THE COTILLION rounds up posts by women bloggers.

AIRBRUSHING AT THE BBC:

Britain’s first bus bombing took place barely half a mile from the BBC’s central London headquarters, and for a day or so after last Thursday’s multiple bomb attacks the BBC, the influential leftist daily Guardian and even the British-based global news agency Reuters all seemed suddenly to discover the words “terrorism” and “terrorist.” In Saturday’s Guardian, for example, one or other of these words appeared on each of the first 11 pages.

In marked contrast to BBC reports about bombs on public transport in Israel – bombs which in some cases were even worse than those in London since some were specifically aimed at children and most were packed with nails, screws, glass and specially-sharpened metal shards in order to maximize injuries – terms like “guerrilla,” “militant,” “activist” or “fighter” were suddenly nowhere to be seen. . . .

BUT THE hope of many of the British taxpayers forced to fund the BBC that it had finally come to its senses and would henceforth call terror by its proper name turned out to be short-lived. By Friday, the BBC’s World Service was slowly reverting to its old habits, both on air and on line. (Its domestic news broadcasts have for the time being continued using the word “terrorist.”)

Presumably hoping that no one would notice, the BBC subtly and retroactively altered its initial texts about the bombs on both its British and international Web sites. Unfortunately for the BBC, however, previous versions of its webpages remained easily accessible to all on Google, and enterprising British bloggers, long-fed up with the BBC’s bias, recorded the changes.

I don’t mind people making minor changes or corrections without noting it — it seems a bit pretentious to me when bloggers note that they changed a comma, as if this will matter to historians of the 25th century — but this was a big deal, and lots of people commented on it at the time. Changing things stealthily after the fact seems a bit, well, creepy, and certainly doesn’t enhance my trust for the BBC.

NANOTECHNOLOGY is bringing great strides in toilet freshness.

DEVELOPMENTS REGARDING NORTH KOREA aren’t getting a lot of attention right now, what with the important shark attacks, etc., but Gateway Pundit has a roundup, with video.

DEREK LOWE: “I’ve known some pretty good Brazilian scientists, but the country isn’t up to being able to discover and develop its own new ones. (Very few countries are; you can count them on your fingers.) So I’ve saved my usual justification for last: if Brazil decides to grab an HIV medication that other people discovered, tested, and won approval for, who’s going to make the next one for them?”

SKIPPY WANTS A MILLION HITS — follow this link if you want to help him achieve his goal.

TIM CAVANAUGH: “While the more ideological anti-Rovians comically pretend to be motivated by a newfound concern for the CIA’s integrity, I just want to see the fur fly.”

There’s certainly a lot of something flying, but I’m not sure it’s fur. Tom Maguire has a roundup.

MY BROTHER TURNED 25 TODAY (this brother, not this one), and we had a party for him. But for reasons that the photo at right should make clear, we didn’t fire up the grill as planned. The rotisserie notch in the grill lid made a perfect birdhouse entrance, I guess. I don’t know when the eggs will hatch, but there was plenty of mom-and-dad bird traffic as we watched.

HUGH HEWITT INTERVIEWED NAN ARON about judicial confirmations tonight. Radioblogger has the transcript.

HERE’S A YEAR FIVE PROGRESS REPORT on the National Nanotechnology Initiative, from the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.

Background and summary here.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF REVOLUTIONS is up, with posts on the pro-democracy movement worldwide.

CHANA’AD BAHRAINI has photos from an antiterrorism protest in Bahrain.

WHY THEY HATE US:

We know very well what the “grievances” of the jihadists are.

The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won’t abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor’s liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

FOR a few moments yesterday, Londoners received a taste of what life is like for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose Muslim faith does not protect them from slaughter at the hands of those who think they are not Muslim enough, or are the wrong Muslim.

It is a big mistake to believe this is an assault on “our” values or “our” way of life. It is, rather, an assault on all civilisation.

Read the whole thing, in which Christopher Hitchens explains the facts of life to the clueless.

JOHN FUND NOTES that opposition to Kelo spans the political divide.

