ANDREW MARCUS has released a couple of clips from his forthcoming blog documentary. I’m a bit embarrassed by one of them, but you can see them here.

THIS SOUNDS PROMISING:

Scientists looking for easier and less-controversial alternatives to stem cells from human embryos said on Friday they found a potential source in placentas saved during childbirth. . . .

It is not yet certain that the cells they found are true stem cells, said Stephen Strom, who worked on the study. But they carry two important genes, called Oct 4 and nanog, which so far have only been seen on embryonic stem cells.

“We were just blown away when we found those two genes expressed in those cells,” Strom said in a telephone interview.

I hope it works out, but the state of scientific knowledge is still rather limited. Stay tuned.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!

NANOTECHNOLOGY ROUNDUP: Lots of people want to know more about nanotechnology. The Foresight Institute website (here) is a good place to start. There’s also a lot of good stuff at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology’s blog. There’s also a short, non-technical explanation of the technology, and some of its implications, here, in an article I wrote for the Environmental Law Reporter a while back.

Eric Drexler’s seminal book, Engines of Creation : The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, is still a must-read for people wanting to learn about the subject. A (much) more technical treatment can be found here, and a less-technical treatment can be found here.

I haven’t read Glenn Fishbine’s The Investor’s Guide to Nanotechnology and Micromachines, but it gets good reviews. And I recently reviewed J. Storrs Hall’s Nanofuture: What’s Next For Nanotechnology, which makes a nice introduction for laypeople.

MORE RIOTS IN IRAN: I’m skeptical of the official claim that “anarchists” are behind them.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

Investigators have concluded that the former chief of the Iraq oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, took kickbacks of at least $160,000 under the humanitarian operation and refused to cooperate with their probe, his lawyer said yesterday.

While the amount of money is small compared to the size of the program Sevan oversaw — one of the largest humanitarian operations in history — the findings would be a major blow because of his stature in the organization and the control he had over it.

Indeed. (Via Newsbeat1).

UPDATE: Some financial perspective here.

LOTS OF WAR NEWS at The Dawn Patrol, a regular feature of The Mudville Gazette.

NORM GERAS interviews Daniel Drezner.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE:

Imagine a cancer drug that can burrow into a tumor, seal the exits and detonate a lethal dose of anti-cancer toxins, all while leaving healthy cells unscathed.

MIT researchers have designed a nanoparticle to do just that.

The dual-chamber, double-acting, drug-packing “nanocell” proved effective and safe, with prolonged survival, against two distinct forms of cancers-melanoma and Lewis lung cancer-in mice.

The work will be reported in the July 28 issue of Nature, with an accompanying commentary. . . .

The team loaded the outer membrane of the nanocell with an anti-angiogenic drug and the inner balloon with chemotherapy agents. A “stealth” surface chemistry allows the nanocells to evade the immune system, while their size (200 nanometers) makes them preferentially taken into the tumor. They are small enough to pass through tumor vessels, but too large for the pores of normal vessels.

Once the nanocell is inside the tumor, its outer membrane disintegrates, rapidly deploying the anti-angiogenic drug. The blood vessels feeding the tumor then collapse, trapping the loaded nanoparticle in the tumor, where it slowly releases the chemotherapy.

The team tested this model in mice. The double-loaded nanocell shrank the tumor, stopped angiogenesis and avoided systemic toxicity much better than other treatment and delivery variations.

Faster, please. (Via NanoDot).

A WHILE BACK, RACKSPACE TURNED OVER INDYMEDIA SERVERS to the FBI. Now Declan McCullagh reports that this was because RackSpace didn’t know what it was doing, not because the FBI asked for the servers:

In October 2004, a federal prosecutor sent a subpoena to Rackspace Managed Hosting of San Antonio, Texas, as part of an investigation underway in Italy into an attempted murder. Under a mutual legal assistance treaty, the U.S. government is required to help other nations secure evidence in certain criminal cases.

The newly disclosed subpoena, which has been partially redacted, asks only for specific “log files.”

But Rackspace turned over the entire hard drive at the time, taking the server offline and effectively pulling the plug on more than 20 Independent Media Center Web sites for about a week.

