If perhaps you once dismissed the business plan for General Memetics Corporation, consider briefly the $300 million value of the contracts discussed in this article.

The Pentagon awarded three contracts this week, potentially worth up to $300 million over five years, to companies it hopes will inject more creativity into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly the military.

"We would like to be able to use cutting-edge types of media," said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, a part of Tampa-based US Special Operations Command. "If you want to influence someone, you have to touch their emotions."

"What's changing is the realization that in this so-called war on terrorism, this might be the thing that wins the whole thing for you. This gets to the importance of the war of ideas."

Pentagon Funds Diplomacy Effort

The rumors are true: Mondo Kim's, one of New York's best and highest regarded independent music and video stores, was raided by New York police Wednesday at approximately 1:00 p.m. EST for allegedly selling unsanctioned hip-hop DJ mixes featuring bootlegged tracks by RIAA artists.

This is very lame. Kim's is legendary. In this case, its over hip-hop DJ mixes, but Kim's real fame as an outlet for bootlegs comes from videos. Browsing through Kim's you will find many things you did not know exist. Everything from concert bootlegs to obscure foreign movies. Things that are out of print that you will not find anywhere else.

BoingBoing is also following this.

Pitchfork: Daily Music News - Kim's Raided by RIAA

Were you inspired by a school teacher? Did you thank them?

We are heading into an age in which jobs are likely to be invented and made obsolete faster and faster. The chances of today's college kids working in the same jobs for the same companies for their whole careers are about zero. In such an age, the greatest survival skill you can have is the ability to learn how to learn. The best way to learn how to learn is to love to learn, and the best way to love to learn is to have great teachers who inspire.

Like all the best essayists, Tom Friedman can transform even the most obvious message into a compelling story.

Behind Every Grad ...

This video is a little slow to start up, but worth the wait. Watch it full screen, because you won't believe your eyes otherwise.

Basically, some people have come up with one of the scariest arcade games ever, and are simply waiting for new victims, er players, to step and stick in some coins.

Proof that british people have a strange sense of fun

(Non-relevant chatter edited out)
[04:15] [KevinMarks] http://beta.technorati.com
[04:15] [KevinMarks] er
[04:15] [KevinMarks] email beta@technorati.com
[04:31] [rattle] The tabs on that main page.. List five items. Fearing the browser's ability to scroll is pointless. Before any of this crap, there was above and below the fold. Work with it.
[04:35] [rattle] Embrace the long tail. Let there be something below the fold worth looking at. Give me something to pull up in a browser that's worth pulling on a shitty GPRS connection, waiting for it to load, and have it worth it to me to see what I got. To understand what's important with web design, you need to take two steps back to more forward.
[04:36] [rattle] Here, I see evidence of the same exact thing that made Technorati's last round of webpage edits fall on its face. Last time, certain sections did not take advantage of with width of the browser. ... which was corrected.
[04:36] [KevinMarks] rattle
[04:36] [KevinMarks] email beta@technorati.com
[04:36] [KevinMarks] or blog it and link back ;)
[04:37] [rattle] Sometimes feedback is a drunk shouting at you.
[04:37] [KevinMarks] it's just that the folk working on it have collapsed wiht exhaustion and I m ight not remeber to pass this on
[04:39] [rattle] Hey, I got a web community I run that gets (mostly) ignored. Such is the fate accepted by anyone who decides to take the personal risk to speak. I saw your soapbox, I stood on it. Maybe I'll remember to comment via email.. Maybe I'll continue to have trouble switching between windows.
[04:40] [rattle] I need to implement trackback and all that shit first.. Now Google Sitemaps. And my shit still doesn't even ping anything. Now I gotta write you email's to help you aggregate the web for your own benefit? What's in it for me?
[04:46] [KevinMarks] rattle: blog your critique
[04:46] [KevinMarks] then ping us
[04:46] [KevinMarks] http://beta.technorati.com
[04:53] [rattle] I already said, my site does not ping. I still need to write that code. Its not as simple as installing Movable Type or Wordpress here.. Building a community from the ground up for people isn't as easy as it looks on the Internet. Take two layers of irony and call me in the morning.
[04:56] [rattle] http://www.memestreams.net/users/rattle/blogid5121042

MemeStreams user (and good friend) Dagmar is currently under FBI investigation due to some mysterious systems break in at the university he works. Click through to read his story about it.

