[links] Link salad for another Pacific Northwest Friday

For science, even eureka moments are bitter-sweet

Sequencing of Fetal Genomes Using Only Maternal Blood Sample — (Via David Goldman, who finds things in the oddest places.)

Newborn brown dwarf formed the same way as stars

New Rover Could Seek Evidence of Ancient Mars Life Just Below Surface

Coral clues to climate: Reefs vanished for 2,500 years

Why 'illegal immigrant' is a slur

Raul Castro, 96-year-old former US ambassador and Arizona governor, detained at Border Patrol checkpoint — He's just lucky it was the Feds and not state or local law enforcement, given that Existing While Brown has been criminalized in Arizona.

Religion, Crime, and Television — An incidental benefit to being a person of faith. (Really?)

‘The Cult of the Individual and the Idolatry of Greed’ — Slacktivist Fred Clark on UK/Australian Evangelical Michael Bird and the American conservative opposition to universal healthcare on allegedly theological grounds.

Curbing the cost of health care — Fareed Zakaria on the efficiencies of public versus private spending in healthcare.

Maybe the Court Ruling on Health Care Hasn’t Had Any Effect on the Election — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison makes an interesting point about the Supreme Court's recent surprise ACA ruling.

Why Romney Probably Won’t Harp on Health Care — The irony of Mitt Romney leading the charge against Romneycare is almost as good as when John McCain's presidential campaign violated McCain-Feingold.

Off And Out With Mitt Romney — Paul Krugman on Mitt Romney's business career.

Use of gambling language in politics — This is interesting. ericjamesstone and I were recently going back and forth on the use of the imagery of violence in political rhetoric, and the question of when that crosses over from metaphor to literal threat. I hadn't thought about that in terms of gambling imagery.

How Scalia Distorts the Framers — Ah, Constitutional Originalism. Simple solutions for simple minds. A number of whom, unfortunately, sit on the Supreme Court. (Via shsilver.)

Are we Republicans applying a double standard in Matt Wingard case? — Local partisan politics in Oregon, but pretty revealing of the usual conservative modus operandi when it comes to transgressions by one of their own.

?otD: Summer's been downright chilly around here. How's yours?

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7/6/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hour (revisions to Other Me)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.75 (solid)
Weight: 239.4
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate