Goooooooooogle

Well, that last post was exceptionally serious. Here's some original research to counterbalance.

It should be well known that a Google search for "boobs" will return a significant number of results. But what about people who are really excited about boobs, someone who would exclaim, "boooooooobs!" What is the distribution of that?

Question answered:



Because the hits for "boobs" (34800000) is substantially larger than for, say, "booooooooooooobs" (707), it was necessary to use a logarithmic scale.

I also included zero o's (bbs) and one o (bobs) for reference. Interestingly, it appears that people are about five times more interested in BBSes than they are boobs, but there are almost six times as many boobs on the Internet as there are Bobs.

There is a curious dip around eight o's, and an inexplicable notch at 18. Otherwise things gradually taper off to zero at 93 o's, only to have a temporary resurgence at
96 and 97.

I'm not exactly sure what that says about people. I'm not sure exactly what it says about me either, but at least it was worth a bit of a laugh.

Now the next great experiment: what does this do to my page hits?

For future reference, and to screw up any future attempts to perform this research, I hereby provide the raw data (sorry, you'll have to copy it elsewhere if you really want to read it, Blogger's formatting is less than ideal):

Google Search bbs bobs boobs booobs boooobs booooobs boooooobs booooooobs boooooooobs booooooooobs boooooooooobs booooooooooobs boooooooooooobs booooooooooooobs boooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs 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Hits 168000000 6080000 34800000 203000 11700 9500 10800 3110 1930 2230 5830 1320 2820 707 857 395 450 645 94 292 91 77 65 50 63 54 43 47 31 44 28 30 27 31 21 22 17 15 20 15 20 10 7 9 14 6 30 6 11 4 5 8 8 5 4 4 5 3 4 4 4 6 4 7 3 8 5 12 4 4 2 6 5 2 6 1 2 6 0 2 2 4 3 3 4 3 2 1 1 1 4 1 0 0 1 0 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0

Us vs Them

If you've been following the American presidential election in the last few days, you may have noticed that the Republican side has taken on a very "Us vs Them" tone.

This is probably a fairly good summary:



I've been seeing this trend down south for quite a long time now. Political opinion is not just polarized, it's not really even opinion any more. It's even moved past the "cheer for your own team" mentality, and focused on hatred of the "other guy's team."

This way of thinking is poisonous, and it has spread into every facet of politics.

The War on Terror exists because we can't talk to terrorists. They're the "other" guys. If you don't negotiate, though, how do you intend to win, other than genocide?

The War on Drugs exists because drugs are seen as inherently evil, even though the War doesn't prevent drug use - it just makes it hazardous through lack of quality control and medical intervention, and puts money into the pockets of gangsters. It creates an Us vs Them mindset, where people involved with drugs become disposable people. If we could solve the organized crime problem, wouldn't it be worth legalizing drugs?

Imagine, for a moment, the world at peace. What does that world look like? Does everyone believe exactly as you do? Like the same things you do? Have the same color skin you do? What happens when we answer "yes" to any one of those? I think what happens is endless conflict, intolerance and hatred, and that is where the Us vs Them mentality takes us.

To me, peace does not mean absence of conflict. It means wars are fought with words, not bombs. It means every person is free to openly question beliefs. It means we can still be friends when we disagree. It means my moral code will not intrude into the privacy of your home, and yours will not intrude into mine. It means we respect each other. It means we honestly search for the truth in matters, and understand that disagreement arises from imperfect information, muddled thinking, or from selfishness.

Perhaps it means realizing that We are somebody else's Them, and They might be right.

It is done

So, the election's done. The Conservatives won another minority. Overall, I figure that's pretty much about the best I could hope for, I suppose.

Despite my minimal efforts to the contrary, our local Conservative incumbent, James Moore, was re-elected. I was right about that. My estimate of 35% of the vote (down from 41%) was a little off the mark, with him taking 54.6% of the vote. That would be 25525 votes vs. 19961 last time, so despite low turnout he actually got more votes. Wow! I totally failed to call that!

Interestingly, the NDP candidate was well ahead of the Liberal candidate as well, which is reversed from last time. I guess the Liberals decided to vote for the Conservatives this time around.

In other news, the NDP appear to have taken the Western Arctic riding. Since I appear to have actually pissed off the only person I know who calls there home (which I feel quite badly about, by the way), I hope there is some consolation in her having made some difference by travelling home to vote, with a vote spread of only 523 votes.

So, all in all, that was probably the least useful $400,000,000 I've seen spent recently. Let's hope we don't have to do it again soon.

My problem with religion

My problem with religion is that it is not actually responsible for almost all of the good things that people attribute to it, and is responsible for some very bad things that people do not attribute to it.

Two days to the election

Here's a link to the candidates. It will probably be invalid soon, but then so will this post.

I'm inclined to vote Conservative, but that's primarily to piss off a good friend of mine who recently told me that I should keep my disagreements that are only tangentially disagreeable to my own blog. (That's not strictly true, but I'm really fishing for a reason to vote for anybody this time around. But it is fun when she's all annoyed.) It's not really a disagreement though. As far as I'm concerned, that argument is already won. Go read The God Delusion and save all of us some pain. I've even added some handy atheism links to the sidebar in case going to the library is too much work.

I almost like my local Liberal candidate. He's seems like a smart guy, is in the computer business, and has various science degrees. He's also not going to win - his flyer was filled to the brim with meaningful, intelligent information, and even I said, "just give me the bullet points!"

Our Green candidate is a computer guy too, but as far as I can tell, he was just dropped into the riding to have somebody on the ballot. Even the lawn signs in my riding are just generic "Green Party" signs, they don't even have his name on them.

Our NDP candidate is pretty cute... that counts for something, right? I'm assuming our young, handsome Conservative incumbent wouldn't disagree.

Current inclination: Liberal by a hair, followed closely by Conservative, with Green coming up a very close third. Am I forgetting anybody? (Hint: yes.)

Current guess at the outcome: Conservative, with 35% of the vote (down from 41% last time).