference.  One of those mass murderers is, apparently, cool.

Barack Obama seems to be a very pleasant person with utterly wrong and destructive ideas about how the world works.  His supporters, on the other hand, appear from evidence like this to crave the firm whip hand and iron boot of totalitarian government.  It's for the people, of course.

Via Blackfive/Lone Star Times and Gateway Pundit/Little Green Footballs.

Today:  artificial sweeteners

and lack of sleep.