Another regularly updated page from BBC. This is charts the latest developments in the Iraq conflict.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq latest: At-a-glance

] The BBC's unrivalled team of correspondents is bringing
] you news from the Gulf and reaction from around the
] world. On this page BBC News Online logs their
] impressions and personal experiences as they watch events
] unfold.

This is _the page_ on BBC. Regularly updated reports from BBC reporters all over the place, weblog style.

BBC NEWS | In Depth | Reporters' Log: War in Iraq

] Furthermore, videos with words such as "bomb", "missile",
] "war" or other sensitive words in the artist or song
] title should not be shown at the moment.
]
] Examples include:
]
] Outkast "B.O.B (Bombs over Baghdad)" - song title may
] offend.
]
] Radiohead "Invasion" - song title may offend.
]
] Megadeth "Holy Wars" - song title may offend.
]
] Gavin Friday "You, Me and World War Three" - song title
] may offend.
]
] B-52s videos.

Quick! Construct a firewall between current world events and our art culture! Don't want the kids to get emotional about this stuff. Don't want anything like the 60's to happen again. Nothing about war makes people want to drink pepsi or buy clothes.

One of the many reasons why MTV will not be relevant in the future.

MTV Broadcast Standards blackhole current events from programming

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

]Achieving Rapid Dominance
]Written By: Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
]With: L.A. "Bud" Edney, Fred M. Franks, Charles A. Horner, Jonathan ]T. Howe, and Keith Brendley

No matter how much the media wants to throw around this newest buzz-term, hardly any of them either know or care to mention where it comes from. This book supposedly proposes some if not most of the strategy being used by the military in iraq.

Shock & Awe, The Book

] 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

] But the TVs remained off, due to a policy put in place in
] Groton and several other school districts designed to
] shield students from potentially unsettling war coverage
] and keep the war from becoming an obsession, at least
] during school hours.

Yes, we must shield students from current events. And we must also wrap them in bubble wrap and never let them leave the bedroom so that they don't ever, ever get hurt!!

War Brings Ban On TV To Fitch High School

] A suspected Tamil Tiger rebel fleet attacked and sank a
] vessel carrying Chinese workers fishing off Sri Lanka's
] eastern coast, killing 17 people, a navy official said
] yesterday

Tiger fleet sinks Chinese vessel, killing 17 on board

Opinion roundup.

United Kingdom, Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian
Saudi Arabia, Nicolas Buchele in the Arab News
Philippines, Adrian E. Cristobal in the Manila Bulletin
Australia, Editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald
Ghana, Editorial from Accra Mail
Israel, Editorial from Haaretz
Russia, Boris Kagarlitsky in the Moscow Times
News Iran, Parviz Esmaeili in the Tehran Times

Salon.com | The world on the war

] Web logs -- hence the geekish contraction "blogs" --
] began as cyberspatial diaries on which writers posted
] snippets of whatever came to mind or to their attention.
] Narcissism and tedious anarchy were the order of the day.
] Over time, the blogs began to take on many of the
] characteristics of privately printed 19th century
] pamphlets -- places where overlooked or simply eccentric
] preoccupations could be aired.
]
] But as the form's potential to reach a global readership
] almost instantaneously became clearer, it has become a
] favored medium for political commentators and opinion
] journalists with a desire to make their case with more
] urgency and timeliness than print -- or even television
] -- will permit.
]
] The run-up to this second Gulf War has been an
] exhilarating period for the latter class of bloggers. In
] fact, the uncertain character of these past few months
] has seemed tailor-made for a medium that puts a premium
] on opinion, debate and the digestion of provocative
] information from more sources than anyone with a day job
] has waking moments to handle.

Los Angeles Times: Online commentators are seizing the moment