Rackspace claimed at the time that the subpoena required the company to turn over the customer’s “hardware.”

Now that the documents have been unsealed by a federal judge in Texas, though, Rackspace is backpedalling.

If I were a Rackspace customer, I’d want some sort of assurance that they wouldn’t make this kind of mistake again. (Via SlashDot, many of whose commenters seem to be oblivious to the fact that the subpoena originated with the Italian government, not John Ashkkkroft).

TOUGHENING IMMIGRATION RULES IN BRITAIN:

LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday announced new deportation measures against those who foster hatred and advocate violence, as his government tries to counter Islamic extremists in Britain.

Blair said the government would draw up a list of extremist Web sites, book shops and organizations and said that involvement with them could be a trigger to deport foreign nationals.

Nice touch, announcing that right after Zawahiri’s message.

SILICON INSIDER: Moore’s Law hits the blogosphere.

UPDATE: Interesting comment from Mick Stockinger:

But the number of blogs doesn’t tell the whole story–posting volume also doubles at fantastic rates–every seven months. There are now 10.8 posts a second for the overall blogosphere.

Cool.

BRIAN MALONEY: “Was a veteran CBS radio reporter sacked after complaining about her spiked terrorism reporting?”

I HAVEN’T READ THIS REPORT FROM BROOKINGS ON IRAQ yet — too busy writing to read! — but a quick scroll through the charts and graphs suggests that there’s a lot we’re not hearing from media accounts.

UPDATE: Pierce Wetter has, and has posts here, here, and here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

DANIEL ORTEGA AND OTHER SANDINISTAS to be charged with war crimes.

I guess the folks who still idolize them need to wake up and smell the coffee.

UPDATE: Maybe even this coffee!

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE WRITES: “I find the NY Times’ reported effort to dig into the adoption records of SCOTUS nominee John Roberts’ children totally despicable.”

My favorite take, though, is James Taranto’s: “And it’s very important to investigate every aspect of a prospective Supreme Court justice’s life. After all, he may threaten the right to privacy!”

WHO KILLED STEVEN VINCENT? The Mudville Gazette has a roundup.

BOB NOVAK WALKS OFF THE SET: Crooks & Liars has the video.

So does Ian Schwartz.

UPDATE: Kaus thinks he knows why Novak left.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Nick Gillespie doesn’t really care:

CNN has suspended Novak indefinitely. Which is no way to treat the guy who just delivered the only interesting bit of video on that flagging network since Jon Stewart called Tucker Carlson a dick on the now-cancelled Crossfire. And before that, it was what, Peter Arnett touring Iraqi baby milk factories?

Ouch.

GARY FARBER notes a very cool NASA video.

BILL HOBBS:

The great thing about the blogosphere (and its close cousin the onlinemagazineosphere) is the variety of voices, and if one blogger is busy or feeling a little burned out or just doesn’t have anything he or she feels driven to dig into and write about, there are always other bloggers busy blogging away.

Absolutely.

PUBLIUS REPORTS that the Andean Free Trade Agreement is progressing nicely in the wake of CAFTA’s passage.

BILL QUICK’s co-blogger Lastango is unhappy with the war effort, which he regards as insufficiently vigorous: “Unless the pillars of the Republican party shake, unless conservative desertion threatens the GOP with ruin at the coffers and the polls, unless the president and his close team fear disgrace, there will be no War On Terror.”

On the other hand, here’s a claim that Bush is trying too hard. Well, sort of.

UPDATE: Eric Scheie has further thoughts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The public seems uncertain.

STILL MORE KELO BLOWBACK. It’s a report on the effort to condemn Justice Souter’s house and build a hotel.

BRENDAN O’NEILL writes that Al Zawahiri is a rip-off artist. “He ‘s only doing what al-Qaeda bosses have consistently done since 9/11: taking the West’s own fear and loathing and throwing it back at us in a supposedly scary, finger-wagging statement to camera.”

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein has further thoughts on Zawahiri’s rhetoric.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Similar thoughts from the wonderfully-named Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War.

BLOGS OF WAR: John Hockenberry has an excellent article on milbloggers in the latest Wired. It’s now available online.