Googlewhacking Heroes

The first Googlewhacking hero on any list must be its inventor, Gary Still No Blog Stock. We who are about to blog salute you.

A Googlewhack is a combination of common words (we seem to be settling on a combination of two words) for which Google returns only one result. As of yesterday, we have adopted the Kevin Marks scoring model that judges “commonness” by how many hits the individual words get. Multiply those numbers and you get your Marks mark.

Cinnamon Brunmier writes:

Ok…by the new Kevin Marks standards, I actually believe that we need to reinstate “schadenfreude” as a common word since it produces 19,700 results on it’s own. Further, my revised Googlewhack of: schadenfreude carburetor has a total value of 3,900,600,000.

schadenfreude = 19,700
carburetor = 198,000

This would put Cinnamon’s buns in the lead, if Gary Turner hadn’t turnered in the following:

plectrum = 14,800
irradiation = 360,000
Total Marks mark = 5,328,000,000

Gary asks: “Do I win something?” The answer would be yes … if Dave Curley hadn’t twisted the following words:

Dewpoint = 277,000
Beeped = 57,700
Total Marks mark = 15,982,900,000

Yes, almost 16 billion points. Dave has set the bar high. But we have confidence that somewhere, someone with too much time on his or her hands will hold high the honor of our species.

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New mnftiu.cc

God bless mnftiu.cc where the truth is funny just because it’s true. And angry.
BTW, at the bottom of the page is a Paypal button so you can make a donation to defray the site’s bandwidth costs.

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Top One Reason Not to Get Stomach Flu

Top One Reason Not to Get Stomach Flu:

1. It’s not nearly as much fun as it sounds.

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MiscLinks

Shirl Kennedy responds to our request for dumb Flashes:

Check out these guys: http://www.skipintro.nl/eng/ They are a “a post-crash internet agency” which ran a Dumbest Intro contest. “Winners” are here: http://www.skipintro.nl/winner_of_nice_t-shirt/index.html

On a related note, our local County utilities department redid their website. Badly. Entirely in Shockwave. http://utility.co.pinellas.fl.us/pcuweb/index.html

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Greg Cavanagh has unearthed Microsoft’s next product.

On a positive note, Mark Dionne found a site that’s actually helpful if you’re trying to install a new car stereo. It’s a model of clarity: http://www.installdr.com/

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Newfoundland: The Anti-Enron

Michael “The Liege” O’Connor Clarke points us to a story in Canada’s National Post:

Newfoundland’s government prepared to take “extraordinary action” against a publicly traded company yesterday, warning Fishery Products International that it is drafting legislation allowing it to veto nearly 600 layoffs planned by the company…

Michael comments:

Yikes. This seems to be almost the moral opposite of the Bush/Enron situation.

Enron = corporation large enough to be significant economic mover and driver of GDP. National government has its hands buried up to the armpits in a smelly, convoluted mess of inappropriate interests, campaign contributions and other conflicts. Corporation suddenly implodes after appealling to government for a bail out. Government takes “hands off” stance but continues to stack the odds in favour of Corporation’s disgraced management.

FPI = corporation large enough (on a provincial scale) to be significant economic mover and driver of GDP. Implodes, threatening substantial (again, on provincial scale) layoffs. Government steps in, very definitely hands-on. Even going so far as to possibly create new legal precedent if required to support the local economy.

I agree with Michael’s conclusion: “Crikey.”

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The Enron Smoking Gun

It’s one thing to read the following news lead in USAToday:

An Enron financial official raised alarms about the company’s precarious finances in August, two months before the energy-trading giant acknowledged publicly that it was in trouble. In a letter to CEO Kenneth Lay, she wrote: “I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals.” The prescient seven-page letter, unearthed by House investigators, showed that Lay was aware of concerns about the company’s financial problems at about the same time that he was reassuring employees by e-mail: “I have never felt better about the prospects for the company.”

It’s another to see an actual scan of the letter itself. Ten times more powerful.

Now we know what they knew and when they knew it.

[Thanks to Chris Worth for passing this along.]

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Googlewhacking, Part 4

Michael O’Connor Clarke responds to the Gogglewhacking thread initiated by Gary No Blog Stock:

The Googlewhacking thread immediately brought back memories of a much earlier Internet Sport (BG: Before Google) called NetBullseye. The idea behind NetBullseye was simple – enter two search terms into Alta Vista and try to come up with exactly one search hit in the list. Googlewhacking seems to be essentially a fancier variation on the same theme.

The original NetBullseye site is still up, here along with some highly entertaining entries into the Hall of Fame.

Playing NetBullseye nowadays, with Google or even with Alta Vista (the engine of choice BG) is way harder than it used to be – but that just makes for a more interesting challenge. Most of the search combinations that worked in the old game no longer score a bullseye – and some of them were pretty tenuous anyway. The only Googleseyes I’ve managed to score so far are:

lambada opthalmoscopes
surinam creamcheese

I’m sure your readers can do better…

Now for the Grand Slam of Googlewhacking: Everlasting life and the crown of England shall be granted to the person who discovers a single page that supports two Googlewhacks. For example, if Michael’s two examples both pointed to the same page, we’d be calling him Deathless King Michael right about now. Does the grail exist? Probably not, although it seems likely that a page that supports a single Gogglewhack is more eccentric in its word usage than most other pages and thus runs a higher probability of supporting a second Googlewhack.

Note: You could publish and submit your own page with double googlewhacks just to become an immortal monarch, but it would be wrong.

