BETTER MRI IMAGING, with nanotechnology.

A POSITIVE REVIEW OF SWING VOTE, from John Hinderaker.

IN THE MAIL: John Zogby’s The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream.

MICHAEL BARONE on the election and the polls:

Mainstream media provided lavish coverage of Barack Obama’s trip abroad the week of July 21-25 and predicted he would get a bounce in the polls. Some of his supporters believe he has put the election away. Other observers employ the hackneyed and meaningless phrase, “It’s his to lose.”

The poll numbers tell a different and more nuanced story. The two national tracking polls showed Obama getting a bounce while he was in Europe, especially after his speech before 200,000 or so Berliners in the Tiergarten. Gallup showed him rising from a 46 percent-42 percent lead on July 22 to a 49 percent-40 percent lead on July 26. The Rasmussen tracking poll showed him rising from a 47 percent-45 percent lead on July 23 (reflecting the previous days’ polling) to 49 percent to 43 percent on July 26.

But over the next several days, Obama bounced back down. Gallup showed him leading by a statistically insignificant 45 percent to 44 percent as of July 31. That’s the closest the race has been in Gallup all that month. Rasmussen had him down to 48 percent to 46 percent on the same day. The world tour bounce has begun to look like a bubble.

But read the whole thing, as it’s not exactly jolly news for McCain, either. I wonder how “none of the above” would poll?

MICKEY KAUS: “Jay Leno Beats NBC News.” Which makes somebody a joke, and it’s not Leno.

EXTREME MORTMAN on why control of Congress matters.

MORE ON CANADA’S “HUMAN RIGHTS” KANGAROO COURTS: When all else fails, change the subject. “I think the battle for freedom of speech is going pretty well, even though it’s summertime. Human rights commissions are being ridiculed on an almost daily basis in the media; their coalition is starting to fracture under the stress, as evidenced by the defection of the B’nai Brith; and the ‘lawfare’ being waged against me and other critics of the HRCs hasn’t worked, largely because of the broad public support expressed through the Internet (thank you, again).”

RANDALL PARKER: “The CO2 that dissolves into the ocean continues to worry me more than global warming. . . . We have lots of ways available to cool the planet with cheap affordable climate engineering. So global warming seems reversible if it becomes a problem. But how to deacidify the ocean if high atmospheric CO2 causes lots of CO2 to dissolve into the ocean?” All the more reason to switch to a nuclear-electric economy as soon and as much as possible.

MIT’S “SOLAR BREAKTHROUGH:” All Hype or a New Hope?

MEGAN MCARDLE ON GDP DISTRIBUTION: “When you see the map, it becomes radically apparent just how firmly Britain was the root of the Industrial revolution. With the lone exception of Japan, the darkest places on the map are either next to Britain, or former British colonies. And aside from Saudi Arabia and Chile, all the growth seems to spread outward from those Anglosphere points of infection. Nowhere, not even Saudi Arabia, has the income density of Western Europe and North America.”

BLOGGER PROBLEM FIXED: At least, the Insta-Wife can post again.

JIM LINDGREN: “I have never understood where Congress acquired the power to order people to enter into contracts that they don’t want to sign.”

SOME COOL COMMERCIAL SPACE NEWS: “SpaceX has just test fired nine engines at full thrust in the full Falcon 9 configuration, a test I was not expecting to see until this fall at the earliest.”

Plus, Rocket Racer photos from XCor.

HMM: Obama shifts, says he may back offshore drilling. On closer reading it looks more like a waffle — or maybe a straddle — than a full-blown flipflop. But there’s still hope.

UPDATE: It’s not playing too well on the left: “Add off shore drilling to that list of Democratic principles Barack Obama does not stand for. I hope Obama gets some votes from Republicans come November because the Bush Enabler sure is on board with many of their core values. Off shore drilling, Church and State, gun control, war funding, death penalty, FISA . . . and the list grows.”

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Requiem For the Los Angeles Newspaper Industry.

ERIC SCHEIE ON Obama and inflation.

TOOK SITEMETER OFF THE PAGE: here’s why.

THIS IS NEWS, BUT NOT SURPRISING NEWS:

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials. The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Obviously, we need to start feeding them disinformation at a crucial moment.

IS THIS THE KIND OF JUDGE ThinkProgress hopes Obama will appoint?

THOUGHTS ON FREE SPEECH AND THE INTERNET: Plus, who to beware of: “People who want the most freedom for themselves and the least for you.”

MICHAEL SILENCE on the polls:

I’m surprised to find some people puzzled over the fact Obama didn’t get a boost in his poll numbers following his nine-day trip to Europe. Hello! He spent more than a week kowtowing to the people we got the hell away from more than 230 years. Seems to me McCain goaded him into a sure-fire momentum stopper.

Heh. Maybe he’s running a shrewder campaign than we think.

MEGAN MCARDLE ON G.M.’S STAGGERING LOSSES:

GM’s historical pension and healthcare obligations, and the vast difficulties they have in permanently laying off workers, mean that the company had to maximize cash flow as best they could. Indeed, I find it interesting that I spent so many years listening to europhile economists assure me that the Germans were going to kick our ass because their cooperative management style, with labor having a seat on the board, allowed them to engage in long-term planning. The industries in America where labor has the most power are the ones that have the hardest time making strategic choices to lower profits now in order to raise them in the future.

It does look that way.

THE MAKING AND UNMAKING of the American hovercraft.

PORKBUSTERS ON PATROL GETS FEATURED IN A FOXNEWS STORY:

USED PRIUSES going for more than new?