the buzz log
Western Adventures in Education for Iraqis
Iraq may be trading up, from Western military support to educational opportunities. According to Inside Higher Ed blog, an Iraqi government program plans to fund 10,000 annual scholarships for its citizens to study at American and British universities.
The Iraqi Parliament has set aside $54 million (about half of what Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki requested, but still not bad) to launch the program, set to run for five years. A Washington academic group is helping the government out with the logistics, and the first round will be chosen by the end of July.
Iraq has been on an educational spending spree: It recently promised to double Fulbright Student Scolarship offerings. Not everyone (including American scholars) loves the idea of money going to Western universities, rather than back into the Iraqi infrastructure. As for worries about even a bigger "brain drain" from Iraq, the Higher Committee on Educational Development requires students every year of their scholarship with a year of working in their native country, or pay everything back.
To most involved with the effort, though, this educational (and cultural) exchange can do nothing but good. Right now, about 225,000 American undergraduates are getting up to scholarly speed in the Middle East.
As one Valparaiso University employee puts it, "The exchange of international students promotes mutual understanding around the world, which leads to more peaceful relationships regionally." First lessons though: How to deal with Western red tape.
Wasted
How would you waste a million dollars?
Spending money on rude vices and cheap thrills, any civilian can do that. But to blow through millions on foreign prisons without walls or computers covered with bat dung requires a lack of planning on a magnificent scale.
Pasadena-based Parsons Constructions shows how it's not done, with the help of U.S. officials: A Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction report singled out the global conglomerate for projects that went nowhere, among them a prison, courthouse, and border control stations.
Parsons blamed unsafe conditions in wasting 42 cents out of every dollar it received (in this case, 333 million of those dollars). It shouldn't be so modest: Inspector General Bowen has given them due credit for what Bloomberg News called "sloppy construction and poor management."
Then again, money's easy to waste during a war. It takes imagination to misplace Caterpillar tractors and Jaws of Life rescue equipment. The Indian Health Service is missing equipment worth $16 million—and that was just a random check of 7 out of 163 field locations.
Not everything went missing, as the government report notes: One office dumped $700k worth of IT stuff when bats used the area for a pit stop. Maybe the IHS should consider turning that guano into gold and following one energy plant's model, and really turn millions into waste. And really, that ain't easy.
Filed under: Iraq, Money, Government, Iraq War
Buzz Multiplex: Strong Bets
Can you deal with the truth? Mebbe so: The Buzz Multiplex heads into a strong spring weekend, with one film based on a true story, a drama inspired by a military policy, and a fantasy spoof that nearly got a reality check in the form of a boycott.
1. "Superhero Movie" (PG-13). Its Tom Cruise scientology spoof has already attracted searches to the parody that stars Drake Bell as a dragonfly bite-induced superhero. But, a threatened boycott nearly made this movie an unlikely political pawn in a battle to get the Weinstein producers to release an unaltered version of "Fanboys," a "Star Wars"-inspired comedy. Now that the Weinsteins have buckled, pre-teens and teens won't have to worry about crossing a picket line to see Pamela Anderson.
2. "Stop-Loss" (R). Although not based on a true story, the film takes a look at the real military policy which extends the service time of soldiers due to be discharged. The MySpace pages have already drawn comments from military rank-and-file and their families. Ryan Phillippe stars, but acting mate Channing Tatum pulls in nearly double the searches (largely fueled by female teens). The appealing cast may help the drama go against the trend of low-performing Iraqi war movies.
3. "21" (PG-13). MIT students making millions by counting cards at casino blackjack tables may have been a true story, but anytime you mix Hollywood with Las Vegas, all reality goes out the plate-glass windows. The film has drawn controversy for changing the group's racial make-up (although the main inspiration doesn't object). Still, the numbers game has drawn passing interest from ages 13-44, as have stars Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey and, most importantly, Kate Bosworth.
Danger Pay Is Their Business
Last week agents of Blackwater USA killed a number of civilians in Iraq. Following the incident, the private security firm was grounded in Baghdad's Green Zone. News of the bloody affair emboldened buzz on the guns-for-hire, though not in a way we would have imagined.
Searches for "blackwater" and "blackwater iraq" made logical leaps. Yet who could have imagined that news of a deadly encounter in one of the most dangerous places on the planet would spark a rush on queries for "blackwater usa jobs" or "blackwater security jobs"? Over 81% of the queries came from men, and 64% of those were men between the ages of 25 and 54. Hazard pay certainly has its adherents.
Working as a security consultant for Blackwater USA may not qualify as one of the world's most dangerous jobs—the top spot on that list goes to fishermen, incidentally—but we're sure the occupation is a contender. As for the eager job seekers, we expect to see more searches now that Blackwater is back in service in Baghdad.
Filed under: Iraq, War, Middle East
The General and the Buzz
According to some reports, General David Petraeus' two days of testimony on Capitol Hill temporarily quieted the drumbeat for an accelerated troop withdrawal from Iraq. That may be, but he sure turned up the volume in Buzz.
Searches for "general petraus" shot upwards 678% yesterday, landing the U.S. commander in our top 40 movers. Once there, he stood at attention between "britney spears at the vmas" and "britney spears videos," but that's Buzz for you. The war in Iraq hasn't made a dent in the top movers for some time, so his presence alone was notable.
His Buzz rank might have been higher, even, if searchers weren't so varied in how they sought out the military man. Queries for "david petraeus," "gen. petraeus," "gen. david petraeus," "general david petraeus," "general petraeus bio," and "general petraeus report" all pitched upward.
The commander wasn't the only Iraq-related concern raised in Search yesterday, either. Another spike sought liberal group MoveOn.org. The activists launched an ad campaign calling Petraeus "General Betray Us," and saw their buzz noise rise 857%.
top movers
| Rank | Subject | 1-Day Move |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ford 400 | Breakout! |
| 2 | Indonesia Ferry | Breakout! |
| 3 | Jordan Chandler | 3481% |
| 4 | Evan Chandler | 2322% |
| 5 | American Music Awards | 1841% |
| 6 | John F. Kennedy | 1529% |
| 7 | Turkey Stuffing Recipes | 1361% |
| 8 | Liam Hemsworth | 1172% |
| 9 | Lou Dobbs | 1142% |
| 10 | Hendrick Motorsports | 888% |
top leaders
| Rank | Subject | Move | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Friday | +340 | 1290 |
| 2 | NFL | +489 | 670 |
| 3 | Jennifer Lopez | +451 | 515 |
| 4 | New Moon | -67 | 250 |
| 5 | American Music Awards | +236 | 249 |
| 6 | UFC | -36 | 239 |
| 7 | Miley Cyrus | +66 | 169 |
| 8 | Hulu | -11 | 154 |
what's the buzz?
A subject's buzz score is the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. Weekly leaders are the subjects with the greatest average buzz score for a given week.
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