Month: November 2004

As would say: We can do that?
Well, apparently so, because Jeff Jarvis has uncovered a rather nice scoop on the basis for one of the FCC’s latest million-dollar decency fines. With the help of a handy Freedom of Information Act request, he discovered that the FCC levied the fine on the basis of a mere three original complaint letters.
Click through for the details…

The New York Times has brief story today on weblogs-driven charity efforts, centering on Strengthen The Good. Meryl Yourish and Jeff Jarvis also make appearances…

Confused about Fallujah? Go check out staggeringly informative Winds of Change roundup on Fallujah, and be confused no more.

So tells us that the next Xbox models will be called “Xbox Next”.
Hmmm. Next? Like, NeXT?
I had the pleasure of using some of the first-generation NeXT’s during my misspent college youth. These were deeply weird machines: optical drives as primary storage (in 1989!); ultra-cool black cube design, and a UNIX-variant OS wrapped in a GUI that did screen display via Postscript (!!!). And oh, yeah, the pre-release versions we worked on had a tendency to, as a colleague was fond of saying, “crash like an Indy car.”
I learned OS development and assembler on those things, which probably explains a lot…

From:	N.Z. Bear
To:	The Left
Re:	Getting your shit together

Alright kids. It’s been over a full week now. I left you alone and let you have your pity-parties. Hopefully you’ve had a good long sulk and gotten it out of your system.
But now, it’s time to get your asses back to work. You might not expect me to be saying this, but here’s the bulletin: this country needs you.
We need intelligent voices to criticize the policies of this — of any — administration. We need differing viewpoints; different ideas about how to deal with the tremendous challenges that history has decided to toss at this generation. We need the balance that a liberal perspective can bring to the debate about where this country is going.
We do not need you sulking in a corner, muttering darkly about homophobic theocrats.
But the first thing you have to accept is that opposition in itself is not a policy. You’ve skated along for the past year by presenting “Bush screwed everything up, Kerry will fix it” as your sole platform. That’s no longer a viable answer (in truth, it never was).
George Bush is President, and he is going to keep being President for another four years. That’s not going to change. So telling us how much he sucks is irrelevant. Telling us how stupid the portion of America which voted for him is: also irrelevant. Discussing secession and to hell with those red states: well that’s just plain stupid, forget about irrelevant.
What is relevant are answers. Solutions, not a list of problems. Declaring that Iraq is a mess is easy, and worthless. Telling us what we should do to fix it is harder, but far more worthwhile. Don’t like the operation in Falluja? Fine: how else would you stop the terrorists? Think we should involve allies more in Iraq? Great. How?
Our nation is at war. We are not screwing around; this is not a game. A better decision now means fewer people die later. It’s that simple, and that’s why we need your help. You will think of things that this administration and its supporters won’t — and can’t. If you can get past the knee-jerk urge to slam Bush because — well, because he’s Bush — you can make a contribution to the safety and welfare of this country. Assuming that still matters to you, even with a Republican in the White House for four more years.
So put away the bottle, and get your game face back on. Bring your best arguments — but leave the chimp jokes and paper mache puppets at home.

On October 28th, the New York Times published a weblog story which the following statement:
“A recent posting on DailyKos, a liberal Web site visited by more than 500,000 people daily, according to blog rankings posted on a site called The Truth Laid Bear…”
I pointed out to the Times’ editor, Bill Borders, that this inaccurately described the data I present in the Traffic Rankings, which does not show that 500,000 individual people visit Daily Kos each day, but rather, shows that he gets that many visits (possibly by a smaller group of people visiting many times during the day).
After much debate, the Times agreed to publish a correction, which finally ran today:
An article on Oct. 28 about Internet sites that criticize mainstream news coverage of political campaigns referred imprecisely to the use of a liberal Web site, DailyKos, as tracked by another site, The Truth Laid Bear. DailyKos receives about 500,000 visits each day, a figure that may include multiple visits by some users. The site is not necessarily viewed by 500,000 visitors a day.
Thanks to the Times for being willing to correct the error, albeit a bit slowly — and to Glenn, Jeff, and Bill, whose support was both gratifying and extremely helpful.

This morning’s top headlines from the Daily News:
How Bush Won the Election – 19 links
by Kevin Drum
HOW BUSH WON THE ELECTION….So what really made the difference in this election? Most of the attention has been on “moral values” and terrorism, and I was curious to see what the exit poll results showed. So I decided to…
LEECHES AND ANTI-RELIGIOUS SCREECHES – 15 links
by malkin
So, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes that America is heading back to the Dark Ages, as the Bush Administration rushes to replace science with religion: W.’s presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities, stirring intolerance, confusing ch
It begins…. – 13 links
by Dan
The reason the dollar has managed to stay as strong as it has – despite the combination of large trade deficits and low interest rates – is that Asian central banks have been buying up greenbacks. The big question that…
Jesusland Flavored Kool-Aid – 12 links
by Michele
I do believe the Democrats have just switched one brand of Kool-Aid for another. Their new drink is Jesusland flavored and they are swallowing it by the gallon. If you read them correctly – and I’m not just talking about…
For more top stories across the Blogosphere, see the full Blogosphere Daily News Page.

This morning’s top headlines from the Daily News:
How Low Can They Fall? – 16 links
by Hindrocket
The recriminations continue. Liberals gnash their teeth and try to figure out what went wrong, and what is to be…
Newsweek On The Campaign – 10 links
by The MinuteMan
Some details struck me from the Newsweek coverage of the campaign: Edwards on responding to criticism of Kerry’s Vietnam record:Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, also wanted to take a swipe at the Swifties. …Stephanie Cutter, the boss of the Kerry…
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information – 9 links
by Henry
As a complement to Kieran’s post, Michael Gaster, Cosma Shalizi’s and Mark Newman’s electoral map where area is proportional to population is fascinating, as well as weirdly beautiful – like butterflies exploding.
Apparently Blogs Drool and the MSM Rules – 7 links
by Steve Bainbridge
For more top stories across the Blogosphere, see the full Blogosphere Daily News Page.

