If you want to see LA female fronted buzz band Kitten open for Young the Giant (featured in the TW music section this week) at Club Congress on Wednesday night, you might be out of luck, since the tickets are nearly sold out. However, The Range comes to your rescue. Enter our contest and you'll win a spot on the guest list for you and a friend Wednesday night. The drawing will be held Wednesday morning and the winner will be notified by noon Wednesday. Good luck!

"(Department of Health Services) just came out with reports for 2009 with numbers that show a higher number of abortions for minorities. It's both a statewide and national trend. ... Sex selection was studied by the National Academy of Science in March 2008, and research shows there is a strong son-bias in parts of America. There is clear evidence that this is happening."

The verdict:

Bottom line: Statewide statistics indicate there is not a higher percentage of abortions among minorities compared with White women. However, national statistics indicate a higher percentage of abortion among minorities. Although studies indicate sex selection is an issue, health organizations do not track the number of males or females aborted, so there is no data to support that claim.

I really couldn't have cared less about the Chicago mayoral race in general (bigger local issues to worry about, let's say), but what did make the race fascinating to me was the Twitter feed @mayoremanuel. Wildly profane and brilliantly satirical, it got to the point that the real Rahm Emanuel offered $5,000 to the anonymous blogger to go away. Well, now that Emanuel won the race handily, the man behind the account has been revealed on the Atlantic Monthly's site:

If that seems like a lot of fuss over a Twitter account, you probably haven't been following @MayorEmanuel. The profane, brilliant stream of tweets not only may be the most entertaining feed ever created, but it pushed the boundaries of the medium, making Twitter feel less like a humble platform for updating your status and more like a place where literature could happen. Never deviating too far from the reality of the race itself, @MayorEmanuel wove deep, hilarious stories. It was next-level digital political satire and caricature, but over the months the account ran, it became much more. By the end, the stream resembled an epic, allusive ode to the city of Chicago itself, yearning and lyrical.

For weeks, journalists and insiders have urged the person behind @MayorEmanuel to reveal himself, but he (or she) demurred. Until now. After a protracted email negotiation, the author has outed himself to The Atlantic. He's receiving no compensation.

The genius behind @MayorEmanuel is Dan Sinker, who has a heart made out of Chicago and balls of punk rock.

I was actually thrilled that it was Sinker, since I was a fan of his late magazine Punk Planet. The story of how the Twitter feed became a phenomenon is fascinating (although admittedly the sort of thing a guy employed to do social media cares about).

[Atlantic]

I'm not entirely sure why this concerns me, considering by 2014, Arizona might have already seceded from the union already, but still, anything that pleases Republican governors at this point concerns me:

In remarks to the National Governors Association, Mr. Obama said he backed legislation that would enable states to request federal permission to withdraw from the law’s mandates in 2014 rather than in 2017 as long as they could prove that they could find other ways to cover as many people as the original law would and at the same cost. The earlier date is when many of the act’s central provisions take effect, including requirements that most individuals obtain health insurance and that employers of a certain size offer coverage to workers or pay a penalty.

[...]

The legislation would allow states to opt out earlier from various requirements if they could demonstrate that other methods would allow them to cover as many people, with insurance that is as comprehensive and affordable, as provided by the new law. The changes also must not increase the federal deficit.

If states can meet those standards, they can ask to circumvent minimum benefit levels, structural requirements for insurance exchanges and the mandates that most individuals obtain coverage and that employers provide it. Washington would then help finance a state’s individualized health care system with federal money that would otherwise be spent there on insurance subsidies and tax credits.

[NY Times]

You're going to end up seeing this video at some point. Someone will inevitably send it to you on Facebook and you will laugh. Might as well get it out of the way now.

From today's Arizona Republic:

Joe Sigg of the Arizona Farm Bureau calls the bill "a real job killer."

For example: Currently, milk has to be Grade A, whether you ship it to Casa Grande or California, as regulated by the FDA. The Arizona Department of Agriculture enforces the federal Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, but SB 1178 would prohibit that for milk shipped within the state.

The "FDA would have little recourse but to pull our license for Grade A milk," Sigg says. "The Arizona dairy industry and allied infrastructures of billions (of dollars) would be shuttered almost overnight."

Hospitals are subject to federal rules. So are CPAs. If homebuilders and agriculture within Arizona could not be held to federal air-quality standards, the state could lose federal highway funds. Electricity generated at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station and used in Arizona would not be subject to federal oversight. Power that goes to other states would be. How do you make that work?

SB 1178 is reckless and bound to be challenged in court.

Charles Ferguson, director of Inside Job, on accepting the award for best long-form documentary last night: "Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong."

Related: Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article on the same subject.

Rarely would I feel compelled to watch a 12 minute celebrity interview video, but Charlie Sheen's just a comedy goldmine right now. My favorite part (other than the multiple times he points at himself and says "WINNING"): the extended quoting of Allen Iverson's "Practice" press conference monologue.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Taco Fish stakes out a barren concrete plot on West Grant Road, just west of Sixth Avenue. It’s a tiny little outfit that is actually quite hard to miss, thanks to two “Fish Tacos” banners flapping away out front.

When eating at a small food operation like Taco Fish, it is nice to do several things. First, stuff a few singles in the Styrofoam tip cup. You know they deserve it. Second, marvel at how food with such flavor and substance can be prepared in a space so absurdly small.

Also, don’t be shy on the pico de gallo and the rest of the condiment bar. The fish is battered and fried properly on the fish tacos, but what sets off the flavors is the balance of the onions, limes and other accoutrements of the condiment line. And don’t forget about that avocado sauce. Seriously.

If you like fish tacos, you should go to Taco Fish. And if you don’t like fish tacos? Well, if anything can cure you, Taco Fish can.

• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The UA Lunar and Planetary Lab's Alfred McEwen talks about a HiRISE photo from Mars:

Some of the largest landslides known in the Solar System have happened on Mars. These are interesting phenomena, but they also sometimes produce excellent exposures of the bedrock geology, in cross-sectional views. The purpose of this image was to view bedrock exposures at a deep level in Valles Marineris.

We have only a vague idea how old these rocks are. Crater counts date landscapes, and clearly this is a young landscape with very few impact craters due to the continual mass wasting (landslides) of the steep slopes. The rocks are much older—probably older than the plateaus surrounding Valles Marineris (2 to 3 billion years based on the large craters), unless these are intrusive rocks emplaced later from migrating magma. We need radiometric age dating, either on Mars or from returned samples, to measure the age of igneous (volcanic or plutonic) rock layers within the strata.

The age of sedimentary layers such as river or lake deposits can be bracketed by the ages of overlying and underlying igneous layers. Not knowing the absolute ages of bedrock units on Mars is a huge limitation to our understanding of the geologic history.

Lots more here.