Insert Godzilla Here Anyone else think Japanese Island Aogashima looks like Monster Island? Good casting is good casting. (via Boing Boing, of course)

Central Coast Some photos from the Central Coast weekend. Lots of gazing into sunsets. Other things, too, of course, but maybe it's the time of year, or the smoke from the burn-offs across the lakes, but the colours really were so vivid. And the company. We also did a bit of hiking along the way back. One stretch of banksia was ominous. Seabirds of many varieties were in evidence, from the pelicans of The Entrance to the cormorants of, well, everywhere. Also in evidence, if slightly less so, was the variety of uses and users of the seacoast.

Awesome Just a head's-up: The Avengers is very entertaining. The new Hulk was good; I thought at first that it was too bad that Edward Norton didn't play puny Banner, but Mark Ruffalo did a fine job. The other players/characters were in fine, well-practiced form. But I think I'll skip 3-D from now on. It really didn't matter.

Cynics Marco Rubio as Vice President? Well, when we’re considering the possibility of Mitt Romney as Commander-in-Chief, why not? Sure, as a one-term Senator, he’s not no more qualified for the top job than Obama was, but in this case what we’re dealing with is a cynical ploy to retrieve votes lost by extreme right-wing pandering on immigration issues, if not outright bigotry, and it’s just the VEEP job, anyway. It’s not like past Presidential campaigns didn’t use the Vice Presidential selection to deliver key demographics in the past. It used to be that you’d pick a Southerner if you were Northern or a Northerner if you were a Southerner. Or if you were perceived as weak in a key area, you picked someone to provide the requisite strength. Biden, for example, was a similarly good choice for Obama as Johnson was for Kennedy, in that he was a Senate-business strong-arm (although that doesn’t appear to have worked out quite so well in the current term, so maybe it’s more Clinton-Gore). Instead of going with the top insider, though, Romney is going straight at the votes. Rubio may deliver more Hispanics than Mittens could otherwise expect, but if they do take office, can he work the Senate? Or is he just going to be another Tea Party foamer, but with a nicer office?