Death in Vegas, Scorpio rising.....I recommend this album highly:)

Death in Vegas :: INFO :: Official news from the UK band fronted by Richard Fearless

] Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams admits he was
] paid to provide favorable coverage of the No Child Left
] Behind Act and Education Secretary Rod Paige through a
] contract between the Department of Education and a public
] relations firm. NPR's David Folkenflik reports.

[ Listen to this. Particularly outstanding is the quote from CNN founding president Reese Schoenfeld : "A whore is a whore, and when you're paid to put out an opinion without announcing to the world that you've been paid, that's not only whoring, but pretending to virtue while you're doing it." Damn. -k]

Contract Tied to Coverage Promoting Administration

The new year is often time for reflection on where we
have been and where we are going. Sometimes that
reflection happens over a beer. Sometimes that reflection
happens with a gun to your head. In fact, both occurred
here at Industrial Memetics when Decius and Rattle forced
us, their loyal employees, to look back on 2004 and
consider the events that have shaped our lives.

No, Seriously, Fuck'n MemeStreams - Year in Graphs 2004

I'd seen some of these satellite photos before but there are a number of very impressive ones in this collection that I hadn't seen. Particularly the 5th one.

Tsunami - Receding waters, Kalutara Beach, Sri Lanka

] Occasionally his Democratic questioners engage in long,
] indignant tirades, even though Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.
] (D-Del.) announces early on that -- despite any
] appearance of hostility -- none of them actually plans to
] vote against Gonzales and they all know he will be
] confirmed.

The decent article about what its like to work in an environment where everyone is full of shit all of the time and they're just rhetorically careful enough about it that its hard to call them on it.

On the Hill, Where It's Hot . . . or Not (washingtonpost.com)

] He says Apple is breaking anti-competition laws in
] refusing to let other music players work with the site.

My problem is that they won't let other sites work with the music player, but really its all the same. Regardless of whether or not this lawsuit is reasonable, the strategy is dumb.

BBC NEWS | Technology | ITunes user sues Apple over iPod

Everyone should be drinking green tea. It has various health benifits listed here. most exciting is it helps you lose weight.

green tea and health

] A few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an FBI
] agent called the Whitney Museum of American Art and asked
] to see a drawing on exhibit there. The piece was by Mark
] Lombardi, an artist who had committed suicide the year
] before. Using just a pencil and a huge sheet of paper,
] Lombardi had created an intricate pattern of curves and
] arcs to illustrate the links between global finance and
] international terrorism.

Something to listen to while you look through the year in graphs.

NPR : The 'Conspiracy' Art of Mark Lombardi

First, Eiron, thank you for raising this question. This is something that I have thought about at length. I appreciate your insight.

Second:
] the things I'm describing may not actually be the vision for
] this community. As it's not my project, I wouldn't presume to
] argue strongly for such a shift.

Do not let this dissuade you from engaging the conversation. A community cannot be owned. There is a delicate balance. I cannot simply take everyone's suggestions. Everyone always thinks their perspective is the right one. But I strongly encourage people to think about how this community should evolve. If I was as good as I wish I was this thing would be bigger then Google. I strongly encourage this kind of conversation, especially on the site.

] As it turns out, this stuff is all pretty hard, and completely
] different than the existing infrastructure. As a concept, only a bare
] germ at this stage,

Exactly. Thats why this dialog is useful. I don't know the answers here.

] i think there's merit, but I know there
] are other priorities right now, even if this was a direction
] for the future.

Thats true, but there is no reason this conversation cannot proceed while other priorities are pursued.

There are several perspectives on this, and each one presents problems.

1. There is a tremendous power involved in associating everything on this site by particular URLs, and one which has not really seen much application yet because of the scale of the site, and that is the discussion bookmarklet. MemeStreams associates a discussion with every url on the internet, and using the discuss bookmarklet you can jump right from any page to it's thread on memestreams. Once the site is sufficiently large this will be extremely powerful. Anytime you are reading an article and you want some more insight or critical commentary you'll be one click away from it. I think this is something the internet really needs that no one is doing right. I want to see it happen.

Having said all of that, you clearly need to have a way to put multiple URLs in a post and at least have them be clickable. Thats a basic, basic thing that I need to implement.

2. The topic system. The problem with topics is that there aren't enough of them and things need to be filed into multiple topics.

If we created enough topical granularity to be able to discuss something as specific as the tsunami the topic system would be unwieldy. Also, the topic system reflects a cultural bias. We have a 9/11 topic. We don't have a tsunami topic. If we lived in South East Asia our priorities would likely be reversed. We'd see 9/11 as a transient event and the tsunami as something that would impact our culture for years and require its own discussion space.

If we allow for things to be put in multiple topics this creates some significant user interface problems. Do you really want a way to file som... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

RE: Links, Memes, and Memestreams

] If there is something implausible in the idea that huge
] stretches of world history have been secretly coordinated
] from a market town just north of the M25 - well, maybe
] that's what they want you to think. The local newspaper,
] the Hertfordshire Mercury, certainly seems convinced:
] over the past few months it has published several
] intriguing stories quoting local Templars, who told its
] reporter of a secret network of tunnels under the town
] that was still in use by the order. "It reaches beyond
] well known central Hertford locations," one Templar said,
] "including the tourist office, the castle, Monsoon,
] Threshers, the post office, Bayley Hall, and the council
] offices." Treasures of "immense importance" were hidden
] there, it was claimed. Was the quest for the Holy Grail
] finally about to come to an end? More surprisingly still,
] was it about to come to an end underneath Monsoon on
] Market Place?

Weird.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Hertford, home of the Holy Grail