] An estimated 33.1 million people watched "Chicago" win
] best picture, Nielsen said on Monday, down sharply from
] the 41.8 million who watched the Oscars last year.
 . . .
] The Academy Awards is often the most popular
] entertainment program of the year, but even last month's
] finale of "Joe Millionaire," with 40 million
] viewers, beat it this year.

'Joe Millionaire' TV Ratings Beat Out the Oscars

This is one of my primary sources of news these days. If there's a particular story that I'm not hearing about in mainstream media, I just go search for it here. I especially like the timestamps on articles, to see how current they are. And I *love* that it indexes thousands of different international news sources, so I can read different angles on the same story.

Go Google!

Google News

] U.S. soldiers confiscated the prisoners' weapons and
] military equipment. The guns were old, but the gas masks
] weren't.
]
] "It looks like a regular chemical protection mask," said
] Sgt. Jennifer Raichle. "It was made in 2002. Brand new."
]
] The gas masks were indeed brand new, as were the
] decontamination kits, and atropeine -- used to treat
] exposure to nerve agents.
]
] "I would guess they were planning on using chemical
] warfare. They may or may not use it, but they were ready
] for it," Raichle said.

Newly-issued gas masks, to troops with old guns? And the next question in my mind is, where were these gasmasks manufactured? Iraqi-made? If so, where's the factory? And if not made in Iraq, then which country has been selling such recently-made gas masks to Iraq??

Iraq Chemical Warfare Clues

] Most of the new information comes from handwritten
] documents and computer hard drives seized during the
] March 1 capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, regarded by
] some government analysts as al Qaeda's most important
] operational planner. Known inside al Qaeda as "the
] Brain," Mohammed has acknowledged being the principal
] author of the Sept. 11, 2001, plot. Significantly, one
] official noted, Mohammed was arrested at a Rawalpindi,
] Pakistan, home owned by Abdul Quddoos Khan, a
] bacteriologist with access to production materials and
] facilities who has since disappeared.

More info from Mohammed's laptop.

Al Qaeda Near Biological, Chemical Arms Production (washingtonpost.com)

] At what point will the United States be able to declare
] that the regime has changed? When President Hussein is
] captured or dead? When his elite 25,000-man Special
] Republican Guard surrenders? Or, when the top 2,000
] members of the ruling Baath Party have been purged from
] government?

Or not until free elections have taken place?

Regime change: How will we know when we've won?

] The bombing of Iraq was intensified after American
] officials revealed that their special forces had been
] holding face-to-face negotiations with Republican Guard
] leaders. The awesome display of firepower was designed as
] much to increase the pressure on them to surrender as to
] destroy targets crucial to Saddam.
. . .
] Mr Rumsfeld had earlier given clues about the extent
] of the unseen war being waged for the loyalty of Iraqi
] generals. "There are communications in every conceivable
] mode and method, public and private, to the Iraqi forces,
] that they can act with honour and turn over their weapons
] and walk away from them, and they will not be hurt," he said.

I fully agree with this. We don't *have* to fight. It's not about killing people and destroying cities. It's about changing the Iraqi leadership. So the quicker we can get through this, with the fewest possible casualties (on *both* sides), the better.

Times Online: The Other Unseen Part of the War

Eyewitness account of the bombing a few hours ago:

] Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's main presidential
] palace, a great rampart of a building 20 stories high,
] simply exploded in front of me -- a cauldron of fire,
] a 100ft sheet of flame and a sound that had my ears
] singing for an hour after. The entire, massively
] buttressed edifice shuddered under the impact. Then four
] more Cruise missiles came in.
. . .
] No doubt this morning the Iraqi minister of information
] will address us all again and insist that Iraq will prevail.
] We shall see. But many Iraqis are now asking an obvious
] question: How many days? Not because they want the Americans
] or the British in Baghdad, though they may profoundly wish
] it. But because they want this violence to end: Which, when
] you think of it, is exactly why these raids took place.

ArabNews: Baghdad's Night of Terror

] 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% [typo correction: 66%] 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.

I'd also be interested to know how much of that increase in traffic is from new users, vs. the existing users doing more hits than usual? For example, is it possible to tell how many unique visitors check out Memestreams on an average day?

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"..

Hee! I'm glad I tracked that link down via Mr. Kobeissi and MEMRI.

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... :)

Perhaps we could add a blurb to the top of the "topics" page that says something like, "Note: This page changes on a daily basis. If you were directed here by a particular search engine, the article that you were searching for may have already scrolled off, but you can find it again by typing the same search term into the 'Search Memestreams' box in the lefthand column."

Thanks to Rattle for the status report!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Iraq conflict hits websites hard

] CNN Ordered Out of Baghdad - Accused of being propaganda machine.

Heh, somebody's not happy with the detailed news coverage. I wonder if they're going to try ordering Al-Jazeera to get out too? ;)

Yahoo! News - CNN Ordered Out of Baghdad

] The Iraq invasion is the first major war on the Web. Now
] that the tanks have started rolling, millions of
] Americans are crowding the Internet to catch up on the
] latest news, see pictures, and send e-mail to loved ones
] in danger. After you've checked out Slate -- it was your
] first stop, right? -- here's where you should you go for
] updates, speculation, on-the-ground blogging, official
] statements, and even war comedy.

Excellent resource with lots of links.

The War on the Web - Sites to see on the road to Baghdad. By Avi Zenilman