He says he didn't do anything, and I believe him.. Its not out of the norm for the feds to vet anyone who has ever been associated with the word "hacker" when an intrusion takes place where they work. Happens all the time. Friends here in the south-eastern security scene have often joked that somewhere the FBI keeps a list of us all, which it refers to and updates regularly. I expect this will be resolved quickly, and have either an amusing or positive outcome. If it doesn't, I guess we just have to make a big stink over it. We've done that before too..

Yesterday's Nightmare (Dagmar's, not mine)

cyantist wrote:

Finally! We have proof that Google is hiding things from us in Alaska, Mexico and New Jersey. Hmmm. Anyway, it's a conspiracy I tell you!

I can say with somewhat certainty that there is nothing odd in the middle of Little Egg Harbor, the "Black Hole" in Jersey's coverage. The water there is pretty shallow, so its unlikely there was something there that was blacked out, like a parked fleet.

I'm not nearly as familiar with the Little Egg Harbor area as I am with the Barnegat Bay/Inlet area slightly to the north, where I'm from. In that last link, you might notice the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant, which I'm fond of making jokes about.

There are a number of interesting things in the immediate vicinity of that Black Hole though.. If from that point, you start going up to the north-west, you will see where most of the US cranberry supply comes from (more). All around that area are parts of Fort Dix and numerous decommissioned bases.. The only stuff that really looks interesting from orbit is the McGuire AFB stuff.

As I'm fond of saying, the entire state might as well be a military base. The best example being the Earle Naval Weapons Station. Check out these Google Maps's links of it: The pier - Landing, offices, and America's most secure baseball field - Lots of parking for a big area of nothing with a bunch of tunnels... - And follow down that secret highway/rail corridor to the main magazine - If you zoom out a decent amount, you will surely notice that the overall Earle complex dominates the area. Zoom out farther, and you notice that the stuff I linked here dominates the state.

Google Maps is endless fun.

RE: Google Sightseeing - Post Archive - Black Holes

This is a picture of an ISO 9001 compliance flag. Large companies might hang these around their office when doing an ISO 9001 initiative. Their employes will then feel like they are characters in Dilbert or Office Space. Either that, or they might feel like pawns of The Conspiracy.

ISO 9001 Illuminati Flag

President Bush on Thursday called on Congress to reauthorize the 16 provisions of the USA Patriot Act that are slated to expire at the end of the year, calling them "practical, important and ... constitutional."

"Congress needs to renew them all and, this time, Congress needs to make the provisions permanent," Bush told an audience of about 150 officers at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy in Columbus.

"We basically said we've very much like to hear about specifics," Gantman said. "The ACLU then, for really over a year, had no specific abuses they could point to. On their behalf, I'd say one of their problems, like us, is we have a helluva time getting information from the Justice Department about what was going on there."

The ACLU, in a posting on its Web site, said the Bush administration and former Attorney General John Ashcroft "essentially refused to describe how it was implementing the law; it left numerous substantial questions unanswered, and classified others without justification.

"In short, not only has the Bush administration undermined judicial oversight on government spying on citizens by pushing the Patriot Act into law, but it is also undermining another crucial check and balance on surveillance powers: accountability to Congress and the public."

CNN.com - Bush to Congress: Renew Patriot Act - Jun 9, 2005

A 17-year-old surfer in New Jersey lost a chunk of leg flesh in what is likely the state's first
attack by a Great White shark in 30 years, officials said on Wednesday.

New Jersey resident Ryan Horton was about 25 feet off the beach at Surf City, Long Beach Island early on Sunday afternoon when he felt a sharp pain in his ankle but didn't see what
caused it. After paddling back to shore, he was taken to a hospital, Surf City Police said in a statement.

Bob Schoelkopf, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, New Jersey said photos of the wound confirmed it could only have been made by a Great White.

If it can kill you, there is a good chance we've got it in Jersey.

Great White shark attacks New Jersey surfer - Yahoo! News