no. more. triple sec.

[I'm sorry to laugh, but the progression of this was great... more of us should liveblog our descent into drunkenness. -k]

Saturday Night Science: Drink 5

Jesus knew viral marketing.
...
The key distinction is between man and meme.
...
when you’re dealing with terrorists, it’s their memes — their ideas, their attitudes — that are Public Enemy No. 1. Jihadists are hosts for the virus of hatred, and the object of the game is to keep the virus from finding new hosts.

The Internet is fertile ground for memes, and jihadists are good at getting the brand out. One of the few things Osama bin Laden has in common with the Jesus of the Gospels is belief in the power of viral marketing.

The ultimate in viral marketing was Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice. Deemed a threat to the social order, he was crucified under Roman auspices. But the Romans forgot one thing: If you face a small but growing movement that threatens the imperial order, you shouldn’t attack the men in ways that help the memes.

Mr. Bush says his favorite philosopher is Jesus. One way to show it would be to spend less time repeat- ing the mistake of the Romans and more time heeding the wisdom of Christ.

An Easter Sermon - New York Times

The Dutch infantrymen stood on a ridge near the Baluchi Valley, an area in south-central Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban and tribes opposed to the central government.

Whenever they push farther, the soldiers said, they swiftly come under fire from rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. "The whole valley is pretty much hostile," said one, a machine gunner.

But rather than advancing for reconnaissance or to attack, the Dutch soldiers pulled back to a safer village. "We're not here to fight the Taliban," said the Dutch commander, Colonel Hans van Griensven, at a recent staff meeting. "We're here to make the Taliban irrelevant."

i'm not convinced this is the right way to win but since i believe in competition and that competition is an evolutionary process
let's see what works
especially since we need to hold Afghanistan

Dutch soldiers stress restraint in Afghanistan - International Herald Tribune

KenCall is one small reason that Kenya’s economy grew 6 percent last year. Yes, Kenya still has all the ills of other African states — from AIDS to abject poverty. But Kenya also now has a democratically elected government that is learning to get out of the way of Kenya’s entrepreneurs and to get them the bandwidth they need to compete globally. It’s way too early to declare Kenya an economic “African Tiger,” but something is stirring here that bears watching — and KenCall is emblematic of it.

The African Connection - New York Times

What did Jane Austen look like and why should we care?
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I was only a few pages into "Emma" when I realized that I was reading with a smile on my face.
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One of the great pleasures of a reading life is picking up an old, familiar novel thinking that rereading it will mean a kind of reminding, when, in fact, the novel makes itself new all over again. It is as if the novel holds itself apart, waiting for real life to erase enough in us to make us suitable readers once more.
...
It is a failing to read Shakespeare and feel impoverished by the lack of biographical detail. It is no less a failing to read Austen and wonder what the mirror said when she looked into it. I cannot think of anything that would make "Emma" richer than it is.

yes yes
the work truly displays a beautiful mind

Meanwhile: Wow! Is that Jane Austen? - International Herald Tribune

The Taliban is on the resurgence, again ruling a swath of southern Afghanistan, and President Hamid Karzai is sure of the reason: Pakistan.

In an interview in his office, Mr. Karzai was scathing in his accusations of official Pakistani duplicity. For starters, he accused the Pakistani intelligence agencies of sheltering Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

The Hand Behind the Taliban - New York Times

New York (Reuters) -- A life-size sculpture of a naked Jesus made out of chocolate has angered a Roman Catholic organization and forced a Manhattan art gallery to reconsider exhibiting it during Easter week.

The sculpture "My Sweet Lord" by Cosimo Cavallaro was to be exhibited for two hours each day next week in a street-level window of the Roger Smith Lab Gallery in Midtown Manhattan.

...

"They would never dare do something similar with a chocolate statue of the prophet Mohammad naked with his genitals exposed during Ramadan," she said.

Tom Waits must be proud.

Chocolate Jesus stirs bitter controversy - CNN.com

Someone on Presidential hopeful John McCain’s staff is going to be in trouble today. They used a well known template to create his Myspace page. The template was designed by Newsvine Founder and CEO Mike Davidson (original template is here). Davidson gave the template code away to anyone who wanted to use it, but asked that he be given credit when it was used, and told users to host their own image files.

McCain’s staff used his template, but didn’t give Davidson credit. Worse, he says, they use images that are on his server, meaning he has to pay for the bandwidth used from page views on McCain’s site.

Davidson decided to play a small prank on the campaign this morning as retribution.

John McCain’s MySpace Page “Enhanced”

Rattle wrote:

I spent 5 minutes trying to come up with something to say about this. All I can muster is that I didn't enjoy watching it, but I couldn't pull myself away.

... and they are playing it repeatedly on TV.

Every time I see it, it somehow becomes more painful. I'm worried this is going to give me nightmares or something. I feel somehow like I have been harmed, but I can't express why. Some sacred sensibility has been assaulted. It seems to start from somewhere deep in the spine. The soul recoils in horror...

The mysterious despair this video is causing me, cannot lift until I see how Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart respond.

It's a strange feeling.

i think age has something to do with how u respond to this
it's the same humiliation u feel when watching your parents do something embarressing
the older u get (i'm rapidly approaching 40) the more u shrug your shoulders and are in fact the ones likely to be humiliating the younger generation/your children etc
i look at the video and think hip hop has permeated the culture and bearing in mind the borg like nature of American culture hip hop is well on the way to being assimiliated which means keep your eyes open since american black culture will soon invent something new because clearly if Karl Rove has appropriate your rebellion it's time for a change. That's the nature of anti-establishment memes -- the successful ones become the establishment and the anti-establishment reacts and creates new ones.
To me the joke is also that I would bet that Rove thinks of himself as anti-establishment.

RE: MC Rove

Journalist Dave Gilbert is hanging up his hat after 13 years working in online news - much of it with the BBC website. But before he goes, he can't help but marvel at how the net has gone from an eccentric side project to being at the heart of all modern news rooms.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | I remember when all this was 'cranky'