Not as bad as I thought… June 10, 2007
Posted by gordonwatts in politics, science.trackback
Getting counts of articles from Google news:
Paris Hilton: 10,422 hits
summit: 45,995 (clearly has more than just the G8 meeting)
G8 summit: 14,028
proton: 775
neutrino: 60
Fermilab: 161
CERN: 168
I had fully expected there to be more hits on the Hilton thing than the G8 summit. On the other hand, it looks like Hilton and the G8 summit are almost as important as each other… Now, if I’d used a blog search engine… Wait. I found one (I’ve heard that it isn’t the best one out there, but I don’t know which one is):
Paris Hilton: 3,732,295
G8 summit: 97,387
proton: 1,755,143 (not sure what they are all talking about!)
neutrino: 195,390
Fermilab: 16,219 (but the top post is that @&#^^@ rumor).
CERN: 579,376
So, it is clear that all the presidential candidates need to have thought out the whole Paris Hilton thing - it is going to matter to the voters!! Or is this just a comment about what happens when editors get involved?
I think it’s a national disgrace that the proton get more hits than the neutrino.
Can a proton travel through a thousand light years of lead? Huh?
It’s baryonic chauvinism, that’s what it is.
Not to fear — most of those posts are about somethign else that has the name proton…
Neutrino hasn’t really entered the national conversation yet… Someone should track these things over years to see what happens to them? Now that neutrino’s have mass will they get talked about more? Is the conversation proportional to the mass?
I wonder how many of those Paris Hilton blog posts had “Who the Heck cares about Paris Hilton???” as subject lines? I was tempted to make one myself, but am now glad I didn’t
what? Paris Hilton is important celebrity gosip. Why she is a celebrity - I can’t figure out - but the fact that we are discussing her on a physics blog is probably a good indication of the problem. Actually my mother went to high school with her uncle - which makes me just 3 degrees of separation from blondy herself. Which is probably how many degrees of separation I am from Einstein. But at least I can say I am happier about being closer in the Kevin Bacon game to Einstein then Hilton.
True, true Kevin. I was posting it here after I noticed that it even made the top of the NYTimes web page. It just seemed to get a little out of hand. Sort of like the rumors about D0.
Why not rename the neutrino as Paris and maybe proton as Hilton that will surely resolve this whole issue
Brilliant!