From The “Not Until You Drive A Stake Through Her Heart” Department — There’s a brouhahah a brewin’ in the U.K. over whether or not Margaret Thatcher should receive a full-blown state funeral. This online poll by the Manchester Guardian suggests that most Britons are against the idea, but that hasn’t stopped the rumor (pardon me, rumour) mill in the tabloid press. The story has been making the go-rounds for a long time, as this 2006 denial from Tony Blair’s office shows, but apparently current PM Gordon Brown has had a change of mind and the funeral is back on. This editorial at UK news blog “The First Post”, by a fellow with the dreadfully-Wodehousian name of Peregrine Worsthorne, seems to think it’s a smashing idea, old chap. Of course, first she has to drop dead, which she presently shows no sign of doing.

From The “But NOW What Do We Freak Out About?” Department — I hope you didn’t throw away your overpriced Nalgene water bottles a while back when the media turned on the Panic Alarm over a nebulous remark about Bisphenol-A in a Canadian medical report. ‘Cuz here’s a newer study that rather strognly concludes that BPA is utterly harmless in the extremely low concentrations people are likely to ingest by using plastic water bottles. I see from that first link that Nalgene wasted no time getting rid of BPA in their plastic the minute the Panic Alarm was sounded, but you shouldn’t feel obligated to buy a new one if you’ve got a perfectly good one already.

From The “I’m Just A Gigolo” Department — Well lookee who’s one of the corporate sponsors of this year’s Democratic National Convention! Of course, the Obama campaign swears up and down that this has absolutely NOTHING to do with his lily-livered, back-stabbin’, chicken-shit decision to vote for the FISA bill with telecom immunity built in. If you say so, fellas. The Republican convention, which is scheduled to be held in the men’s room of Concourse A at the Minneapolis Airport, is being sponsored by KY Personal Lubricant. Maybe they’ll loan you some.

From The “A Smile Is Just A Frown Turned Upside Down” Department — Even the Bushies have to admit that the economy is well and truly fucked at this point. Witness Dubya’s change of heart about signing the mortgage relief bill today. One way you can tell that the conservatives have finally owned up to their mistakes is by those head shots that look like engravings that appear in the Wall Street Journal. According to Columbia Journalism Review and Conde Nast Portfolio, the pictures (which use a technique called “stippling”) of various financial prognosticators and doomed Bush officials have been redone to express gloomier sentiments, as you can see by the pictures of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson above. Of course, these guys have tons of money safely stockpiled in gold bullion somewhere, so it’s not like they’re feeling the pinch, they just want us to know they’re taking it seriously.

From The “Better Luck Next Time” Department — You will recall the story about South African runner Oscar Pistorius, who won the right to try out for his Olympic track team despite being a double amputee. The argument that had been made against him was that his prosthetics gave him an unfair advantage over normally-abled runners. I guess they didn’t help him enough, because he did not qualify for the team. I don’t know if he still has time to try a favorite trick of past Olympians and claim some other nationality in order to weasel his way onto a different team, or if he’ll just have to wait until 2012.

And lastly, from our “So You Think You’re So Damn Smart?” Department — Here’s a little quiz from the Pew Center for Research that lets you see how well you measure up to your fellow Americans on news awareness. Twelve questions, pretty much all softballs, and all multiple choice to boot. See if you have been paying attention to the news lately. I got a perfect 12, putting me in the 97th percentile. The median score is an unbelivably depressing 50th percentile.