It’s a new era in, um, target marketing:

At the Blackwater Pro Shops in Fayetteville, North Carolina and Salem, Connecticut, you can “purchase clothing and equipment emblazoned with the logo,” the Solider Systems blog explains. “If that doesn’t get your blood pumping you can also try out your new firearms at their indoor range.”

Customer tip: Avoid the Genius Bar.

Retail Guns-for-Hire: Blackwater Opens Storefronts [Wired]

Blackwater Pro Shop

Update: Next time you drop by the Blackwater Pro Shop, you might want to make an offer on Blackwater itself.

Sayonara: Blackwater puts itself up for sale [AP/Raw Story]

“Man and machine can now be linked more intimately than ever, according to a new article in the journal ACS Nano Letters. Scientists have embedded a nano-sized transistor inside a cell-like membrane and powered it using the cell’s own fuel.” [Discovery News, via Kottke]

Will the new iPhone get me laid?

No.

Will the new iPhone make my enemies’ heads explode with the touch of a button?

No.

If I hold the new iPhone up to a mirror while using video chat, will I be zapped into a cosmic vortex?

Singularity Transposition is only available in Europe; standard data rates apply.

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“Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has released the results of a lie detector test which he says proves he isn’t behind a string of attacks against one of his Republican opponents, Rep. Nikki Haley.” [WIS-TV, via Political Wire]

Part the First:

A court in Bhopal, India has sentenced seven men to two years each in jail after finding them guilty of criminal negligence over the accident that spewed tonnes of poisonous gas from a Union Carbide India Ltd plant in 1984. These are the first convictions related to the Bhopal gas accident, which is estimated to have caused the deaths of at least 15,000 people.

Read more »

“Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, comes on stage to announce that FarmVille will be coming to the iPhone at the end of June. He says 70 million people play the game each month, mostly on Facebook. You can now farm anytime and anywhere, Mr. Pincus says.” [NYT iPhone liveblog]

[ Comedy Central Flash video not available. ]

She said a bad thing, the right-wing blogosphere had a field week, Craig Crawford disowned her, Walt Whitman High disinvited her as a commencement speaker, and now she’s out.

We prefer to remember her in better times.

Helen Thomas retires ‘effective immediately’ after Israel remarks [The Hill]