I would have been such a good advertising/PR person.

Have you considered going into politics?

Have you considered going into politics?

Doesn't work, I can't keep a straight face during speeches.

Doesn't work, I can't keep a straight face during speeches.

Karl Rove's job might be open soon....

When I was in college, the radio station I worked with did a survey to see who was listening (not many, it turned out). What was interesting was the degree of falsification of surveys that occurred because the cold calling was boring and frustrating when dealing with a small rural town who didn't care what the little college radio station was doing.

My former boss had a job cold-calling people for the Alexandria police department and asking them very detailed questions about their security practices - do they lock their doors, windows, have an alarm, type of locks, etc. Amazingly, people would just happily give all this information to someone who called them out of the blue.

Karl Rove's job might be open soon....

Nah. I don't think he's going anywhere. I don't think he'll be found guilty of an actual crime and the bad press will blow over.

The only way Rove's going anywhere is if he ascends. And he's already a big giant snake, so what would be the point?

Damn. I'm having a lot of trouble searching for the 80% porn thing (predictable, given the presence of "porn" in the search terms) but it sounds interesting!

Damn. I'm having a lot of trouble searching for the 80% porn thing (predictable, given the presence of "porn" in the search terms)

Yeah, I can see that being difficult to search for. I've heard that 80% of the Internet is porn.

Emily, I remember the 80% porn thing too. It's several years back, maybe late '90's. I think one of the "authors" either was a pornographer, or later became one, and the academic credentials were iffy. The magazine cover was kind of famous -- it was a kid with an eerie blue computer monitor glow on his face.

Of course, I can't remember any Googleable details.

There was an intelligence test that asked what you should do if you're in line for something and someone cuts in front of you. The correct answer is that you should tell the person to get out of line. Supposedly, someone of Chinese background would do nothing, as s/he would assume that if someone cut in line they must have an important reason to do so.

Good lord. I would fail that question because, most of the time, I'd rather wait an extra minute than get into a confrontation with a stranger.

Neilsen Media Research recently released a press... release showing that "people meters" had a dramatic impact on ratings for African-American viewership, as opposed to set-top boxes, something along the lines of a 40% difference. It's not clear why their methodology is flawed, but it seems clear that one or both are misrepresenting black viewership in the ratings.