Cool video.

RoboDex 2002 - SDR-4X Sony Robot does Tai Chi

] GOD MAY PLAY DICE with the universe, as Einstein once
] feared, but serious gamblers, scorning metaphysical
] crapshoots and the casino's house edge, prefer no-limit
] Texas hold'em poker. Light years removed from the
] alcohol-soaked nickel-dime-quarter games of kitchen and
] dorm room, where the most you can lose is your beer money
] and who walks away with it depends less on skill than on
] luck, no-limit tournament action is always a ruthlessly
] disciplined fight to the death. The beverage of choice at
] these tables is mineral water, and the aces primly
] quaffing it have worked long and hard to make luck as
] tiny a factor as possible.
]
]
] In limit poker, where the size of each bet is strictly
] determined in advance, the winner is almost always
] determined by the dealer: Whoever gets dealt the best
] hand takes the money. No-limit poker, however, gives
] stronger players the leverage to win pots with cunning
] and force while holding unpromising hands. In the famous
] words of Crandall Addington, a Texas oilman of majestic
] hold'em facility, ''Limit poker is a science, but
] no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a
] target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and shoots
] back.''
]
] The shooting isn't always a metaphor. In the early years
] of the Cold War, the study of poker helped give rise to
] game theory, an unplayful branch of mathematics with
] powerfu

Boston Globe Online / Sunday | Focus / The poker of war

] Fox News had its own response to the demonstrators. The
] news ticker rimming Fox's headquarters on Sixth Avenue
] wasn't carrying war updates as the protest began.
] Instead, it poked fun at the demonstrators, chiding them.
]
] "War protester auditions here today ... thanks for
] coming!" read one message. "Who won your right to show up
] here today?" another questioned. "Protesters or
] soldiers?"
]
] Said a third: "How do you keep a war protester in
] suspense? Ignore them."
]
] Still another read: "Attention protesters: the Michael
] Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth
] Avenue and 50th Street" - a reference to the film maker
] who denounced the war while accepting an Oscar on Sunday
] night for his documentary "Bowling for Columbine."
]
] The protesters said Fox's sentiments only proved their
] point: that media coverage, in particular among the
] television networks, is so biased as to be unbelievable.

Fox news ticker speaks out against NYC protesters

Very soon Suddam Hussien shall know the way of conflict, the way of war, the way of Optimus Prime!

U.S. Army Ohio National Guard 5694TH Tactical Crash Rescue Unit
On the battlefield I have no equal! I am unstoppable, indestructible! If you face me, then like all those who have come before... you will fall! For I am Optimus Prime, an American Soldier!

Hello. My legal name is Optimus Prime. I have been a Transformers fanatic since 1984. This site will let you get to know a little about me, my family, and my love for toys that are more than meets the eye.

Autobots, transform and roll out!

Optimus Prime's Home Page!

Any time travellers who wish to make their fortune by tampering with the past should contact me immediately (if not sooner). I charge 10% of profits after taxes, in contemporary currency, and discretion is assured. Everything else (returns, nature of markets, use of numbered swiss accounts) negotiable.

Insider Info Wanted

Hijexx wrote:
] The footage was the most disturbing thing on television in
] some time. There was US President George W Bush, being prepped
] for his televised declaration of war. It was not the combing
] of his hair, the only aspect of the coverage reported by any
] American media outlet (the Washington Post in this case),
] which was cause for embarrassment; everyone expects that.
] Rather, it was the demeanour — I would say antics — of the
] president himself.
]
] Like some class clown trying to get attention from the back of
] the room, he started mugging for his handlers. His eyes darted
] back and forth impishly as he cracked faces at others around
] him. He pumped a fist and self-consciously muttered, "feel
] good," which was interestingly sanitised into the more mature
] and assertive, "I'm feeling good" by the same Washington Post.
]
] He was goofing around, and there's only one way to interpret
] that kind of behaviour just seconds before announcing war on
] Iraq: the man is an idiot.
]
] ...
]
] I've seen the footage they're talking about. It's not the
] hair combing, it's the antics. I watched as he sat there
] trying to practice his serious face and asking if it was good
] or not. It was pretty sickening.

The Washington Post article is here, btw:
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1027-2003Mar20.html

Now, I haven't seen the footage itself (if anyone has a link to it, let me know), but I would like to offer an alternative view, especially because I've been doing a lot of public speaking myself lately.

