AUSTIN BAY writes that Walter Cronkite doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Walter who?

THIS IS COOL: “After a seven-year journey, a NASA space capsule returned safely to Earth on Sunday with the first dust ever fetched from a comet, a cosmic bounty that scientists hope will yield clues to how the solar system formed.”

I hope it doesn’t unleash the dreaded Cometary Plague, of course. Not likely.

OVER AT MONDO HOLLYWOOD, an interview with Patricia Heaton about her new documentary, described as “Waiting for Guffman meets Spellbound.”

I liked Spellbound.

UPDATE: More on Patricia Heaton’s documentary here.

HUGH HEWITT has an application questionnaire for GOP leadership aspirants.

UPDATE: Bob Ney steps down.

CODE PINK and Nancy Pelosi: Gateway Pundit looks at a troubled relationship.

OOPS: Another reason why newspapers need affirmative action for people with military experience.

UPDATE: More on the NYT’s photo error, here.

PAMELA ANDERSON’S BUST: I’ve always preferred thighs to breasts myself.

UPDATE: Original recipe, or extra crispy? I prefer original recipe, though extra crispy can be tasty, too.

DANIEL DREZNER announces a winner in his Senatorial-dumbness contest. It was a hardfought battle!

LAST WEEK’S INAUGURAL PODCAST featured music from Audra and the Antidote, both at the beginning and along with the interview with Audra Coldiron that appears at about 22:45. Lots of people liked it, and some people wanted to know where to get more. You can get it through their website (here’s a direct link to the downloads page) if you like. I first encountered the band back pre-InstaPundit, when I was running a series of now-defunct Internet radio stations, one of which (Nashtunes.com) featured some of their stuff. I’ve been a fan ever since.

THE HISTORY CARNIVAL is up! So is the new Haveil Havalim, and the Carnival of the Recipes!

I fell a bit behind with the carnivals last week, so here’s the Carnival of Education, and the Carnival of Homeschooling. Also, the Carnival of the Vanities. And there are lots more carnivals at BlogCarnival.com, of course.

UPDATE: There’s also the Carnival of the Cats, up at Niobium. (Via Sissy Willis).

HOWARD KURTZ has a report on the Republican leadership race, noting a resurgence of the spirit of 1994. The Republicans need to get in touch with that spirit, if they want to remain in power. “Shadegg has drawn his strongest backing from economic conservatives. CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow said on his blog that if Shadegg were to succeed Tom DeLay in the No. 2 House post, it ‘would stop the misbegotten march toward big government conservatism and budget excess which has gotten the Republican Congress into so much trouble.'”

I don’t know enough about Shadegg to be sure, but somebody needs to stop that “misbegotten march.” And regardless of who’s elected, we need to see reforms that will ensure a lot more transparency and accountability.

TIGERHAWK has thoughts on “Remembering May, the ‘gang of 14’ and the vindication of various people.”

TOP TEN BLOGGER LIES. Heh.

CHRIS ANDERSON looks at the demise of big-box music stores: Makes sense to me. I still buy CDs — usually through Amazon, or my local store, The Disc Exchange, which is very good at carrying local bands — but I haven’t darkened the doors of a Sam Goody’s, etc., in years. And I buy more and more stuff via iTunes. Ed Driscoll has similar experience.

And, by the way, my last album (Mobius Dick’s Embrace the Machine) is now available on iTunes. I don’t know whether Got Dick? or Indistinguishable from Magic will be going up later or not. I guess it depends on how Mobius Dick’s dozens of fans react!

THIS IS INTERESTING:

Female soldiers have long fought off perceptions that their bodies just aren’t equipped to handle the rigors of training and warfare. But a decade’s worth of research suggests that women are hardly as fragile as critics once thought.

A new study by military researchers found that many assumptions about female bodies are “astoundingly wrong.” Women are just as good as men — in some cases, perhaps even better — at handling intense exercise and decompression sickness.

The findings, reported in the Journal of Women’s Health, don’t change the fact that women — on the whole — are smaller and less powerful than men. Still, they suggest “that human physiology is more consistent than would be suggested by the social embellishments and exaggerations” that come about when there isn’t any actual research, said Col. Karl Friedl, commander of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine and co-author of the report (.pdf).

Read the whole thing.

“THE OXYGEN OF PUBLICITY:” Clive Davis notices something odd from the BBC.

AVIAN (AND REGULAR) FLU UPDATE:

The government, for the first time, is urging doctors not to prescribe two antiviral drugs commonly used to fight influenza after discovering that the predominant strain of the virus has built up high levels of resistance to them at alarming speed.

A whopping 91 percent of virus samples tested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this flu season proved resistant to rimantadine and amantadine, a huge increase since last year, when only 11 percent were.

The discovery adds to worries about how to fight bird flu should it start spreading among people. Health officials had hoped to conserve use of two newer antiviral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, because they show activity against bird flu, unlike the older drugs.

Now, because of the resistance issue, the newer drugs are being recommended for ordinary flu, increasing the chances that resistance will develop more rapidly to them, too, as they become more commonly used.

Just one more thing to worry about. And another reason to push harder for new, better antiviral drugs.

PEAKTALK: “One of the key factors in this ongoing federal election campaign has been the extraordinary about-face of the Canadian mainstream media.”

OVER AT MONDO HOLLYWOOD, Andrew Marcus and Clay Champlin interview Gary Sinise about his aid program, Operation Iraqi Children, and why supporting the troops shouldn’t be seen as a “conservative” phenomenon.

UPDATE: Vik Rubenfeld is blogging from the festival, too.

MORE DEVELOPMENTS IN IRAQ, from Iraq the Model. (Via PJM). Related post from The Belmont Club here.

DO I GET ANY OTHER CHOICES? Phil Bowermaster looks at Singularity literature and asks if God is more like Zeus, or Bill Joy.

MONDO HOLLYWOOD is another PJ Media blog covering Hollywood, and it’s hosting the ongoing reporting from the American Film Renaissance by Andrew Marcus.

GREYHAWK AT THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE is flexing absolute moral authority.

I agree that Murtha’s Vietnam record isn’t the issue, and shouldn’t be. Rather it’s his behavior regarding the current war that’s the disgrace.

UPDATE: Afghanistan Veteran Sgt. Mark Seavey punishes Reps. Murtha and Moran, and gets a rather limp response.

MICHAEL TOTTEN reports: “Egypt doesn’t do many things better than Lebanon, but it does do the Internet better. Free wi-fi is both fast and ubiquitous. So I went to a cozy restaurant and pub, ordered a four-cheese pasta from the waiter, flipped open my laptop, and poked around the Web for contact information for the Muslim Brotherhood.”

STRATEGYPAGE on Algeria:

The most able and active Islamic terrorists have apparently fled the country, and they are being detected, and sometimes arrested, in Europe, Canada and some Arab countries. Some have been found (usually dead) in Iraq and Afghanistan. These Algerians overseas often operate as part of the Algerian GSPC, or the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group. The GSPC has more success recruiting among Algerians in Europe, where memories of the atrocities and terrorist tactics of the GSPC in Algeria are dim. In Algeria, GSPC is seen as a bunch of bloodthirsty fanatics.

Islamic terrorists: To know them is to despise them.