Humans leave their mark on the planet:

The devastating impact of mankind on the planet is dramatically illustrated in pictures published on Saturday showing explosive urban sprawl, major deforestation and the sucking dry of inland seas over less than three decades.

Mexico City mushrooms from a modest urban center in 1973 to a massive blot on the landscape in 2000, while Beijing shows a similar surge between 1978 and 2000 in satellite pictures published by the United Nations in a new environmental atlas.

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“If there is one message from this atlas it is that we are all part of this. We can all make a difference,” U.N. expert Kaveh Zahedi told reporters at the launch of the “One Planet Many People” atlas on the eve of World Environment Day.

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“These illustrate some of the changes we have made to our environment,” Zahedi said. “This is a visual tool to capture people’s imaginations showing what is really happening.”

“It serves as an early warning,” he added.

Click the “Next” button under the photo in the story to scroll through a series of before and after photos.

Neil Armstrong is threatening to sue his barber — make that former barber:

Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, used to go to Marx’s Barber Shop in Lebanon about once a month for a cut. That stopped when he learned that owner Marx Sizemore had collected his hair clippings from the floor and sold them in May 2004 to a collector.

That barber is a real class act.

Shortly after Charlie Chaplin died, his body was stolen from his grave and held for ransom. These days, it would have been offered on eBay as the ultimate Chaplin collectible.

New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks on the PBS NewsHour, talking about the need for a truly independent investigation of the Guantanamo prison camp:

This is not only a war against individual terrorists. This is clearly a war for public opinion in the world, and especially in the Muslim world. And there’s no question that what’s happening — or at least the issue of Guantanamo — is a defeat, a daily defeat, for the United States.

And somehow that defeat has to be dealt with. And, to me, having an independent commission that will take a look at whether the Navy’s doing a good job or the investigators down there are doing a good job — that just seems to be necessary.