Too good not to blog, not good enough to warrant their own post: links to tide you over until the a.m.

· The hammer’s coming down on Iran … very, very gently.

Iran is not an imminent threat and sanctions against the Islamic Republic would be a “bad idea”, the UN nuclear watchdog chief has warned.

“We need to lower the pitch,” Mohamed ElBaradei said….

Speaking in Qatar, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief said his “message to Iran” was “the international community is getting impatient“.

Here’s the LGF archive of posts on Iran’s Manhattan Project. It stretches back two and a half years. Now here’s Condoleezza Rice, today:

She called Thursday’s talks an “opening discussion” about the diplomatic road ahead regarding Iran, but indicated that targeted sanctions against the Iranian government were likely options.

“A lot depends on what the Iranians do” in response, Rice said.

· C&F on Iran. Ahmadinejad’s not the only Shiite in the region who lets his mail pile up, though. Likewise, Condi Rice had to cancel her visit to a mosque in Blackburn today due to fears of an “invasion.” Lileks blames America’s image problem.

· Muslim leaders on nukes: Tayyip Erdogan says no one should have them, Amr Moussa says everyone should have them.

Nuclear energy programs, that is. Like Iran has.

· Eight armed thugs accosted a man praying at a mosque in Islamabad on Wednesday and beat the hell out of him with rifle butts for five hours. And in this case, that’s not nearly as depressing as it sounds.

· South Carolina considers capital punishment for twice-convicted child molesters. Constitutionality prospects: dubious.

· Glenn Reynolds is having a tough week, so he gets a pass for missing the coolest nanotechnology ever. What a photo; it’s how Jeff Goldblum would have ended up if he hadn’t blown his head off at the end of “The Fly.”

More cool technology: the not-so-necessary and the urgently necessary.

· Finally, did you hear about that new superbomb the Pentagon’s testing? New York Times movie reviewer Manohla Dargis got hold of one and dropped it on Basic Instinct 2:

It should come as no surprise that “Basic Instinct 2,” the long-gestating follow-up to Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 blip on the zeitgeist screen, is a disaster of the highest or perhaps lowest order. It is also no surprise that this joyless calculation, which was directed by Michael Caton-Jones and possesses neither the first film’s sleek wit nor its madness, is such a prime object lesson in the degradation that can face Hollywood actresses, especially those over 40. Acting always involves a degree of self-abasement, but just watching trash like this is degrading.

There were no survivors.

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