We've come a long way, baby, and one of the most-cited Internet videos explains. It's "The Machine is Us/ing Us" and it's a fascinating history of the evolution of everything Internet....where it's been, where it's going. Credit goes to Dr. Michael Wesch, assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. Discuss, which the blogger at EverythingMiscellaneous did, describing the video as "the Web in 5 minutes." Not even 5, actually. It's worth checking out.
From the "creative people with too much time on their hands" department comes one of the most popular blog posts from the past several days: "What I did Over Christmas Vacation." To wit, a bunch of "Lord of the Rings" fans built a replica of Helm's Deep battle sing candy (Sourpatch Kids, Gummy Bears, lollipops, peppermints, icing etc). No pun intended, but...SWEET!...and rather nerdly.
What about guys? And one of the week's top news stories -- that more U.S. women are spouse-less than those who are married -- was curious for what it didn't report: the number of men (over time) who are also spouse-less or not. The report noted generally that more men are married than women, but didn't provide comparative historical data for men. Hmmm... WhereItStands at least provides a timeline.
What will 2007 hold for the U.S. and Iraq? A redeployment of existing U.S. troops in an already embattled country? A troop surge? A little diplomacy for a change? A BlogPulse Trend Graph, while not able to predict the future, plots references to "stay the course" against references to drawing down/redeploying troops. ("Stay the course" peaked in pre-election late October when the Bush Administration officially abandoned the three-word policy as official policy).
Time has been short lately, have you noticed....between family responsibilities and new job responsibilities, but I'm back just in time to congratule...YOU, Time's "Person of the Year" for creating, posting, blogging, videotaping, sharing, link and citing all those tidbits of wisdom that have combined to create all this Internet buzz.. That news makes up six of Monday's top 10 most-cited news stories and Monday's most-cited phrase in the blogosphere. Reason to celebrate and prepare an acceptance speech? Or to diss the entire "award"? Congrats, regardless.
Could you drive through a major U.S. city if all the traffic signs were removed? European cities are experimenting with the concept, which ranks among today's most-cited new stories in the blogosphere. (Can anyone imagine driving in Boston without traffic signs?)....
I give it a year, maybe two I'm not sure what the folks at the U.S. Mint think will make Americans suddenly begin loving the dollar coins, given the fact that the Susan B. Anthony $2 version went, well, nowhere. "Dear Mint: We want LESS weight in our pockets, not more. Thank you."
Feeling the earth move, indeed If the spirit strikes you on Dec. 22, here's why. Enough said.
It's less than a week until Thanksgiving, but Christmas decorations seem to have been up for months in retail stores. Are we rushing the season? Perhaps....(the spike, by the way, is for the Canadian celebration of Thanksgiving.
If you're curious about which videos bloggers are most curious about, BlogPulse has added a new segment of blog analysis called "Top Videos." Today's list of the 40 most-cited videos, it's obvious, is dominated by YouTube.com offerings. TOday's, for example, is called Kiwi, an animated film done as part of a student's master's thesis. As with other BlogPulse data sets, the list is based on the videos that bloggers cite or link to the most in their blog posts.
A link to the Top VIdeos section is now available on the left-hand navigation bar off the home page and in the left-hand navigation list on the Analysis page. Results are retroactive to Oct. 16. Enjoy!
It hasn't been a week since the mid-term elections, and the divisive fear-mongering has started already, what with right-wing bloggershinting that Al Quaeda is absolutely thrilled now that Democrats have swept Republicans out of majority control, a point refuted by Glenn Greenwald. Maybe everyone ought to take a deep breath and at least let the Democratic majority take office before they start speculating and spreading fear and loathing. Who knows? Maybe some real live international diplomacy and intelligent foreign policy might make a difference for a change...
BlogPulse, the book OK, so there is no BlogPulse book, but over at the Data Mining blog, Nielsen BuzzMetrics' own Matthew Hurst created a close fascimile of one.
Maybe he can pastor to resigned Rep. Mark Foley. And Jimmy Swaggart. And Tammy Faye Baker's husband, whatever his name was. And... (Note: One would assume that staking the high moral ground also means having the ability to walk on it).
Given what's happened this week, you have to wonder what's' worse: John Kerry'sbotched joke about the kind of smarts needed to wage an effective war, or the fact that the Iraqi government basically told the U.S. troops to leave one of Bagdhad's strongest havens for independent militas? Is that "stay the course" or not?
The verbal smackdown And it was time for a BlogPulse graph to illustrate whether actor Michael J. Fox, who takes his drugs for a legitimate degenerative disease, or DJ Rush Limbaugh, whose excuse for taking drugs is more elusive, captured more buzz for Limbaugh's recent mockery of Fox's political involvement on behalf of stem cell research:
From one end of the spectrum to the other...it's the only way to sum up some of the blog discoveries today. First is BoingBoing's focus (in today's fifth-most-cited blog post) on a bill apparently signed within the last two weeks by President George Bush that gives him power to declare martial law. That shares space with today's second-most-cited blog post about porn-industry donations to the Republican Party. Honest.
If that's not earth-shattering enough, perhaps the news delivered by Sir Nicholas Stern (today's burstiest person) will be: his global warming report, delivered in Britain, forecasts dire economic consequences if the nations of the world don't start addressing carbon/greenhouse gases.
One week from today Next Tuesday, voters will head to the polls to decide which party will lead for the next several years. A BlogPulse trend graph provides few clues except a lot of overlap:
