CHRISTIAN BALE, a thorough professional.

ACCELERATING BONE REPAIR with titanium nanotubes.

ED MORRISSEY ISN’T BUYING CHRIS DODD’S REFI PLAN:

Dodd still has yet to make the mortgage papers public as he promised over six months ago. This looks like an attempt at a bait-and-switch to avoid the public disclosure of records that would show Dodd as knowingly accepting these sweetheart deals at below-market rates as a gift from a company that Dodd oversaw. Given the long wait we’ve had for that full disclosure, I’d say that Dodd realizes he has something to hide.

Refinancing now has nothing to do with investigating whether influence peddling took place before, either. If anything, it looks more like an attempt to bury the evidence than of a sudden commitment to clean government.

Indeed.

BYRON YORK: “While everyone is looking at Tom Daschle’s tax problems (I am too, working on a story for tomorrow morning), a new issue has arisen concerning another Obama cabinet nomination, that of Rep. Hilda Solis to be Secretary of Labor.”

HAMAS RALLIES at the Minnesota State Capitol. People are scared of them. They’re not scared of anyone at the moment. And, really, why should they be?

PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES: More wi-fi options for commuters.

FOOTBALL-FIELD-SIZED TRUCKS head to Canadian oil sands.

THE LATEST CONSUMER REPORTS has a bunch of new digital camera reviews. As with the big-screen tvs, the most noticeable thing is the drastic decline in price. Canon sweeps, with the $149 SD1100 taking top marks in the “subcompact” category, the $400 Powershot G10 winning in “compact,” and the $320 SX10 is winning in the “superzoom” category. They didn’t test my Lumix LX3, though, and I think it would be hard to beat.

OBSOLETE PLATFORM: Printing The NYT Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle.

STEVE GILL: Where’s Obama?

UPDATE: A look at media coverage from The Anchoress.

WHY EFFICIENT LIGHT BULBS fail to thrive. “Incandescent light sources typically are very flattering in terms of rendering skin and enhancing how we look. Consumers got used to a very high level of color quality in the home. Compact fluorescents can be some departure or produce less color quality in terms of rendering color inside a space. Some fluorescents are very good, but many are not. . . . There’s no reason today why we shouldn’t be using all energy efficient technologies in the home. The reason we’re not is consumers don’t like this technology.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: How forward-looking are we? “It’s armchair sociology, of course, but I’d argue that people have suddenly become much more focused on estimating their future income and expenses, rather than living paycheck to paycheck–hence the suddenly renewed interest in savings.”

MORE CHARGES OF human rights hypocrisy. “Obama supporter? Then you are now officially pro-torture.” Plus a heavy dose of I-told-you-so. More here.

UPDATE: Hilzoy says the L.A. Times report on rendition is misleading. (What? The LAT? Ridiculous!) Well, possibly. Hardly gets Human Rights Watch off the hook for hypocrisy, though.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A response to Hilzoy, Scott Horton, Glenn Greenwald, etc. from Prof. Darren Hutchinson.

THE OBAMA ERA: ALL THOSE OTHER PROBLEMS, plus a mirth deficit.

JOHN SCALZI ON Amusing Yourself Completely (and Legally) for $100 a Month.

CHRIS DODD WILL REFINANCE. He’s kidding, right?

HOW WASHINGTON REALLY WORKS: Tom Daschle, living lavishly off his name and connections.

USING HYBRID NUCLEAR REACTORS to eliminate nuclear waste.

Plus this observation: ‘If we do not get more nukes we are going to get more coal.”

AT TAXPROF, a Daschle tax roundup.

COOL: Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning. Still a few bugs in the system, though.

DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Reza Aslan vs. Peter Beinart.

DEREK LOWE: 10,000 hours to drug discovery?

HEH: Bratz Dolls May Give Young Girls Unrealistic Expectations Of Head Size.

A GOVERNMENT OF HELMSLEYS. Personally, I prefer “An Army of Leonas,” but then, I would . . . .

But in the era of Hope And Change, should we need to point this out? “Geithner and Daschle appear to have privileges that other people do not have, the freedom from the obligation to avoid paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes until the moment when their tax delinquencies becomes politically inconvenient to the Obama Administration.” Apparently, we do.

IN THE MAIL: From Alex Berenson, The Silent Man.