Glenn and Prof. Bainbridge point to a downright interesting report on CNN Money regarding blog traffic.
Allen Wastler provides a chart, apparently using data from comScore Networks, which provides the following trafic statistics for “number of daily visitors” for various blogs on Election Day:
Blogspot.com: 333,000
Typepad.com: 95,000
DailyKos: 86,000
Wonkette: 31,000
A few observations:
From their methodology page, I gather that comScore is coming up with their figures by using a panel of web users and surveying their surfing habits, then extrapolating that behavior to the web universe as a whole.
So, first, we should recognize that their number will not necessarily sync directly with SiteMeter Average Daily Visits, which is our usual metric of choice around these parts.
Second, given their methodology, I suspect that what comScore is reporting is not the total number of visits per day, but the number of unique visitors. Taken in that light, the idea that Kos had 86,000 people who checked his blog throughout the day doesn’t seem too far off base. Since his average daily visits count was around 600,000 at that time, each person would need to check seven times during the day for his total daily visits to amount to 600,000. For a major news day like election day, that doesn’t sound like an unreasonable rate.
At any rate, I have no way of verifying whether comScore’s data is accurate or complete bunk. But, I think we should be careful in comparing comScore’s apples to SiteMeter’s oranges…

I’m about to upgrade to Moveable Type 3.1, so please dismiss any random wonkiness you see on the site until further notice….
Update: This is a test… how’s it look?
Update 2: Well, it seems to have gone rather smoothly. Please report any oddities you notice here…

Michelle Malkin posts this morning on in the blogosphere, pointing out that contrary to conventional wisdom, there is actual change in the top ranked blogs over time.
With Michelle’s post prompting me, I decided to reach back into the Ecosystem’s historical database and check out what the Top 30 (“Higher Beings” and “Mortal Humans”) looks like today as compared to six months ago (May 7, 2004).
Here’s the result:

Blog	November Rank	May Rank
Instapundit.com	1	1
Daily Kos	2	3
Talking Points Memo	3	2
DRUDGE REPORT 2004	4	10
Power Line	5	71
Boing Boing	6	16
lgf: put your foot on the rock	7	9
Eschaton	8	4
www.AndrewSullivan.com	9	5
The Washington Monthly	10	14
The Corner	11	15
Wizbang	12	37
Blogs For Bush	13	23
The Command Post	14	40
The Volokh Conspiracy	15	7
Captain’s Quarters	16	NA
Slashdot	17	22
Michelle Malkin	18	NA
Dean’s World	19	17
a small victory	20	8
JoeUser.com	21	303
Lileks	22	12
The New Republic Online: etc.	23	13
Tim Blair	24	24
Belmont Club	25	79
Matthew Yglesias	26	18
Vodkapundit	27	30
RealClearPolitics	28	139
IMAO	29	19
Wonkette	30	56

Blogs highlighted in green were not in the Top 30 in May, but are now.
So of the current Top 30, nine blogs weren’t there six months ago — just under one third. That certainly isn’t a monolithic and static list — it shows quite significant turnover, really.
In case you are curious, the reason I didn’t do this comparison by Traffic rankings is that I only started capturing historical data for traffic about a month ago. But going forward, I’ll be able to provide interesting historical reports on traffic, as well as links.
Update: Corrected to show that Matt Yglesias was ranked in the Top 30 in May 2004 as well as November.

Hmph. I just noticed that at the end of October, quietly purchased Keyhole. Keyhole makes an extremely spiffy product which allows you to browse aerial imagery of any spot on the globe. Will be interesting to see what Google does with their technology…

Wizbang us to Newsweek’s extensive insider report on the two Presidential campaigns, and declares it required reading. Never one to refuse Mr. Aylward, I have begun complying.
My favorite passage so far describes John Edwards reaction when told that some of the accusations against Kerry made by the Swift Boat Veterans were, er, true:
“[Edwards’ aides] warned the veep candidate that the story was already out of control and about to get worse. Historian Douglas Brinkley, author of a wartime biography of Kerry, cautioned that Kerry’s diary included mention of a meeting with some North Vietnamese terrorists in Paris. Edwards was flabbergasted. “Let me get this straight,” the senator said. “He met with terrorists? Oh, that’s good.”
Oh, and I like this one too:
The Kerry campaign did work closely with the major dailies, feeding documents to The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe to debunk the Swift Boat vets. The articles were mostly (though not entirely) supportive of Kerry, but it was too late. The old media may have been more responsible than the new media, but they were also largely irrelevant.

Anybody notice that CNN is giving Nader sympathy percentage point in their final tally of results?
The exact stats are:

Candidate	Votes	Percentage
Bush	59,459,765	51.34%
Kerry	55,949,407	48.31%
Nader	400,706	0.35%

But CNN presents them rounded as:

Candidate	Votes	Percentage
Bush	59,459,765	51%
Kerry	55,949,407	48%
Nader	400,706	1%

If Nader’s 0.35% rounds to 1%, why doesn’t Bush’s 51.34% round to 52%? Did somebody make .345 the mathematically accepted cutoff point for rounding-up while I wasn’t paying attention?
PS: Yes, I know this isn’t a big deal. I’m taking it easy this week. But a bear has to stay in practice…