Jake Ellison

Now that Washington voters have put the State Liquor Control Board in charge of coming up with the rules and process for licensing the growing and selling of marijuana, we're wondering what the agency's new name should be.

City and county officials said yes to the $490 million deal, so Chris Hansen et al. have submitted a preliminary design for the proposed NBA arena to be located in Seattle’s SODO neighborhood.

The superhero phenomenon in Seattle led by Phoenix Jones is becoming a staple of nightlife in some of the violent and crime-ridden parts of the city.

It’s also turning into something like an official organization with dues paying members, health insurance and company cars. And, the team’s self-shot street videos continue to raise questions about the superheroes’ presence in the city …

The business side of superhero life

Okay, on Dec. 6 we can legally have pot in our pockets. But there are still at least four things to consider when contemplating your first legal marijuana possession – not counting how or if the federal laws will be enforced.

With the passage of laws approving same-sex marriages in several states including Washington, the National Organization for Marriage says it will keep up its efforts to make Starbucks suffer for its support of the laws.

The Colorado Independent, an online news organization, reported NOM’s efforts against Starbucks will be focused in the Middle East. The news org said it got the information from a news conference.

Winter winds and ocean currents are expected to deposit more debris on the Washington coast from the March 2011 tsunami in Japan.

State Ecology Department spokeswoman Linda Kent says the amount of debris declined over the summer after peaking in June, but it could pick up as weather patterns shift.

On Mars, Curiosity took a moment or two for self-identification, as if to say, this is me on Mars. The composite image however, almost looks as if Curiosity had a visitor.

Initiatives to legalize marijuana and create charter schools in Washington are pulling away toward approval in the latest poll by The Washington Poll and KCTS9. The poll is a project of the Center for Survey Research at the University of Washington.

Doesn’t this guy ever let his hair down? It’s Halloween! A long and important tradition, at least as far as I remember, was getting far too much candy and then hoarding it for months. (A parallel tradition only surfaced sometime after the 1980s: fighting over how much of the trick-or-treat take our kids were going to keep.)

Now though, there’s “healthier” candy … where’s the fun in that?

Well, Bill Gates is still just the second richest man in the world … so he has to stay on his game, evidently. So, he wrote on his blog that he’s enamored of great tasting candy that’s suppos’ to be good for you.

HONOLULU – A geologist tracking a tsunami in Hawaii says the first waves hitting shore are smaller than expected.

Gerard Fryer of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said Saturday night the largest wave was measured at 5 feet in Maui in the first 45 minutes.

Warning changes

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center had issued a tsunami warning for all Hawaiian islands Saturday night, hours after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake rocked an island off Canada's west coast. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie proclaimed an emergency, mobilizing extra safety measures.

In a blast from the past, the public radio show Bullseye dug up Seattle’s connection to the first video showing the genesis of computer-generated images or graphics in movies.

In 1980, Boeing employee and University of Washington graduate Loren Carpenter presented a two-minute computer generated movie call “Vol Libre” that almost immediately revolutionized moviemaking.

In a video presented at the Seattle Police Foundation’s awards banquet Friday the two officers presented with Excellence Awards explained how they found and confronted the Café Racer killer.

On May 30, Ian Stawicki shot and killed four people at the café in north Seattle and wounded another. He later killed a woman in downtown Seattle in a carjacking. He then drove the woman’s car to West Seattle where he shot and killed himself as police closed in.

The contest for designing the top of the Seattle Space Needle went from six choices to one - trees.

Instead of increasing kids’ isolation, a new study from the University of Washington suggests life on the digital frontier is helping kids reach developmental milestones.

Phones and social media help kids share personal problems and build a sense of belonging, the UW noted in a press release.

What would Seattle look like with all of its people gone? Well, Los Angeles film director Ross Ching wondered the same thing, but not just about Seattle.

Ching’s ongoing time-lapse video project called the Empty America series has been to San Francisco and now Seattle. He intends to do New York City and Washington D.C. next. His video of an "empty Seattle" was published this morning.