the buzz log
College Rankings, The Taliban, and Literary Rats: What's the Buzz
Our picks from the day's hottest searches.
- US News College Ranking (up 5,424% in searches on Yahoo!). Princeton Review released its best 371 colleges, prompting users to check the more familiar one.
- The Taliban (+1,266%). The Sunni Islamist movement plans chaos for the Aug. 20 Afghan elections.
- Rats of NIMH (+723%). Much talk about a live-action adaptation of the 1971 children's classic, "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH."
- Carbon Motors (+410%). The company that builds fancy police cars will move from Georgia to Indiana.
- Swine Flu Symptoms 2009 (+140%) As work towards a vaccine continues, the flu's hitting Australia, Europe... and Capitol Hill.
Filed under: Health, Autos, War, College and Universities, Daily Recap
Dubious Honor: Top Party School
It may be the one list that colleges work hard not to make: Princeton Review's Top Party Schools. This year, Penn State snatched the title away from University of Florida to claim the top spot. We're sure they'll know how to celebrate.
Of course, university officials did their best to back away from the dubious honor: The blame lies with a bunch of jokers on Facebook who urged classmates to vote their school to the top spot. Assured a university spokesperson, "It's not connected to reality."
Of course not. And parents, if your offspring are attending any of these schools, put your mind at ease. Even the author of the survey noted that all the schools on the list have "great academics." Did we mention that Penn State also won in the category of "lots of beer?"
But back to academics. It's about where students will feel happiest. If you like beer, like football, and like frat parties, then perhaps Penn State is for you. For those more content to stay holed up in the library to study, well, buyer beware.
See the complete list.
Filed under: College and Universities, Alcohol
Not Too Classy: Professor Arrested
Here's a teachable moment: Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested for breaking into his own house. Really.
It went down like this. A Cambridge, Massachusetts neighbor called the cops on the African American studies head after she observed him and a friend attempting to force open the door of his house. In the middle of the day.
The officer who arrived on the scene seemed confused about being called for a robbery when only the resident was there. He asked the ornery professor to show his ID and step outside to his porch. That's when things got ugly. Gates got mad, accused the policeman of racism, and in front of several witnesses, got cuffed and arrested for "disorderly conduct."
Interest in the arrest immediately spiked as the news spread. (You can read the police report for more details.)
Oh, and the reason Gates had to force open his door in the first place? It was busted. From an attempted robbery.
Filed under: Crime, College and Universities
Seeking a Good SAT Score
Remember high school? We do. The desperate hunt for dates ranks high on our list of memorable traumas, but the dread-fueled anticipation over the SAT takes the cake. Things haven't changed a bit. Today, high school students were given Web access to their scores. Searches immediately soared.
Throughout the day, lookups for "sat scores" and "college board" (the outfit that administers the test) posted triple-digit gains. Those queries were to be expected. What caught us a bit off guard was the immediate spike on "what's a good SAT score." Students have their score. Now they want to know if it's something worth flaunting.
Of course, we don't know what a "good" SAT score is. What one student considers an acceptable score would send others crying into their pillows. However, we can check the overall average scores on the test's official site. According to record keepers, the average scores for 2008 college-bound seniors are 502 in critical reading, 515 in math, and 494 in writing. Keep in mind, those scores aren't "good" or "bad" -- they're just the averages.
The last time we wrote about SAT scores "rocking the Web," we pointed out that not every student is satisfied with average scores. Heck, some aren't even satisfied with awesome scores. For scholars attempting to gain admittance into the hallowed halls of Harvard (pronounced "Hah-vaard") for example, we noted that, according to non-official sources, scores range from 690 - 800 for critical reading, 700 - 790 for math, and 690 - 780 for writing.
Now, if you're over a certain age, you may be wondering what's with the three different scores. Indeed, the addition of a "writing" portion to the SAT is a relatively new phenomenon. Until 2005, the maximum score a braniac could achieve was 1600. Nowadays, that number is 2400. Perfection: These days it's 50% more difficult.
Filed under: College and Universities
I Didn't Do My Homework Because...: New(ish) Excuse for a New Age
The dog ate my homework: Too elementary, insensitive to canines since it implies they don't respect intellectual achievement, and don't you have a file saved?
My (fill-in close kin) died: Too macabre, and you're going to run out of family members pretty quick. If they don't disown you first.
My file got corrupted: Hmmm. Subtle, and just on the right side of plausibility. Especially if you emailed said file to teacher or professor.
Who among us haven't felt that dawning desperation, "I'm not going to finish my assignment on time." For those who have thrown ethics into the wind but have one of those teachers or professors who would demand 1) an X-ray of the dog's contents or 2) a death certificate, there is apparently a little-known service called Corrupted-Files.
The Website offers to, well, corrupt your file, which you then email to your educator of choice. Presumably, by the time he or she gets to it and tells you, you've used those extra precious hours to finish and can send the real goods.
All right, before you procrastinating students or even working stiffs get all excited and start checking out this secret service for Powerpoint presentations, the academic circle already got a whiff of this scam. (They're not intellectuals for nothing.) Inside Higher Ed blog interviewed the shameless Website's owner, who says he actually created it "as a goof" but did tell one complaining faculty member, "It's basically just a good excuse vs. outright cheating." Why didn't Wall Street think of this?
While the customer base is modest at best (10 a day during finals time), the desperate tend to come from "Ivy and top tier schools," says the founder, who explains, "I guess the more perfect people think you are, the more likely in life you are to cheat to keep that perception."
Filed under: Education, College and Universities, Cheats
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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