Journal photos / Bob Thayer

Walt Disney Pictures rented Seven Stars Bakery at 820 Hope St. in Providence for 24 hours yesterday and transformed it: Bakery worker Ian Cappelano came by to see the fictional Yumm's coffee house, which sports stickers, skateboards, bikes, posters, cars and even trees that weren't there the day before, as well as New Jersey newspapers in coin boxes.

They're filming Dan in Real Life, a romantic comedy about a widower who finds out the woman he fell in love with is his brother's girlfriend. Actor Steve Carell (The 40 Year Old Virgin), at right, stars.

The Journal's Michael Janusonis writes about the shoot today: Hollywood comes to Hope and Fourth streets

Bonus link: The East Greenwich Pendulum reports, Eldredge school goes Hollywood: "The Eldredge School became a New Jersey high school for a day on Tuesday" as Disney shot scenes there.

Shroud for a day: The veil: too obviously hidden. In the L.A. Times, a Muslim journalist living in London buys her first hijab, and spends a day in the head-to-toe black garments. An excerpt:

After a few hours, I get used to the gaping and the sniggering. But what does surprise me is what happens when I head into central London. I have arranged to meet a friend at the National Portrait Gallery. In the 15-minute walk from the bus stop to the gallery, two things happen. A man in his 30s stops in front of me and asks: "Can I see your face?"

"Why do you want to see my face?" I ask.

"Because I want to see if you are pretty. Are you pretty?"

Before I can reply, he shouts: "You ----ing tease!"

I'm completely taken aback.

Just as I'm thinking about this, I hear the impatient beeping of a horn. A middle-aged man is behind the wheel of a van, leering at me. "Watch where you're going, you stupid Paki!" he screams. This time I'm a bit faster.

"How did you know I'm Pakistani, underneath all of this?" I shout at him. He responds by driving so close past me that when he yells "Terrorist!" I can feel his breath on my veil....

Toumani, from Mali, now of the Bronx.

Melting pot: NYChildren is a collection of photographs -- one child from every country on Earth currently living in NYC; 67 percent of 192 nations are currently represented, and the project continues.

Thanks to Travelers Diagram for the pointer.

The (proposed) long arm of Missouri law: Stem Cell Research, Michael J Fox, and Politics as Usual in Missouri: St. Louis blogger Shelley Powers goes beyond the Michael J. Fox / Rush Limbaugh smackdown to the essence of the proposed Amendment 2 that all the fuss is about:

The problem with debates of this nature is ... a local election that is being misconstrued at a national level. Let's look at some local facts:

There is an amendment up for election, Amendment 2, that would safe guard embryonic stem cell research in Missouri, as long as it meets federal laws and guidelines. Why is this needed, when such is not currently illegal? Because in the past, legislators here have tried to make this illegal. More than that, they've tried to make it illegal for a citizen of Missouri to get treatment based on embryonic stem cell research elsewhere....

...Think of it: Ten years from now there is a potential treatment for Parkinson's, but it's not available in Missouri. OK, you think to yourself, you'll just go to the state where the treatment is offered. However, you can't because even doing that would be illegal if you were a resident of Missouri. You lost that right because some bo-dunk, god fearin' state representative slipped this one in when we weren't looking. This is what Amendment 2 protects us against: nothing more, nothing less.

Shelley includes video and photos from the political ad war, and links to the Post-Dispatch's blog post on Ad checks for stem cell proposal. Definitely worth the click: Here's the link again.

Perspective: Shuttle Launch Seen From ISS at Warren Ellis Dot Com. Ellis writes, "These images came to me via a string of friends-of-friends-of-friends: shots of a Space Shuttle launch as seen from the International Space Station."

There's another, closer view at the link.

Hot pix: Burning Man 2006 or How I Spent my Summer Holidays: Superb photos of "the world's largest outdoor art gallery."