NYT columnist Thomas L. Friedman lays out his argument for rallying the United States with a new green patriotism.

This April 5 speech by C.G. Lynch of CIO.com is an excellent primer for the challenges posed to the newspaper industry by the Web.

This sums up the stakes:

Despite the pessimism of those who tally the mergers, layoffs and tanking stocks in the newspaper business, some experts believe newspapers can be saved by using the Web to reinvent themselves and thereby retain their role as a vital institution in American society. If they fail, and newspapers begin to fold with the great rapidity many expect, the loss to the American polity will be incalculable. In either case, there will be some valuable lessons other businesses can learn about dealing with disruptive technologies: principally, that one’s customer base and competition can change overnight, and a failure to prepare for that change can have catastrophic consequences.

The Guardian's George Monbiot on the struggle between scientists and bureaucrats over the latest IPCC report and what it says about the real efforts to suppress the truth on climate change.

From the NYT:

Google agreed to its largest acquisition yesterday, reaching a deal to purchase DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, almost double what it paid for YouTube last year. And perhaps just as important, the deal kept DoubleClick from the hands of Microsoft.

Notice the BBC most-emailed stories summary below:

And when was the 'goat marriage' story written?

If you said Feb. 24, 2006, then the chévre is on me!

Adam Curtis, BBC Online's world editor, blogged in September about the story's periodic revival.

If you really want to indulge your inner Web geek, check out the Beeb's 'most popular now' page. You can find the top emailed and most-read stories, see how relatively heavy or light Web traffic to the Beeb is from various world regions, and get a regional breakdown of the emailed/read stories.

As I'm typing this, the most popular story is US sex abstinence classes queried. Traffic from North America was 19 per cent above normal.