I always find Stratfor’s daily state of the world missives to be interesting reads. As an intelligence service, they have a much different slant in their reporting than regular newspapers. For example, today’s update explains what Dubya and Putin have to gain and lose in their umcoming summit.

Rob Walker weighs in on the refusal of cable companies to carry advertising for DSL. I’ve also read that phone companies are generally only rolling out DSL to areas where cable companies are offering cable modems, or they face some other form of broadband competition. Cable companies, phone companies, media companies — they all suck. I’m just surprised they haven’t figured out a way to buy legislation that will allow them to merge into one giant quasi-governmental agency. Then we could have the media/communications company (probably named something like (Warner Sprint Bell Worldcom AOL, Inc.), and the software company (Microsoft). Wouldn’t that make things delightfully simple?

Have you ever been forwarded the 8th grade graduation exam from Salina, Kansas? I have, several times. Fortunately, Dave Farber forwarded it to the IP mailing list, and someone responded with a link to this essay which identifies it as a teacher certification exam. The exam is always offered as evidence that we’re dumber and more poorly educated than we’re used to be, and I am almost always irritated to the point of distraction by people pining on about the fond old days of yore when things were better than they are now. Glad to see that one debunked.

I forgot to mention it last week, but Automatic Media (the umbrella for smart sites like Suck, Feed, and Plastic) bit the dust. Scott Rosenberg’s remembrance of Suck and Feed brought back a flood of memories for me as well. I can remember reading Suck for the first time and thinking, “This is what this whole Web thing is all about.” This was back when almost nobody knew who the Sucksters were, and before they had an ongoing feud with The Netly News. It seems almost impossibly long ago now.

Business Week on the RIAA’s moronic and greedy lawsuit against Launchcast: After Napster, a New Net Target.

It becomes increasingly obvious every day that Donald Rumsfeld is the biggest asshole in the Dubya administration (and this is an administration that includes Karl Rove and Ted Olson). His last evil genius scheme: scrapping the 1972 ABM treaty and building a missile defense system even if it doesn’t work. Certainly this man must be getting kickbacks from the defense industry. I can’t for the life of me imagine one good reason for spending billions of dollars on something that probably won’t work just for the sake of doing it.

Anil Dash apologizes to Walter Mossberg.

Apparenty Smart Tags do work on any site.

The National Academy of Sciences has issued its report on global warming. The ultrasimplified conclusion: global warming exists and it’s probably our fault.

I normally delete spam, but one I received yesterday was too good to pass up. The subject was “Urgent,” so I opened it thinking that it was from a reader of one of my books in desperate need of technical support. But nope, it was an offer to launder money for a fictitious officer from the Nigerian army.