Emitting dangerous quantities of nishitrons. Weep for the pandas. Haven’t they suffered enough? One panda was killed and another is still missing, and nobody knows how many wild pandas have died.

At RealClearMarkets, Steven Malanga observes the third anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London — which allows governments to use eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another to further economic development — by returning to the scene of the crime: [T]he very redevelopment project that sparked the Kelo lawsuit, an effort by the town of New London, Ct., to turn

Apparently, the surface responds to the electric charge on the skin of one’s fingers, and therefore won’t operate from the touch of one’s fingernails. And who requires them to have long nails? Teh Patriarcy, I presume. I’ve got news for you, ladies. One of the primary functions of the iPhone is to allow people to babble at one another, for hours and hours and hours at a distance. So shut

Zimbabwe’s Mugabe of Knighthood Phew! Close one! Queen Elizabeth II stripped Robert Mugabe of his ceremonial knighthood on Wednesday, revoking the honor amid new attempts to rebuke the president of Zimbabwe and express revulsion over human rights abuses in his country. The highly unusual move was the most eye-catching of several steps, which included decisions to press for new European Union sanctions against Mugabe’s regime, to ban Zimbabwe’s cricket team

Bastards! From Say Anything (who get a little too excited about it, in my view): With Democrat senator Barack Obama busy in the run-up to the US presidential polls, a group of well-wishers in the capital have decided to send him a symbol of his lucky charm, Lord Hanuman, to help him emerge victorious. Obama’s representative Carolyn Sauvage-Mar on Tuesday received a gold-plated two-feet-high idol which she will pass it

Bastards! Friedman: What seems to have happened in Iraq in the last few months is that the Iraqi mainstream has finally done some liberating of itself. With the help of the troop surge ordered by President Bush, the mainstream Sunni tribes have liberated themselves from the grip of Al Qaeda in their provinces. And the Shiite mainstream — represented by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Army — liberated

Advertising Age reports: After declining political advertising since its inception in 1981, MTV is reversing course. The Viacom MTV Networks channel — once known for round-the-clock music videos and now home to a host of reality shows — says it will now take political ads, though only from political candidates and party political committees, not from third parties. Any connection to Barack Obama’s announced desire to advertise on MTV is

Flipper flopper. (a Serr8d joint) Speaking of heavenly bodies and facial scars (consult Karl’s comments below): Why is Mars two-faced? Scientists say fresh evidence supports the theory that a monster impact punched the red planet, leaving behind perhaps the largest gash on any heavenly body in the solar system. Heh. And I would have thought it would be, y’know, Venus. Or Uranus, if you’re Brazilian.

One-time “consumer activist,” one-time election spoiler and fulltime nimrod Ralph Nader reportedly attacked Barack Obama in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News: “There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American,” Nader said. “Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos,

He might be smoking, but it would be at a cafe, hunched over a New York Times, an Atlantic magazine, his MacBook and some organic fruit-flavored tea, listening to Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” on his iPod. Wait . . . they allow you to smoke at a cafe? What are you smoking? Can’t wait till Senator Leahy starts organizing trips across the Mexican border to stock up on