Jeffrey Lucey was 18 when he signed up for the Marine Reserves in December 1999. His parents, Kevin and Joyce Lucey of Belchertown, Mass., were not happy. They had hoped their son would go to college.
...
[On returning from Iraq] He had nightmares. He drank furiously. He withdrew from his friends. He wrecked his parents’ car. He began to hallucinate.
...
“Then I could see, through the corner of my eye, Jeff,” said Mr. Lucey. “And he was, I thought, standing there. Then I noticed the hose around his neck.”
...
Mr. Lucey made no effort to hide his bitterness over the government’s failure to address many of the critical needs of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. His voice quivered as he said, “When we hear anybody in the administration get up and say that they support the troops, it sickens us.”

Death of a Marine - New York Times

As the Bush administration sinks deeper into its multiple quagmires, the personality cult the G.O.P. once built around President Bush has given way to nostalgia for the good old days. The current cover of Time magazine shows a weeping Ronald Reagan, and declares that Republicans “need to reclaim the Reagan legacy.”

But Republicans shouldn’t cry for Ronald Reagan; the truth is, he never left them. There’s no need to reclaim the Reagan legacy: Mr. Bush is what Mr. Reagan would have been given the opportunity.

Don’t Cry for Reagan - New York Times

Life is short for a meme, it seems, and unpredictable, to boot.

Unlike baby mammals, a meme cannot expect to go from conception to birth in a standard, more or less fixed period of time. Some memes are born immediately, whereas others may linger in gestation for years on end. Because prenatal care is so poor in the meme world, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant mortality rates are quite high. Even worse, abortion and infanticide of new memes are commonplace in some quarters.

However, also unlike mammals -- and in fact most higher organisms -- a meme reaches reproductive age only moments after its birth. If it only manages to find its way to a target-rich environment, growth opportunities abound.

Yet even the most successful families of memes can go from pauperdom to dynasty to death to dust, all in the span of a few days.

Fortunately, here at MemeStreams, they don't bury or incinerate our beloved memes of yore. Instead, the crack team of scientists at the Industrial Memetics Institute has developed a highly advanced cryopreservation service. Unlike similar services for humans and other mammals, the service provided by MemeStreams is active today. It allows you -- in fact, anyone -- to reanimate a suspended meme of your choosing, and then to deposit it in the memetic meat market that is your blog.

Sadly, I have found that most MemeStreams users only rarely -- if ever -- avail themselves of the benefits of these remarkable cryorestoration services. As an independent profit center with no annual allocation from the IMI budget, the cryo unit is perpetually at risk of closure. For months now, the unit has been unable to hire staff to replace three of its senior technicians lost to headhunters in Q4FY06.

As part of the upcoming "Reanimemer" promotional campaign aimed at a Q3FY07 turn-around for the ailing cryo unit, I have scoured their voluminous records to provide you with a small sampling of what is presently on offer. I encourage you to plan your own visit soon.

Radebaugh: The Future We Were Promised (now, archived here by wayback, and here)

Terrorists terrorists terrorists terrorists terrorists terrorists terrorists. (now at YouTube) -- This video still amazes me.

A business model for MemeStreams

Neurodiversity Forever

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The Short Life and Long Death of Memes

There aren’t a lot of environmental groups with their own investment bank consultants, so when you hear that Environmental Defense has just hired the boutique Wall Street firm Perella Weinberg Partners, you know that we’re in a new world. Every college activist should study this story, because it is the future. In the old days, when activists wanted something done, they held a sit-in or organized a protest march. Now they hire an investment bank.

a nice story that rather renews one's hope

Marching With a Mouse - New York Times

Emergence is the development of complex organized systems. Like intelligence in the field of AI, or agents in distributed artificial intelligence, emergence is a central concept in complex systems

Emergence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It took some mighty fine nets, but scientists who spent two years trawling the world's oceans for bacteria and viruses have completed the most thorough census ever of marine microbial life, revealing an astonishingly diverse and bizarre microscopic menagerie.

Seas Yield Surprising Catch of Unknown Genes - washingtonpost.com

If there were no precedents for the suspicious death of the Russian journalist Ivan Safronov, it might be easier to believe his fall from a fifth-floor window on March 2 was the suicide officials initially said it was. But too many other journalists working on sensitive stories have met violent ends in Russia.
...
the testimony of family and friends that he had never seemed suicidal, and the circumstances surrounding his fall from the window — with his hat and oranges he had purchased scattered on the stairwell below — strongly suggest that it was not an accident.

the tale of the boiling frog episode xxii

A convenient suicide - International Herald Tribune

The BBC says it is concerned for the safety of a correspondent who has gone missing in the Gaza Strip.

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Fears for BBC Gaza correspondent

EVEN by Washington’s standards, few debates have been more fatuous or wasted more energy than the frenzied speculation over whether President Bush will or will not pardon Scooter Libby. Of course he will.

Why Libby’s Pardon Is a Slam Dunk - New York Times

The Kremlin has been sending persistent signals that autonomous political activism will not be tolerated. As a result, political action on the streets has become highly risky in Russia, and those venturing to participate in events unwelcome by the government should be prepared to get in trouble.

the tale of the boiling frog episode xxi

Masha Lipman - Breaking Putin's Cordon - washingtonpost.com