OIL SPILL: Rudy Giuliani Slams Obama On Leadership.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Vote and comment on IMM/Foresight statement to President’s Council.

YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE IT FROM THE PICTURE: Porn Star Murder Suspect Had History Of Violence.

HMM: Colorado Dem: Actually, the White House offered me three jobs to quit the primary.

EUROCHAOS: “You just can’t save some people from themselves. . . . How astonishing that Germans have not only advanced beyond all the other reasons they used to be eager to use military force, but are now at least somewhat willing to chip in to make the world a safer, more stable place where we can all get rich. About the most sensible thing I’ve heard out of a German in decades. Unflinchingly Teutonic in its logic. And for stating this, they run him out.”

IF POLITICIANS ARE DENOUNCING BLOGGERS, bloggers must be doing something right.

MARKDOWNS ON Kitchen And Dining.

RICHARD COHEN bumps into reality.

OKAY, EARLIER I MENTIONED PolitZoid’s Money For Nothing stimulus video, but via William Sulik on Facebook I saw this gem from Weird Al Yankovic, putting the Beverly Hillbillies theme song to the Money for Nothing tune.

IT’S NOT JUST SESTAK: AP Sources: Admin talked jobs with Romanoff. “The Obama administration dangled the possibility of a government job for former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff last year in hopes he would forgo a challenge to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, officials said Wednesday, just days after the White House admitted orchestrating a job offer in the Pennsylvania Senate race.”

I, FOR ONE, WELCOME our new robot astronomers.

MARK TUSHNET:

I mentioned Elena Kagan in this post because my sense — based on no inside information, of course — is that her selection reflects a strategic calculation by President Obama similar to FDR’s. What the President wants is a Supreme Court that will stand aside when or if Congress enacts the programs the President favors, and is relatively indifferent to his nominees’ views on other questions.

Read the whole thing.

RISE OF THE REPLICATORS. “MakerBot is one of a range of desktop manufacturing plants being developed by researchers and hobbyists around the world. Their goal is to create a machine that is able to fix itself and, ultimately, to replicate.”

Neil Gershenfeld had a book on this phenomenon a while back, and I wrote a column about it.

SPACE COMPANIES get NASA’s attention. “For many years the entrepreneurial space industry–collectively called ‘NewSpace’–has criticized NASA as slow, bureaucratic, and difficult to deal with. NASA, in turn, has devoted the bulk of its spending to major aerospace companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, not the entrepreneurs. However, as NASA and the White House redirect U.S. space exploration efforts, NewSpace companies are finding fresh opportunities to work with NASA.”

JENIN REDUX: As Reality Unfolds About Flotilla, World Media Continues with Fictional Narrative. This is why people chiding Israel for poor PR miss the point. It doesn’t really matter what they do, since the press will just lie about it. That seems an argument for much less restraint, rather than more. . . .

MARKDOWNS ON DVD and Blu-Ray.

REASON TV: How To Save A Dying Ocean From Overfishing.

ANOTHER GREEN DREAM TURNS BROWN?

THE TEN BIGGEST OIL SPILLS IN HISTORY, plus some hopeful background: “The largest oil spill the world has seen exacted little permanent damage on coral ecosystems and local fisheries, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission at Unesco. The study concluded that about half the oil evaporated, one-eighth of it was recovered and another quarter washed ashore, mostly in Saudi Arabia.”

A BREAST-CANCER VACCINE? Faster, please.

HMM: Artery Calcification, Heart Disease, Erectile Dysfunction Link.

NO WORRIES, WE’VE GOT “SMART DIPLOMACY” FOR THAT: “In the meantime, we should pay attention to a growing concern in the southeastern Mediterranean: A bankrupt Greece has alienated its patrons in northern Europe, has alienated the U.S. through years of anti-American rhetoric, has little or no financial resources, and will be facing cutbacks in its military — and a newly assertive Turkey is carving out a position of influence in the region as the real, and far more serious, representative of Islamic government, perhaps in the fashion of the old Ottomans.”

Remain calm. All is well.

MOVE OVER ETHANOL: A car powered by Diet Coke and Mentos. “Sadly, the economics of scale required to make Coke Zero and Mentos an actual substitute for gasoline and diesel make the newfound fuel unlikely to gain widespread acceptance. For what it’s worth, it apparently takes 108 two-liter bottles of Coke Zero along with 648 Mentos to travel exactly 221 feet.”

THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY Mickey Kaus’s new TV ad.

SOON, WE’LL BE MISSING JIMMY FREAKING CARTER: The “story line” of Obama’s presidency is “passivity, detachment, acquiescence and compromise” — says Maureen Dowd. With intermittent bouts of thuggishness, happily usually ineffectual.

UPDATE: Barney Frank distancing himself?