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Decius
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"I don't think the report is true, but these crises work for those who want to make fights between people." Kulam Dastagir, 28, a bird seller in Afghanistan

2004 Statistics for www.memestreams.net
Topic: MemeStreams 9:27 pm EST, Jan  2, 2005

Since 2002 we've been publishing the httpd log statistics for this site on an annual basis. This gives you some insight into traffic levels, popular pages, and the kinds of search results that bring people to MemeStreams.

From the time we went online (in the fall of 2001) until September of 2003 we saw a fairly constant growth in the number of unique visitors using this site. This year that pattern has changed. The growth, as measured in terms of unique visitors, seems to have leveled off shy of 30,000 people a month, and this year we settled into a static pattern typical of older websites, where more traffic is received in the winter months than in the summer months. As our site is current events focused we also get an occasional boost from popular news stories.

However, while the same number of people are using MemeStreams as were using it a year ago, those people seem to be using it a lot more. In September of 2003 we got 27,825 unique visitors, who visited 101,041 pages on the site. In November of 2004 we got 27,496 unique visitors, but they visited 155,421 pages on the site.

Truth be told, this is probably a more significant change. A lot of those 27 thousand people wash in from a search engine looking for something specific and never return. The vitality of this site is more dependent on the people who stick around a while and actually make use of it. Those people seem to be growing in numbers even as the overall total remains the same.

The main page of the site was hit 259,011 times this year, which works out to about 708 times a day. Thats up from 148,826 last year (which is 408 times a day). Also, in 2003 29% of our traffic came from search engines and 33% came from bookmarks. This year 19% came from search engines and 57% came from bookmarks.

2003 saw the birth of the referrer spammer and they are not going away. The 5 "links from an external page" listed here were the only ones that made the top 20 who I'm absolutely sure aren't spammers. (Honestly, the Netnewswire link may be considered spam, as it is offered by that RSS reader, but its somewhat interesting data and not exactly the same thing as robots that hit your site over and over with no interest in fetching the content.)

If you're interested, you can find the links to older annual statistics here:
http://www.memestreams.net/allabout.html

Happy New Year!

2004 Statistics for www.memestreams.net


Stephen Roaches year end review and look forward to 2005
Topic: Business 8:30 pm EST, Jan  2, 2005

His usual pesimistic self, but makes a good read anyways.

Stephen Roaches year end review and look forward to 2005


The Ends of the World as We Know Them
Topic: Society 3:38 pm EST, Jan  2, 2005

How long can America remain ascendant?

Where will we stand 10 years from now, or even next year?

History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly.

A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions.

Could this happen in the United States? It's a thought that often occurs to me here in Los Angeles.

Take a deep lesson from history. We must be willing to re-examine long-held core values, when conditions change and those values no longer make sense.

This isn't "just another book promo" pseudo op-ed. There's a political element to it.

The Ends of the World as We Know Them


Administration planning for indefinite detention without trial.
Topic: Current Events 3:34 pm EST, Jan  2, 2005

Palindrome wrote:
] ] US Administration officials are preparing long-range
] ] plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists
] ] whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts
] ] in the United States or other countries, The Washington
] ] Post reported Sunday.

This is strange. Xinhua is the Chinese State Press. Sometimes its a reasonable source but particularly on things like this it should be taken with a grain of salt. Google news doesn't show broad coverage of this story, and a lot of it is coming from places that might be considered "radical" such as Al-J, or the Washington Times.

It took me a while to find the original Washington Post story, which I'm linking here. It seems to blur the questions about Pentagon detention of enemy combatants and the CIA's renditions discussed here a couple days ago.

Reuters reported that "influential senators denounced the idea as probably unconstitutional."

"It's a bad idea. So we ought to get over it and we ought to have a very careful, constitutional look at this," Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on "Fox News Sunday."

Are we really having this debate again?

Administration planning for indefinite detention without trial.


RE: Internet Archive
Topic: Miscellaneous 3:17 pm EST, Jan  2, 2005

adam wrote:
] very cool resource

Indeed. And something that ought to be memed but isn't.

The internet archive has old versions of much of the web cached, as well as a growing collection of public domain music, movies, and books. We've considered tying it into Memestreams so that when you are reading an article that was memed you can either go to the URL today, or you can go to the internet archive's cache at the time it was memed.

