the buzz log

Amateur athletes and professional politicians have taken up a chunk of summer, but as fall draws nigh, people are figuring out how to maximize leisure, work, and holiday time for the rest of 2008. Many have been consulting different "schedules" on the Web. Not surprisingly, college and professional sports dominated searches in the past 7 days, as the following top 20 (non-convention-related) list reveals:

1.	NFL Schedule		11.	University of Florida (Gators) Schedule
2.	Football Schedule		12.	University of Georgia (Bulldogs) Schedule
3.	Dallas Cowboys Schedule		13.	LIRR Schedule
4.	Oklahoma State (Cowboys) University Schedule		14.	US Open Schedule
5.	Notre Dame (Fighting Irish) Schedule		15.	University of Oklahoma (Sooners) Schedule
6.	Penn State (Nittany Lions) Football Schedule		16.	Chicago Cubs Schedule
7.	NASCAR Schedule		17.	University of Southern California (Trojans) Schedule
8.	College Football Schedule		18.	Alabama (Crimson Tide) Football Schedule
9.	Fall 2008 TV Schedule		19.	University of Michigan (Wolverines) Football Schedule
10.	University of Texas (Longhorns) Schedule		20.	Chicago Bears Schedule

Fall TV and transportation timetables also cracked the national priority list. The Great Writer's Strike of 2008 has made for some mighty skimpy programming, and viewers have also been seeking out cable fare on HBO (+43%), while the CW and CBS make up the most freebie broadcast queries. As for transportation, the new school year may likely be driving these lookups, as students return to college and parents reschedule their day around their children's activities.

The holiday time crunch doesn't loom that far off, and indeed an obsessed many began gathering ideas for halloween costumes since early August. True advance planners scheme even now for Yuletide joys, such as "christmas ornament crafts" (+209%), "christmas songs" (+89%), and "christmas trees" (+21%).

More current, of course, are the holiday queries for Ramadan, including the "ramadan fasting schedule 2008." The Islamic holy month started Aug. 30 through Sept. 2, depending on how celebrants calculate the beginning of the lunar month.

Expect a busy fall: The professional politicans aren't going away anytime soon (at least, not until November 5), and another round of amateur competition comes after the Beijing Paralympics holds its opening ceremony on Sept. 6. This may be no time to miss out on historical moments, but history definitely has a way of pre-empting regularly scheduled lives.