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.

Look to here for link to video footage:
http://www.memestreams.net/thread/bid5716/

George's little antics

Saddam has a blog! :P

Saddam's Cyber Palace

] When it comes to political truth, I think many Arab
] citizens today can have a more informed perspective than
] Americans. Don't get me wrong - that's not because my
] country is more democratic, has better journalists, or
] more intelligent analysis. None of these is true (not yet
] - but I remain hopeful for Bahrain's new democracy). But
] we do see your news as well as our news as well as
] Israeli news. In my (so far limited) experience of
] American life, Americans are extremely sheltered in the
] news that they see. When I read Haartez, I learn about
] Isrealis suffering from the conflict, I learn what they
] are worrying about, I learn how they deal with their own
] extremists, and I learn about their many citizens that
] would like to see peace. And I learn all this from an
] Israeli perspective, so I hear a positive human side.
] Americans do not seem to be learning such things about
] Arabs. Reading British commentary does not count as
] getting "a different perspective".

[IP] In the Arab world today, we get a more informed perspective than you.

Yes, there is a "Rate My Gasmask" site..

Rate My Gasmask

Yahoo's current search popularity statistics.

Yahoo! Buzz

(From: http://www.kevinsites.net .. No permalink for entry)

] Title: Pausing the warblog, for now.
]
] Dear readers:
]
] I've been asked to suspend my war blogging for awhile.
]
] But I don't want let you down -- I'm chronicling the events
] of my war experiences, the same as I always have, and hope
] to come to agreement with CNN in the near future to make
] them available to you in some shape or form, perhaps on
] this site.
]
] In the meantime, thanks for participating in this remarkable
] forum. It's been a remarkable experience to be your witness
] here.
]
] -- Kevin Sites.

This SUCKS. I had great expectations for this blog..

[U: I just sent a scathing email full of vitriol to CNN@cnn.com. ]

Woah. This site is extremely cool. Beats the hell out of Blogdex, Popdex, and Daypop.

Very similar to some things going on here. Their "Technorati Anywhere!" bookmark is pretty much the same as our Discuss bookmark in how it works and what it does.. This site works much like MemeStreams threads and the top level page, only all their content comes from feeds, and our content comes from MemeStreams user blogs. Our threads aim to be more like discussion areas. Different thrust, some of the same methods.. MemeStreams revolves around the users and the reputation system. The top level (democratic) view is a product of the way the system works, not the focus of the system.. The agent is the focus.. Popularity rules on the top level page, and your immediate community (users whom have high reputation with you) rules in the agent. Its not really clear yet, because we have such a limited number of active users, the system allows for a high amount of clustering.

I'm currently working on a system for allowing users to import content from RSS feeds into MemeStreams.. Its still not completely clear how all the details of it are going to work.. Its all work in progress. I'm not in a position where I'm ready to give any kinda ETA for it making it to the site either. Normally I wouldn't even mention it till it was farther along, but after seeing this, its on topic, its unignorable, its inspiring.. At some point we are going to have functionality much like this.

Also, From David Sifry's blog (http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000251.html):

] Technorati's got a new feature called Current Events that
] I just whipped up. It is a list of the top links to
] "professional" news sites by bloggers in the last two
] hours, along with comments and analysis. I created it
] because, like most people, I've been following the progress
] of the war, watching and reading the mass media, and I
] wanted to know what people out there were saying about the
] news. What are the most important stories? What is real,
] and what is propaganda? What is not being reported, or is
] being underreported? These were the questions on my mind
] when I created Technorati's Current Events. Ever since the
] Google purchase of Blogger, the thing that struck me as the
] most compelling potential new feature was the combination
] of Google News with Blogger users' commentary. Perhaps
] they'll still do it, but I think I just beat them to it.

I like that attitude.

] I'm constantly amazed by the collective wisdom of a huge
] number of individuals, each publishing their thoughts, and
] voting their attention by linking to things. I wanted to
] tap into this collective brainpower, organize it, and
] present it back to us all.

And that is what we are working on here too.

---

Argh.. It makes me feel really uncomfortable every time I see something thats uber similar to what I'm working on.. It seems to happen often.

/me needs to spend less time reading news and more time coding.

Wait.. Thats it.. The war.. The War!! I can blame it on the war! I like that. "The War is holding up MemeStreams development." If anyone asks, thats my excuse from here out.

Technorati: Current Events, with context

Sometimes when I query Google, it returns pictures instead of my search results. Today, I had this happen and I had to hit reload almost 10 times before I actually got a proper page. The image this meme links shows the upper left hand corner of the results page from one of my queries. You can see Google's logo with random images stuck in it.

Something isn't working correctly over there.. This has been happening for me many times over the past several weeks.

Has anyone else had this happen? Or does Google just not like me.

Google Weirdness

] 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% [U: 66%, typo] 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.

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".. 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... :)

BBC NEWS | Technology | Iraq conflict hits websites hard

The fact that this guy finds these numb-skulls "witty and erudite" shows just how bright you have to be to write for the San Francisco Bay Gaurdian.

=darwin

quoted:
===

Anarchy in the USA
Black Bloc antiwar rioters speak out.

By A.C. Thompson

THE BLACK BLOC has few friends. Cops, obviously, loathe the sable-clad anarchist types who've stomped through downtown San Francisco three times in the past three months, skirmishing with cops, spray painting the San Francisco Chronicle building, shattering windows (Old Navy, Starbucks, and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, among others) and causing at least $50,000 in property damage.

Pacifists and less radical elements of the antiwar movement say the rioters are tarnishing the movement's image and scaring away would-be supporters (see "Resist!," page 22). Stephen Zunes, a left-leaning associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University, trashed the Black Blocers in the Chronicle last week, describing them as "nihilists" and "hoodlums" without a "political agenda."

Zunes's comments are typical. Most people seem to think the Black Bloc rioters are a pack of mindless hooligans. But that analysis is only half correct. Hooligans? Definitely. Mindless? No way. The four young shit-disturbers – three anarchists, one communist – I met at an anonymous and presumably unbugged location March 15 were witty and erudite. And they definitely have a political goal.

sfbg.com | Life During Wartime