Reading the Wired news this morning I spotted a story on manufacturing meat in a laboratory. Three years ago I wrote about this and now I guess some Dutch guys are working on it for real. There will be no steak for a while, but manufactured ground meat may not be too far off.

Once apon at time some friends of mine announced to me they had started a blog. I was pretty curious about blogs - I'd heard of them but hadn't actually become a regular blog reader, actually mostly I was interested in becoming a blog writer. Fresh into my anti-coporate personhood jag I think I thought I had something to tell the world. Anyway, suffice to say that The Long Dark Tea-Time was born shortly afterwards.

Although this blog is barely sipping at the tea these days its still ticking along after three years. I think I even have a few regular subscribers out there - although writing about the stuff I do I get a ton of hits purely from search engines. For a while my Iraqi Flag image was the number one Iraqi Flag image on Google.

Then one day because Blogger doesn't have post categories and because I was trying to remain mostly anonymous but wanted to blog about mainstream tech stuff, I started another tech focused blog. For obvious reasons I wont give its name or a link here, but it wouldn't be hard to guess, so now I had two blogs. For a while I was even contributing to a group blog called Johnnytheo (either Johnny Theo or Johnny The O, I can't remember which).

But today I'd like to give special mention to the blogopshere's newest recruit, someone who I've said always should be blogging about her day to day experiences. Yes my partner and packing and shipping savant (also refered to as "Agent J") has finally got her own blog. Unfortunately I'm not going to give you the link here since being in retail if all my friends end up knowing about it someday soon so will some of her customers. Then one day someone will come along and notice that their bad behavior at the store has been publicised and will bring a big fat lawyer to the party. So if you happen to know "Agent J" in person I'll let you bug her in person for the link, or wish that her blog will become so famous that you will get to read it anyway. Until then good luck finding it and welcome to the Blogosphere Agent J!

Thanks to Tree Hugger I came across a great potted history of oil by comic Robert Newman. A video of his performance is available for free from Google Video. When he started talking about the coincide of Iraq and Iran switching to trading oil in Euros and its impact on US deficit spending I could have wept since I blogged about this theory way back in 2003 before the US even stepped foot in Iraq. I believe this theory then and I still believe it now. I don't think it was the only reason the USA went in, but I think it was definitely contributing factor. Believe me, with China alone holding 1 trillion in US dollars imagine what would happen if everyone stopped needing greenbacks to buy oil. It would be like switching from gold to leaves as the backing for currencies - good bye bullion hello deforestation!

I just received an email from someone who doesn't normally circulate me anything spam or urban myth flavored. However this one was about the #1 movie on Google Video - apparently its 911 Loose Change which is yet another 9/11 conspiracy theory. Actually when I checked now its only at #13, with the number one spot held firmly by a Japanese commercial for a seemingly translucent bra (followed closely by a promotional spot for The Naked News).

Anyway, I did watch "Loose Change" and I have to say my mind has not changed since I last dug through all the conjecture at sites like 911review.com and its ilk. Basically I think Bush and Cheney could only dream of pulling off such an elaborate stunt but they simply couldn't. And if they really did need and want to risk such a major hoax and an excuse for empire building they could and I believe would have choosen a much simpler plan - just fly one or two planes into buildings, or simply blow them up and blame the terrorists.

When "Loose Change" starts delving into notions that it was all done to claim a few billion in insurance and gold, well its just beyond belief. There are far easier and legitimate was to cream off a few billion from the economy. The bigger deal here is that Bush actually got away with all the crap he did and got himself (re)elected in 2004. That required no conspiracy, no drone planes, no pre-planted charges - just a ready and will nation of dumb and dumber voters who think happiness can be delivered by killing terrorists.