Thursday!

* Most girls as young as 6 are already beginning to think of themselves as sex objects, according to a new study of elementary school-age kids in the Midwest.

* Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.

* Bruce/Batman, distracted by his mommy-daddy-me orphan issues, has not realized that he has become the villain. Batman Occupied.

* So you say you want to be vice president.

* And just because: What Playing Cricket Looks Like to Americans.

‘Manifestly Absurd’ and Real Vetting Round-Up

Just a few more politics links. Sorry if this isn’t your thing—I get caught up in this stuff.

* Chris at Cynical-C links to a clip of Chris Matthews demolishing Republican congressman Adam Putnam on the Palin selection. I saw him do this yesterday—and like a lot of things I see Matthews do lately it makes me think he really does want that Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

* He’s also got news that Palin has never actually issued an order to the Alaskan National Guard. georgia10 has the rest of your real vetting round-up.

* Via Srinivas, Dan Froomkin says what so few outside the blogosphere will admit:

One of the problems with modern political journalism is that when something manifestly absurd takes place, as long as there are people willing to argue both sides, our top reporters feel obliged to treat it as deserving of serious debate.

Case in point: John McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

* And David Plouffe has a nice rejoinder to the “community organizer, ha ha” stuff:

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

And it’s no surprise that, after eight years of George Bush, millions of people have found that by coming together in their local communities they can change the course of history. That promise is what our campaign has been about from the beginning.

Midday

Midday.

* Scott McCloud introduces the world to Google Chrome.

* Philip Pullman’s Top 40 books.

* Writing tips from Walter Benjamin.

X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

XI. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

…

XIII. The work is the death mask of its conception.

* FailureToVet-gate hits the New York Times. And Daily Kos has a round-up of pundit reactions, including David Brooks giving up the ghost and Richard Cohen invoking Incitatus, the horse Caligula made consul.

* And Dark Roasted Blend visits the fantastic megastructures of Paolo Soleri, the thinker behind arcology.

Morning Links

Morning links.

* The protests in St. Paul turned violent yesterday, with police tear-gassing the crowd.

They had come in their thousands – grandmothers, veterans, young families and even disgruntled Republicans bearing banners and peace flags, to demand an end to the five-year conflict. And for the most part, the demonstrations passed off peacefully.

But once the main antiwar march had finished, splinter groups embarked on a violent rampage, smashing windows, slashing car tyres, throwing bottles and even attacking Republican delegates attending the nearby Xcel Centre.

Many of those involved identified themselves to reporters as anarchists. These protesters, some clad in black, wreaked havoc by damaging property and starting at least one fire.

* Washington Monthly has a nice pair of posts detailing the entire Sarah Palin fiasco so far, if you haven’t been following the coverage closely here and elsewhere. And for a good articulation of the gambling frame I’ve been pushing as the best way to understand John McCain, see Josh Marshall.

* Barack Obama loves science and science funding.

* Google releases its long-awaited browser, Chrome, tomorrow. MetaFilter’s talking about it.

* Neal Stephenson and the 10,000-Year Clock. There’s more Stephenson links at MeFi.

* “The Night Gwen Stacy Died”: The End of Innocence and the Birth of the Bronze Age.

The Sarah Palin Chronicles

More and more evidence mounts that the McCain camp didn’t actually vet Palin at all. They didn’t read a single article in the Wasilla newspaper, and they didn’t talk to Walt Monegan, the man at the center of her still open abuse of power ethics investigation—nor, apparently, did they talk to anyone else. They’ve been pushing as one of her few notable accomplishments her opposition to the “Bridge to Nowhere,” which has turned out to be, well, bullshit. Nearly recalled as mayor, she left the small town of Wasilla over $20 million dollars in debt. That’s after she tried to censor the town library and fire long-time town employees without cause for “not fully supporting her efforts to govern.”

Oh, and her husband works for BP, one of the largest employers in Alaska, which is not in any way a conflict of interest.

And those are just the highlights. Given all this, I get a sinking feeling when I see how much attention the already ubiquitous, totally moronic baby smear is getting. Even Andrew Sullivan is pushing it now, though he’s careful to hedge his bets. That’s just not a basket in which I want to put Barack’s eggs; it’s the raw irresponsibility of John McCain’s cynical and poorly thought-out VP pick—a roll of the dice from a chronic gambler—that we should be talking about, not whether a seventeen-year-old girl does or doesn’t have a “baby bump” in a given photo.

The Juno/Juneau parody poster on Gawker made me laugh, but that’s the only upside here. I don’t think we’d want anything to do with the baby thing even if by some impossible chance it all turns out to be true.

John McCain says he made this decision because he looked into Putin’s Palin’s eyes the one time they met and saw a soul mate. The only thing we should be saying about Palin is that this is not the way to make the most important decision of your candidacy. The Palin pick is stone-cold proof that John McCain has neither the judgment nor the temperament to be president.

So leave her kids alone. Keep your heads on straight, netroots.