Mr. Mike's Links-a-go-go!

Lots of links, so here we go:

* New Zealand is about to start denying citizenship to babies of immigrants (legal or illegal) who are born in their country. This follows news that Ireland is also about to do the same. Read the discussion for thoughts on why this won't happen here and why NZ and Ireland are doing it.

* Gotta love the way this article wants to have it both ways:

European voters punished leaders in Britain, Italy and the Netherlands for getting involved in Iraq - but also turned their ire on the war's chief opponents German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac over local issues, projections showed Sunday.

My reading is that voters are skeptical of further Euro-bonding, the Euro-right is rising, and that most Europeans don't really care about the Euro-Federal government.

* The Cassini-Huygens probe has arrived in-system at Saturn and is sending back pictures from her outermost moon: rocky, cratered Phoebe. Coming at the end of the month will be pics of Saturn!

* It's a controversial idea: Now that Iran has said it almost has nuclear bombs in its national armamemnt, maybe we should act pre-emptively and missile-strike their facilities. After all, it's what Israel did with Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility. It would set Iran back quite a few years and buy us some time to get their mullacracy overthrown. Minimal casualties for Iran now might mean saving hundreds or thousands of Israeli lives (or European or American lives) later.

* Maoist movie reviews! You can't make this stuff up. Go to Dr. Frank's What's it? (here and here) first, then dive into the archives. Minutes of hilarity guaranteed, oppressed capitalist masses!

* Thanks to regular commenter Lance for pointing me to this column from The Tennessean's Larry Daughtrey about the Memphis Promenade and Nashville's riverfront. Turns out the situation is even more muddled than you might think, and that history has long and winding tendrils.

* England had their local elections this past weekend and the Labour party (Tony Blair's party) took a shellacking, losing big. But this is local, not national, and pundits over there say it doesn't necessarily mean bad news for Blair in next year's elections. More here.

* The challenge: Photoshop your favorite Star Trek character in their off-season job. Whee!

* A Mississippi doctor refuses to treat the daughter of the man who voted for limiting lawsuit awards in medical malpractice cases, citing conflict of interest.

* This picture of Bill and Hill nodding off at the Reagan National Funeral Service caught my eye because it has something no one seems to have commented on. Look at Bill's face, how elongated it looks and how he looks like he's sucking in his cheeks. That's exactly how he looked on camera! What is up with that? Botox problems? In a later photo at the unveiling of his White House portrait, he looked normal again. Something weird going on....

* Todd Anderson over at POPSHOT magazine has a fine meditation on what government is for. A quick read and well worth it.

* Here's a perfect example of bad science and overhyped results becoming "news." This guy posts an excerpt from a public-domain book on two ISPs, then writes to each claiming the texts are copyrighted. One immediately pulls the webpage; the other doesn't. From this, he gets all worked into a lather about "censorship" and "threats to the Internet." Worse, it got picked up and discussed on Slashdot.

* Go read this story about ice core samples from Antarctica that give us a good picture of global temps and air quality going back 800,000 years. Read it closely. It says that CO2 levels haven't been this high in 400,000 years, meaning that at some prior point it was this high! Why? It also notes that we are in a temporary period of global warmth and somewhat overdue for a return to Ice Age temps. So, is global warming bad, or what? It's all so confusing....

* And lastly, we have a public service webpage comparing Realdoll vs. Superbabe. Plastic love dolls go, er...head to head. As it were. NOT work safe!