Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.

Environmentalism, meet realism. I agree with the author's assertions here. Time has clarified a number of things, but the environmental movement has not necessarily moved to embrace any of it.

I must admit to being unaware that population growth had leveled off..

Environmental Heresies

The News Corporation, making one of its largest bets on the Internet, announced today that it is paying $580 million in cash to acquire Intermix Media Inc., a Los Angeles-based company whose chief asset is MySpace.com, a Web site that is enjoying surging popularity with young audiences.

News Corporation to Acquire Intermix for $580 Million - New York Times

China's next manned space flight will carry sperm from high-quality pigs for attempted genetic modification, in the first animal breeding experiment to be carried on a Chinese space capsule.

The agency quoted an official at the academy as saying the sperm would be taken from two "carefully chosen" Rongchang pigs.

Scientists believe that microgravity and cosmic rays in outer space will cause genetic change in the sperm.

I want Chinese Space Bacon!

China space flight to carry pig sperm - Newindpress.com

Frustrated by MemeStreams? Sick of our bad UI design? Tired of all these stupid people and their insipid political ideas and boring personal interests? Why start a flame war when you can take out your frustrations like a man... with firearms! Send an email to tom@memestreams.net with your mailing address and I'll mail you some MemeStreams sitckers! Stick them to your car. Stick them to your laptop. Stick them to your little sister. Or better yet, take them down to the range..

Disclaimer: "Industrial Memetics testing indicates that its new sticker product will not protect against 45 cal, 9mm, 7.62x39, .223, or 12 guage slug. However, other tests indicate it may survive for a short time on the bottom of a skateboard."

MemeStreams Stickers!

MemeStreams is now pings weblog indexing services. This should result in posts on user weblogs showing up in more blog search engine results.

We are currently pinging the following services: Weblogs.com, Technorati, My Yahoo!, PubSub, Moreover, Blo.gs, Syndic8, and Feedster.

If anyone is aware of any other weblog tracking services we should ping, be sure to let me know. We can easily add support for any services that utilize the XML-RPC weblogUpdates.ping or weblogUpdates.extendedPing methods.

Update: Everything appears to be working now. Notice to all the perl coders out there, Frontier::Client is not a good module to use in a daemon..

Courtesy of Cryptome.

Valerie Plame Photo

London bombing suspects (L-R) Hasib Mir Hussain, Germaine Lindsay, Mohammed Sadique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer are seen at Luton train station in central England in this July 7, 2005 Closed Circuit Television video footage released by London's Scotland Yard on July 16, 2005.

London Transport System Bombings on Yahoo! News Photos

Recently, discussions about business models surrounding indexing the blog-o-sphere have been popping up. Much of this has been surrounding Technorati. Doc Sears has a great starting point. Wired has an article about how Technorati is becoming a "utility".

Tom Foremski kicked it all off with this account of a statement from a Technorati PR exec:

"It's all about getting the right algorithm" he said at one point, arguing that Technorati's sophisticated automated services would enable corporations to find out what is being said about them, their people, products, and to respond to bad news very quickly, by engaging bloggers in conversations.

Mr Hirshberg's pitch very much played into the fear that most corporations and their media relations teams currently wrestle with: how do you deal with millions of bloggers acting as journalists? How do you control your corporate message?

Well, Technorati is offering services that will help companies control their corporate message by identifying those blogs and their social network, that have posted around the "wrong" message. Then, I would imagine, some sort of corporate "SWAT" team could parachute in and engage those off-message bloggers.

Here is his followup.

Also.. I noticed something of interest today. Slashdot is no longer listed in the Top 100 Blogs list. It previously held one of the top spots. I asked about this in an IRC channel that is frequented by a number of Technorati people, and the response I got was that they don't consider themselves a blog, they don't ping Technorati, so they don't get listed. They had only been listed previously due to the inbound linkage from blogs Technorati indexed.

I do find this strange. Slashdot is a Weblog by any definition, aside maybe from one clouded by some type of bloggy politics. If they don't call themselves a "blog", its probably because they predated all the post-2000 blog uber alles. They seem to pay attention to the space, even if they don't adapt every practice.

I think we should be liberal with the semantics of weblogging. In this context, if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and is found with other ducks.. Might as well consider it a duck. Fark makes the duck list. And Fark is more like a Platypus than a Duck. Hell, maddox's page barely touches the animal kingdom and its #11 on the Top 100 Blogs. He pings? He doesn't seem like the type to ping.. He certainly does not have anything nice to say about blogs.

Several points:
1) Technorati has clearly designated itself an opt-in service. This has the side effect of walling up the blog space as its importance as a tool grows.
2) Its largely unknown how they intend to leverage their data on the blogosphere, by all appearances they seem to be chasing the business model of Moreover, only with a more narrow take of what data they are concerned with.
3) I smell the worst kind of politics.

China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the US if it is attacked by Washington during a confrontation over Taiwan, a Chinese general said on Thursday.

“If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” said General Zhu Chenghu.

Well, that is certainly disturbing. Does "draw their * and * on to the target zone" mean if we put weapons systems in striking range and on alert, they would attack us with nukes? "Hawk" may not go far enough to describe this guy..

The Bush Administration will likely just sit and watch if China makes a move on Taiwan.

FT.com / World / Asia-Pacific - Top Chinese general warns US over attack

Rock the Casbah?

A Defense AT&L exclusive: the lyrics from Major Punks' not-to-be-released-anytime-soon underground hit: Transcendental Passion

Cashman got it right
and the Clash, man, they did too
Jack said stick it to the man
and he's talkin' about you
CHORUS:
Punk's transcendental passion
for genuine self expression
is pushin' back oppression
with more than just aggression
Punk's got a deep obsession
it's makin' no concession
for posers tryin' to make themselves
more 'portant than the mission
Ya gotta do it your way
and I gotta do it mine
ya got a brain so use it
don't just toe the comp'ny line
CHORUS
Linus Torvalds, Ghandi
And Martin Luther King
they led the masses, got it done
without an ounce of bling
CHORUS
Stiffen up your backbone
cut through all the clutter
wear some ink, grow your hair
watch the big man sputter
CHORUS
(Gratuitous drum solo)

Everything We Need to Know About Program Management, We Learned from Punk Rock