As it should. Excerpt:

In 1954 the Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. But that same year it also ruled in Berman v. Parker that government’s power of eminent domain could be used to seize property in order to tear down “blighted” areas.

It soon became clear that too often urban renewal really meant “Negro removal,” as cities increasingly razed stable neighborhoods to benefit powerful interests. That helps explain why 50 years later so many minority groups are furious at the Supreme Court’s decision last month to build on the Berman precedent and give government a green light to take private property that isn’t “blighted” if it can be justified in the name of economic development.

I’m surprised at how much resonance this issue has. I think some smart politicians will make it an issue in 2006 and 2008, and I think it will come up in Supreme Court confirmation hearings, too.

UPDATE: Here’s a report on legislative responses to Kelo around the nation. (Via Volokh).

IS ILLINOIS SECEDING?

UPDATE: Jonathan Gewirtz emails:

Gov. Blagojevich is merely exercising his interpretation of the Second Amendment, which of course concerns the rights of states rather than individuals. Reminds me of a law review article I once read. . .

Heh. Indeed.

I’M SCHEDULED TO BE ON CAM EDWARDS’ SHOW at about 4:20, talking about genocide, the U.N., and the right to arms as a nascent international human right.

THE HOTLINE’S BLOGOMETER feature is up and running. It’s free to non-subscribers, too.

IN THE FUTURE, every cat will be famous for fifteen minutes.

UPDATE: But there’s a downside.

CARNIVAL-O-RAMA: This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up. So is the latest Carnival of Personal Finance. There’s also the Carnival of Liberty, and the fledgling Carnival of Music.

Meanwhile, the Indian blogosphere weighs in with the latest Blog Mela. If you’ve been looking to diversify your blog-reading, now’s your chance!

UPDATE: I forgot the Carnival of the Cars!

ANOTHER UPDATE: And the Carnival of Cordite!

THE INSTA-DAUGHTER is sitting next to me on the sofa, reading The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, a book that I liked a lot when I was 9. Our tastes aren’t the same, but it’s always cool when they overlap.

CAM EDWARDS EMAILS:

I’m in NYC this week, covering the UN’s 2nd Biennial Meeting on Small Arms and Light Weapons. We’ll have extensive coverage at www.nranews.com, including interviews with folks like Bob Barr, Tony Bernardo from the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action, Dave Kopel, Tom Kilgannon from the Freedom Alliance, and hopefully yourself.

I’m supposed to be on about 4:20 Eastern time. It’s worth noting the role that small arms confiscation has played in the run-up to genocide in several parts of the world. I recommend this forthcoming article by Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen, along with this article from the Washington University Law Quarterly by Daniel Polsby and Don Kates. And here’s my column from a couple of years ago suggesting that the right to arms should be an international human right.

The U.N. seems to feel differently, of course, but given its record of supineness — if not outright complicity — in the face of genocide, that isn’t much of an objection.

PODCASTING from Tehran.

MORE ADVICE for aspiring law professors. And if you missed it over the weekend, read this post. It occurs to me that the wider availability of this kind of information from academic bloggers — information that used to be available mostly to people who attended a few top schools that groom their graduates for academic careers — will serve to weaken the relative position of the top schools. Just another example of the Internet’s hierarchy-flattening effect.

UPDATE: Thoughts on blogs and academia — making hiring committees look kind of bad — can be found here.

GOOD NEWS for independent filmmakers.

ANGRY GAIA WORSHIPPERS will be disappointed in Dennis’s meager damage toll. But take heart:

An elderly man seeking shelter from Hurricane Dennis was found dead at the Pensacola Civic Center about 1:45 a.m. today, Escambia County Sheriff Ron McNesby said.

The 77-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was found in a restroom, according to sheriff’s reports.

Initial indications are that he died of a heart attack. Family members were at the shelter with him.

Also, Florida officials reported the first fatality tied to Hurricane Dennis was a 3-year-old boy who died Friday in Walton County.

The child fell out of a van during evacuation preparations. Florida Highway Patrol Col. Chris Knight said he had no further details.

Take that, decadent Western materialists!