Basically, it's *scary* to get up on stage. Even when I'm giving a talk that I've given literally dozens of times before, I get nervous right before I speak. My palms sweat, I fidget, I run through the script in my head, I worry about how the audience is going to receive what I say, I worry whether I'll communicate the emotional impact that I intend to communicate, and I do all kinds of absurd little things to try and calm myself down and/or psych myself up. Then, once I'm actually on stage, I usually go on autopilot and I'm fine, though I may not even be consciously aware sometimes that I'm speaking. Indeed, on a couple very stressful occasions where I was speaking to enormous audiences, I'd have people coming up to me after a talk and telling me what a great job I did, and how moved they were by some of what I'd said, but I would have absolutely no memory of some of the parts of the talk that I'd just given, because I was so nervous while I was speaking!

When I watch Bush speak (and also sometimes when I watch Colin Powell or Tony Blair speak), perhaps because I'm identifying so strongly with the *process* of public speaking, I can picture what's going on behind the scenes. Like during Bush's "State of the Union" speech, while I was seeing ... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

George's little antics

Enjoy.

Why the Blues will never make the Stanley Cup finals

] This simulated government official is taking questions in
] conformance with the Official Simulation Act of 2002. All
] quotes are authentic. No government official was harmed
] in the making of this simulation.

Ask Don Rumsfeld!

] Keynote Systems, which regularly tests the response times
] of busy websites, said the responsiveness of BBC News
] Online suffered during the busy lunchtime period with
] average download times rising from 0.47 seconds to 1.88
] seconds.
]
] ITV News went through a more serious slowdown with
] average download times ballooning from 5.66 seconds to
] 15.84 seconds.
]
] As the conflict got under way, some sites such as that
] run by Arabic satellite TV broadcaster Al Jazeera were
] only intermittently available.
]
] The website of Britain's The Sun newspaper was also
] taking a long time to finish loading.
]
] Nic Newman, head of editorial development and technology
] at BBC News Online, said traffic to the site had already
] almost tripled and he expected it to grow further.
]
] Similar leaps in visitor numbers have been seen at the
] Yahoo and MSNBC news sites.
]
] According to Comscore Media Metrix, the top 15 news sites
] have seen traffic jump by more than 40%.

MemeStreams has been experiencing a steady increase in traffic since the 17th. We are currently up 166% [typo correction: 66%] for the period of the 17th thru 20th, vs 13th thru 16th. This is a mildly misleading statistic, as Saturday and Sunday are usually not very busy days. But no matter which way you slice it, we are experiencing a significant traffic increase. I'll post an update on this after I can compare a complete week.

I'd also be interested to know how much of that increase in traffic is from new users, vs. the existing users doing more hits than usual? For example, is it possible to tell how many unique visitors check out Memestreams on an average day?

Also of interest, "baghdad webcam" has very quickly become the top search term hitting the site, accounting for 5% of all search engine hits, and flying right past other "hot" search terms such as "ebonics translator", "isonews", and the everlasting "raver porn".

A quick visit to MSN's search engine shows that we are the top link for "baghdad webcam"..

Hee! I'm glad I tracked that link down via Mr. Kobeissi and MEMRI.

Good for us, bad for MSN users, as the page linked currently has absolutely nothing about webcams, let alone webcams in Iraq. The next link MSN search brings up is www.webcaminiraq.org, which was the link origionally on that page which caused MSN to index us as the top hit for that search term.. [shrug] I guess MSN's search engine isn't that smart. Or maybe it is, in a completely accidental way.. It is sending users to our "Current Events" top links page after all... :)

Perhaps we could add a blurb to the top of the "topics" page that says something like, "Note: This page changes on a daily basis. If you were directed here by a particular search engine, the article that you were searching for may have already scrolled off, but you can find it again by typing the same search term into the 'Search Memestreams' box in the lefthand column."

Thanks to Rattle for the status report!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Iraq conflict hits websites hard

] The bombing of Iraq was intensified after American
] officials revealed that their special forces had been
] holding face-to-face negotiations with Republican Guard
] leaders. The awesome display of firepower was designed as
] much to increase the pressure on them to surrender as to
] destroy targets crucial to Saddam.
. . .
] Mr Rumsfeld had earlier given clues about the extent
] of the unseen war being waged for the loyalty of Iraqi
] generals. "There are communications in every conceivable
] mode and method, public and private, to the Iraqi forces,
] that they can act with honour and turn over their weapons
] and walk away from them, and they will not be hurt," he said.

I fully agree with this. We don't *have* to fight. It's not about killing people and destroying cities. It's about changing the Iraqi leadership. So the quicker we can get through this, with the fewest possible casualties (on *both* sides), the better.

Times Online: The Other Unseen Part of the War