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.Me Generation

With reference to the blogging yesterday by Dan Gillmor, Dave and (immodestly) me on the problem of there being more people than unique domain names:

Brits are about to be allowed to register their names as “.me.uk” According to an article from Reuters (in Canada’s Globe and Mail) the domain names will be handed out on a first come, first served basis and will initially cost 50 pounds. (For those with self-esteem problems, an alternative punctuation is available for an additional 25 pounds: “Me? Uk!”).

Jacob Schwirtz of Gazm.org, who has started blogging recently, points us to KevinKelly.net, an amusing site for people named, well, you figure it out.

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The New Royalty

[This is a piece I’ve had sitting around for a while. Dan Gillmor’s piece on Google’s effects on domains (blogged by Dave) called it to mind…]

The year is 2090. It’s 60 years since Arnold Schwarzenegger cinched his support belt one notch tigher, added 50 pounds to the barbell, pushed up … and exploded, spewing formaldehyde and Viagra all over the Hollywood Gym. His site, www.schwarzenegger.com, has been maintained by his estate ever since. There hasn’t been any new content added since the year 2047 and it’s now mainly consulted by historians studying Arnhold’s role in the Richard Simmons presidency. But now Arnold’s estranged great-granddaughter has filed suit with 65 other of Arnold’s descendants who feel they have a legitimate claim on schwarzenegger.com. The movement spreads among the progeny of other first generation web site name grabbers. “No Dots for the Dead!” becomes an international rallying cry. Their opponents begin to sport bumperstickers that say “Sure you can have my dot-com name…when you pry it from my cold dead fingers” on their levitating personal scooters … because, um, Flubber turned out to be real.

I’m facing a version of this problem right now. I own www.hyperorg.com. (Weinberger.com was taken by a company that mass-registers surnames.) There are lots of other Weinbergers in the world: If I use Google to look for myself, I find a rabbi in Israel, a car dealer in California, and a kid who writes record reviews, all on the first page of the results. So, as the sole owner of hyperorg.com, when I’m dead and gone, which of my kids should I leave the Weinberger family org to, assuming I agree to be an “org donor.” And which of their kids, lo unto the many generations will inherit hyperorg.com… and which ones will be frozen out? And how about the poor car dealer’s kids who’ll never have a chance at inheriting their-name.org?

This question has been resolved in a hardheaded way in the business world. American Airlines owns aa.com, but everyone from Alcoholics Anonymous to Aukland Adventures would probably like to own it. The victory goes to the person who applied earliest or can afford to buy it from the person who did … with trademark-owners trumping everyone. So what do the losers do? They register a lame variant such as “aa-Aukland.com” or “alcoholics- anonymous.org” that you might guess at after five wrong tries.

And adding new extensions besides .com and .org and the others doesn’t really help. The fact is that there are lots more people than meaningful web site names, and it’s only going to get worse as the generations increase.

So, the vast majority of us are going to be left out in the cold. You’ll locate our sites by looking up our name on some web directory. On the other hand, those of us who grabbed our names early, we’re going to the new royalty. “Hello, I’m David Weinberger … of the .org weinbergers.” Ah, it’s gonna be sweet.

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Enron Judge Conflict of Interest

Here’s a forward (thanks, Chip!) that says that the judge in the Enron proceedings has a serious conflict of interest that has perhaps influenced her decision to hold off on freezing the money Enron executives skimmed before the megacorp flopped. I don’t know anything about the apparent author, Brenda Pitts Bennett, but she cites her sources.

From: Brenda Pitts Bennett
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 3:14 PM
Subject: Enron Judge’s MAJOR Conflicts of Interest

1) Judge Lee Rosenthal (again, the judge hearing the case filed against Enron by angry shareholders and employees) says she has the right to freeze the funds of Enron executives, to keep them from hiding their ill-gotten gains, but needs further evidence first.

2) Judge Lee Rosenthal has herself held Enron stock until as late as the year 2000. Clearly, her ruling will impact her own financial future if she has to freeze her own funds!

3) Judge Lee Rosenthal was appointed to the bench by GWBush!! AND

4) Judge Lee Rosenthal, until her appointment to the bench by GWBush, practiced in a law firm, Baker & Botts. The “Baker” in Baker & Botts is none other than James Baker! That’s right, the same James Baker whose financial records may be frozen, the same James Baker who may receive a subpoena for records on Friday from Congress for his role in Enron. The same James Baker who was on the Enron payroll and who used his political clout for Enron’s benefit.The same James Baker who was hired by Enron at the end of Bush Sr.’s administration. The same James Baker that masterminded GWBush’s post-election vote-count operations in Florida. The same James Baker whose wife, Susan, has been on the board of bush-supporter James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.

Now, doesn’t it appear that Judge Lee Rosenthal has just a few catastrophic conflicts of interest going on here? Not only is her own financial future dependent on one of the important rulings facing her court (whether to freeze the funds of Enron stockholders who sold large blocks during the time period that Enron was fraudulently inflating its worth), but her rulings will have a major impact on the powerful man (GWBush) who appointed her to the bench AND the powerful man (James Baker) who was a partner in the law firm where she practiced law before she was appointed to the bench.

Is this how the Enron court cases are going to go? Are the financially ruined Enron employees and stockholders going to be further assaulted again by Bush/Enron-toadying judges?

Judge: Enron Funds Could Be Frozen

Federal Judges’ Financial Revelations

Judge Rosenthal appointed by GW Bush

James A. Baker’s law firm

Brenda Pitts Bennett
Texas
[email protected]
www.geocities.com/copbrutality

I don’t find point #2 very convincing: Rosenthal wasn’t an Enron executive so it’s not clear to me that she would have to freeze her own assets. But the rest of the picture is certainly disturbing. [Note: The first link Bennett cites was dead so I substituted a working link to the same AP story.]

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