If you haven't checked this site out, you certainly should.

RE: Internet Archive


RE: Tsunami Relief
Topic: Current Events 10:32 pm EST, Jan  1, 2005

Hijexx wrote:
] Decius: It is not that easy to figure out the original poster.

Oh, I agree that this is a problem, and it will be fixed, but until then if you are going to call someone a fuckface and a homo, etc, you ought to be sure you're nailing the right person. Its hard to have sympathy for someone's confusion when they are being belligerent and personally offensive.

] As for the issue itself, I don't need to be told I am a jerk
] if I don't do this or that. I'm glad you're concerned, but
] you should have found a nicer way to convey it to others.

Clearly my post has been misunderstood, and for that I apologize. You guys are taking this way more personally and way more seriously then it was intended to be taken.

I don't work for any of these charities, I'm not associated with any cause, I have no vested interest in raising this money, and I don't really think you're a jerk if you don't donate.

This post was essentially a straight forward explanation of how I felt about this. I had been toying for several days with the idea of memeing this donations page. The problem was that when that idea popped into my head I realized that I could not, in good conscience, meme that page if I did not donate, and so I needed to decide if I wanted to do that, and I never came to a conclusion about it. When someone else memed the page it pushed the issue, and I realized that I should donate. I felt like failing to do so up to that point was poor on my part, and that feeling prompted the jerk commentary.

This was an emergency that was not predictable and is not a persistent problem, in a society where people do not have insurance. They really do need help in the form of one off financial donations. This is not a systemic problem like poverty in America, which requires long term solutions. Nor due I buy into things I've heard from several different people about how these people are responsible for their fates because they lived near the sea. There is a reasonable risk that the exact same thing will occur on the East Coast of the U.S. in the coming decades, and you don't hear people complaining that everyone in New York and New Jersey is "stupid for living near the water..." This one of the only times you'll ever see where a one off donation of $20 out of your pocket really is exactly what is needed, and really is the right way to handle the problem.

RE: Tsunami Relief


Justice Expands 'Torture' Definition (washingtonpost.com)
Topic: War on Terrorism 12:24 pm EST, Dec 31, 2004

] The Justice Department published a revised and expansive
] definition late yesterday of acts that constitute torture
] under domestic and international law, overtly repudiating
] one of the most criticized policy memorandums drafted
] during President Bush's first term.
]
] "It could be that this is not just a cynical ploy but a
] real sign of change,"
Greenberger said.

Did they concede a point? Things have been so fucked up for so long that I've gotten used to thinking that when we don't slip closer to the edge thats a win. An actual retreat on a point? How will this impact the Gonzales's confirmation? Where are the right wing commentators foaming that this is soft on terrorism?

Justice Expands 'Torture' Definition (washingtonpost.com)


Tsunami Relief
Topic: Current Events 11:20 pm EST, Dec 30, 2004

If you do not recommend this link, you are a jerk!

How could you fail to promote such a worthy cause when it only takes two clicks of your mouse? Don't be a jerk.

Once you have recommended this link, if you do not actually donate some money, you are a jerk.

How could you advocate that other people donate money when you haven't the spine for it yourself?

Don't be a jerk!

Lets put it this way... Did you donate money or time or blood after 9-11? This tragedy impacted far, far more people. Furthermore, this is South East Asia, not NYC. These people don't have effective relief infrastructure, and they don't have big life insurance plans... If the victims of 9-11 deserve your compassion, and they do, then the victims of this Tsunami do as well, and in fact they are even more in need of your help.

Don't be a jerk. Click Recommend.

Tsunami Relief


CNN.com - Scientists: Quake may have made Earth wobble - Dec 29, 2004
Topic: Science 3:51 pm EST, Dec 29, 2004

] Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion
] Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass
] toward the Earth's center during the quake Sunday caused
] the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or millionths of a
] second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.
]
] When one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was
] forced below the edge of another "it had the effect of
] making the Earth more compact and spinning faster," Gross
] said.

CNN.com - Scientists: Quake may have made Earth wobble - Dec 29, 2004


iPodSoft iStories
Topic: Miscellaneous 12:25 pm EST, Dec 29, 2004

A collection of choose your own adventure games for the ipod.

iPodSoft iStories


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