A Memestreams Feature Request: integrate with Twitter. I'm sure plenty of us use twitter on a frequent basis. For me, I somehow ended up making twitter the center of my contact universe: I rarely log into facebook, because my tweets go there; I rarely have the attention these days to post to livejournal, and so my tweets are consolidated there. I know that my audiences there are listening to my tweets, and keep that in mind.

But I like the memestreams update/reputation system. I don't necessarily have an audience here that I care about more than facebook, or livejournal, or twitter, but I like the tools and I like the stuff that percolates to the front page (which, of course, I read on livejournal via rss).

Anyway, when I update here with a link, it is normally something of Interest to me that would probably be my interest to the rest of the people who casually read my feeds. But fewer people are subscribed to my syndicated rss feed on livejournal, and that's not always an overlap with twitter, etc.

Most blog platforms these days have integration with Twitter (see a list of wordpress tools). I could (and maybe just will) use something like TwitterFeed. But a more memestreams significant twitter linkup would be cool.

Memestreams Feature Request - twitter linkup

If you have not been listening to the "This American Life" episodes on the financial situation, you owe it to yourself to do so. They are phenomenal. While the top posters here might have been coming to grasps with the what why and how, here is a resource (spread over three episodes so far) which effectively explains a lot of it in a presentation style that should be accessible to all.

This American Life

Show 1: The Giant Pool of Money
Show 2: Another Frightening Show About the Economy
Show 3: A Better Mousetrap 2008

Matt Groening:

...Over the decades we've bought, received, worn, played with and stared at an endless series of Peanuts books, greeting cards, sweatshirts, shoestrings, coin banks, figurines, adverts and TV shows. (Lest you think this is a knock, remember I'm the Simpsons guy, and we've allowed Bart asthma inhaler holders and Duff Beer fishing lures.) But clear away the insurance commercials, billboards, dolls, apparel, stickers, soap dishes and the rest, and we're left with the real thing: the Peanuts comic strip itself, Charles Schulz's brilliant, angst-ridden, truly funny, 50-year-long masterpiece of joy and heartbreak...

We especially loved copying the Peanuts kids, because they seemed simple enough at first glance. But those giant heads and dots for eyes were trickier than they looked. Our Charlie Browns weren't sweet and impassive. In our wobbly hands, Charlie Brown's big, round head turned into a macrocephalic oval, his eye dots drifted apart, and his body got fatter and more squished. No matter how much we practised, our Charlie Browns looked like freaks.

Jonathan Franzen:

But what if Schulz had become a toy salesman rather than an artist? Would he have lived such a withdrawn and emotionally turbulent life? I suspect not. I suspect that Schulz the toy salesman would have gutsed his way through a normal life the same way he'd gutsed out his military service. He'd have done whatever it took to support his family - begged a Valium prescription from his doctor, had a few drinks at the hotel bar.

Schulz wasn't an artist because he suffered. He suffered because he was an artist. To keep choosing art over the comforts of a normal life - to grind out a strip every day for 50 years; to pay the steep psychic price for this - is the opposite of damaged. It's the sort of choice that only a tower of strength and sanity can make. The reason Schulz's early sorrows look like 'sources' of his brilliance is that he had the talent and resilience to find humour in them. Almost every young person experiences sorrows. What's distinctive about Schulz's childhood is not his suffering, but the fact that he loved comics, had a gift for drawing and was the only child of good parents.

Oh boy, Charlie Brown: Matt Groening and Jonathan Franzen pay tribute to Peanuts | Books | The Guardian

It’s a startling thing to hear from Ms. Silverman, who in January created an Internet sensation with a music video in which she declared, in the starkest possible language, that she was having a torrid affair with the actor Matt Damon

"Starkest possible language".

Sarah Silverman’s Message to Your Grandma - Vote Obama - NYTimes.com

Pushing back against what it calls McCain's “guilt-by-association” tactics, the Obama campaign overnight began e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday.

Gloves are off in both campaigns now.

Exclusive: Obama to hit McCain on Keating Five - Yahoo! News

A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome.

Ancient Peru Pyramid Spotted by Satellite : Discovery News

It turns out that the less control a person feels, the more likely they are to see patterns or make connections that don't exist. The good news is there is a way to fortify yourself against this sort of hard-wired self-deception.

Insecure Minds Wired for Pattern-Finding : Discovery News

Conservatives and liberals leave behind distinct "behavioral residue" that can be picked up by savvy scientists and possibly other observers, according to the study by New York University psychologist John Jost and his colleagues. The results are set for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Political Psychology. nullnull

Conservative or Liberal? Workspace Reveals All | LiveScience

Sources told CNBC that, last week, officials with the world's largest shoe and apparel maker told college swim coaches who they have contracts with, that the company would no longer be developing the latest and greatest for championship swimmers. Those suits, for obvious reasons, are used by swimmers at the majority of top programs whose coaches have a Nike contract.

Nike Pulls Out of Olympic Swimwear Battle - Sports Biz with Darren Rovell - CNBC.com

Induces that dull pain at the back of the head that I believe to be the result of brain cells crawling away to die of embarrassment.

10% !

My Best Friend's Girl Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes