Bloggasm

In the lead-up to the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, most television news pundits were relying on polls from professional pollsters — like Zogby — to predict the outcome. But a pseudonymous blogger known as Poblano was using a different methodology — demographics.

Guess whose predictions were more accurate?

“Critics scoffed. Most of the public polls pointed to a close race in North Carolina,” writes the National Journal. “Looking back at Poblano’s efforts in Pennsylvania, pollster Dick Bennett decried the models as ’stepwise regression run amok.’ Slate’s Mickey Kaus predicted failure for ‘a sophisticated model that ignores… what’s been happening in the campaign. Like Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright.’”

But in the end, they were wrong and Poblano was right.

What’s perhaps scary is that he was able to make these predictions based on demographic sub-groups. Are they really that predictable? Is this evidence that no matter what happens in a campaign, these subgroups will always vote the same?

The National Journal article has a nifty chart that gives a clear picture of how accurate the blogger’s results were compared to all the professional pollsters.

This is pretty sick.

Several hackers began posting on an epilepsy forum pictures of rapidly-flashing images.

“The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images,” writes Wired. “People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they’re exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons.”

The FBI is investigating the breach.

According to Wonkette, this was located on ABC’s The Note until someone realized that putting the two pics side-by-side like this wasn’t exactly family-friendly.

Over the past year or so there has been no shortage of media critics who have theorized on how to save the floundering newspaper industry. Though many of these ideas focus on utilizing the web and Web 2.0 technology, there has also been a few of what I’ll call “no more free meal ticket” schemes.

Basically, the person tries to find some organization or company that has been benefiting from newspapers and journalism for free all these years and announces that it may be time for it to pay up.

Case in point: A writer for the Columbian Journalism Review recently penned a piece arguing that since the public benefits from the watchdog nature of journalism, then it’s time for the government to begin subsidizing news organizations — an idea that wasn’t exactly enthusiastically embraced by editors and publishers.

Today, I came across an article published by the Century Foundation that has supposedly pinpointed another group that has gotten off Scott free: internet providers and cell phone companies, among others:

Consider that the consumers are paying for broadband, cell phone service, and satellites, plus the cost of the lap-tops, PDAs, televisions, and iPods. The monthly bill for all the delivery is easily a couple of hundred dollars. Mac laptops start at $1,099. Good Dell laptops start at $999. There are cheap cell phones but the kind that offer news and entertainment are still pricey as is the service that supports them. My household monthly tab for two cell phones (a Blackberry and an iPhone), a premium cable package, broadband, and two desktops computers, is about $675. Obviously, we use these devices for a great many things and, in today’s world, they are probably indispensable.

He says that, by contrast, “the New York Times subscription delivered to our door by hand is $5.10 per week. Around the country, the Orlando Sentinel is $19.50 for thirteen weeks; Atlanta Journal-Constitution is $10.99 a month; the Minneapolis Star Tribune is $42.25 for thirteen weeks.”

He concludes that the “Googles” and “Verizons” should therefore start paying for the content that has helped make their companies so popular in the first place.

The author fails to understand, however, that he would have to compare the costs of subscriptions of every newspaper available on the web to really begin to compare it to the internet’s offerings. Simply adding up your subscription costs for the NY Times and a few others just doesn’t cut it.

Adding in both an Iphone and a Blackberry doesn’t necessarily reflect the gadgets found in most households — he’s artificially inflating the cost of all this gadgetry to try and make it seem like these companies are making a killing off your content.

It should be noted that at least one cable/internet company is already subsidizing the news business — Comcast. After all, they are offering wire stories on their website. I think we’ll see similar instances of this kind of online syndication of content from major corporations.

However silly his idea is, at least it’s better than accusing God of having a free meal ticket. Mike Koehler, deputy sports editor at The Oklahoman, has started a new website called prayerforpapers.com, in which he enlists the help of invisible sky fairies to save the industry. Talk about last resort.

The American Prospect has a profile of Christopher Hitchens. Though it’s interesting, the article’s brow extends a little to high for my intellectual capacity. I don’t think I got half of the historical and philosophical references made in the piece, though thankfully I had my good friend Wikipedia at my side.

Approximately 77% of posts dealing with Barack Obama in four major conservative blogs focused on non-policy issues. The blogs I surveyed include michellemalkin.com, powerlineblog.com, redstate.com, and littlegreenfootballs.com.

The four blogs published a total of 311 posts in April prominently featuring Obama. Of those, 71 posts (23%) focused on policy issues. The remaining 240 posts (77%) focused on non-policy issues.

Policy issues the blogs covered include Obama’s views on Iraq, the economic slowdown, the housing crisis, the gas tax, immigration, and the war on terror.

Non-policy issues the blogs covered include Rev.Jeremiah Wright, Weathermen founder Bill Ayers, “bitter” comments about rural voters, his decision to wear a flag pin, and his alleged elitism.

Of the blogs surveyed, redstate.com had the highest percentage of posts focusing on policy (34%) and littlegreenfootballs.com has the lowest percentage (11%)

The breakdown of policy/non-policy posts featuring Obama prominently for each blog can be found below:

michellemalkin.com

Policy: 9
Non-policy: 54
Total: 63
Percentage of policy issues: 14%
Percentage of non-policy issues: 86%

powerlineblog.com:

Policy: 10
Non-policy: 60
Total: 70
Percentage of policy issues: 14%
Percentage of non-policy issues: 86%

redstate.com:

Policy: 48
Non-policy: 92
Total: 140
Percentage of policy issues: 34%
Percentage of non-policy issues: 66%

littlegreenfootballs.com:

Policy: 4
Non-policy: 34
Total: 38
Percentage of policy issues: 11%
Percentage of non-policy issues: 89%

Total posts from all blogs: 311
Total policy posts: 71
Total non-policy posts: 240
Percentage of policy posts: 23%
Percentage of non-policy posts: 77%

Flaws in the study: Obviously, what constitutes a “policy” post versus a “non-policy” post is not always clearly defined. In the few instances where this was murky, I tended to put the post into the “policy” category. Also, an argument can be made that “non-policy” posts could indirectly shed light on Obama’s policy views.

I attempted to only include posts that featured Obama prominently, and tried not to count ones in which Obama’s name was only mentioned briefly. For instance, all posts that featured the Rev. Jeremiah Wright but didn’t mention Obama were not counted. The exception to this rule was michellemalkin.com, which automatically used an “Obama” tag in its Wright posts regardless of whether Obama’s name was used in the post. This indicated that the site was blatantly tying all Wright issues with Obama, and therefore they were counted as “Obama posts.”

Vanity Fair has an interesting article about a war currently going on in the liberal blogosphere — a war that is most visible at Daily Kos because it has so many writers. I’m speaking, of course, of the war between Clinton supporters and Obama supporters. And since we all know the success stories of Obama’s online campaign, it isn’t too hard to guess which side is outshouting the other.