Mixed nuts

"Happy Mornings" is a commercial for Folgers, though it's difficult to see how.

The winner of Bruce Schneier's Movie-Plot Threat Contest involves the destruction of Grand Coulee Dam, triggering a chain reaction that knocks out the rest of the dams on the Columbia River and leaves the West Coast without power for months, taking down the U.S. economy in the process.

Well, if the terrorists do go after Hoover Dam, perhaps our best hope is to send in the Transformers, who are already doing work at Hoover Dam. On that note, is this test footage of Optimus Prime from the new Transformers movie?

As for terrorist plots, the one that's scaring New Yorkers right now is the aborted plot to gas NY subways (as described by Ron Suskind in his new book The One Percent Doctrine, excerpted in the latest issue of Time).

Not new, but still cool music video: man juggles in time to Fatboy Slim's "That Old Pair of Jeans" (thx Ken). That's one of the two new tracks on Fatboy Slim's greatest hits album Why Try Harder, releasing tomorrow.

The new Apple "I'm a Mac" ads are clever and funny. But are they all that effective in moving Windows users over to Macs, or do they just preach to the converted? I'm with Stevenson, I think it's the latter.

Raising children doesn't make one happy. In fact, when children finally leave the next, parents experience an uptick in happiness. So writes Daniel Gilbert in an essay for Time. But, he notes, that capacity for humans to sacrifice for the good of their children is why we have holidays like Father's Day. At his weblog, Gilbert includes footnotes for those interested in delving more deeply into the research cited. Gilbert is the author of Stumbling on Happiness, a fascinating book I've just started reading this past week.

At Winged Foot this weekend, a score of 5 over par won the U.S. Open. That's not entirely surprising as the U.S. Open always has the toughest setup of the four golf majors. As long as the course is equally tough for everyone, the final score relative to par doesn't matter. But Matthew Rudy of GolfDigest.com feels this year's setup rewarded robotic play, with little decision-making required, and punished the world's true best players. Ron Sirak of Golf World disagrees.