the buzz log
Landings, Charts, Old Man Gloom: What's the Buzz
Our picks from the day's hottest searches.
- Space Shuttle Discovery (+1,164%). Landing during hurricane season? Good luck—astronauts have an extra day in orbit until they figure out which coast will be clearer.
- Hermaphrodite (+694%). The kerfuffle over runner Caster Semenya has people reading up this intersex condition; meanwhile, her government considers a lawsuit for human rights violations.
- Cell Phone Radiation Chart (+417%). The Environmental Working Group's consumer guide is hotter than a Billboard chart.
- 9/11 Photos (+274%). Commemorating today's anniversary.
- Zozobra (+266%). Old Man Gloom—the original burning man—went up in flames at the annual Fiestas de Santa Fe in New Mexico.
Filed under: Health, Holidays, 9/11, Space, Cell Phones
July 2009 Buzz
The sun hid from view for much of Asia, a pop king's memorial brought out mourners, and a misdemeanor ended with a White House beer bash. Below, a look at July's searches and buzzy stories.
Spaced Out
Darkness descended for about six minutes across much of Asia, as a rare solar eclipse brought out revelers and drove the superstitious indoors. The U.S. missed out on the fun, but celebrated the moon walk's 40th anniversary instead.
Dearly Departed
All things Michael Jackson continued to reverberate through the Web, from the memorial to the will, to the latest raid on the attending physician. Mourners also honored Walter Cronkite, whose death recalled a media heyday, and two sports figures—footballer Steve McNair and boxer Arturo Gatti—who died too soon.
Crime Watch
Sonia Sotomayor applied for her Supreme Court Justice robes this month, but violations of rights occupied the Search docket. Henry Louis Gates became known beyond academic circles after a Cambridge police office arrested the Harvard scholar at his home. The local issue turned national after Obama weighed in, but a peace of sorts was brokered with a White House beer bash. No suds for Erin Andrews: A video shot through a peephole of the ESPN broadcaster, taped unawares, went viral. News outlets who posted screen grabs of the illegal video spurred accusations of hypocrisy all around. There was some justice: People who tried to download the video may have got a virus.
Other big buzzers
Cash for Clunkers translated to a lot of firm handshakes in dealer showrooms ... Sarah Palin handed over her gubernatorial duties to the runner-up... Lance Armstrong did pretty well, but Alberto Contador is Tour de France's indisputed champ... and now for the top 10 lists
Search Terms with the Biggest Percentage Changes
| Biggest Search Terms |
Filed under: Autos, Celebrities, Monthly Wrapup, Recaps, Space
Conspiracy in Space!
The 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing has inspired pride, nostalgia, and a whole lot of conspiracy theories.
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, the three brave astronauts from the mission, met with President Obama to mark the occasion. But not everybody was "buying their story." We noticed a huge uptick in queries from folks eager to learn "the truth" about the historic day.
Searches on "moon landing conspiracy theories," "moon landing hoax," and "moon landing staged" all posted a giant leap for paranoid-kind. In honor of folks' refusal to believe what their told, we rounded up the top conspriacy theories in Search.
Top "Conspiracy" Searches for Past Seven Days
Filed under: Space, Conspiracies
July 2008 Buzz Roundup
July is supposed to be about barbecues, vacations, and leisure. Instead, high gas prices meant people were stuck at home (if they weren't foreclosed, that is), focusing on money savings, dark knights, and celebrity babies. Here are a few items that blew through Search this month.
Tossing Oil and Money into the Wind
So for an 80-year-old guy, oilman T. Boone Pickens's windy talk about energy resources moved quickly (+67,360%) up the Search charts. His Pickens Plan aims to wean America off foreign oil, and suckle on domestic crude and wind instead.
Change may or may not be in the air, but energy costs and the overall economy plagued July searches. We logged spikes on everything from "energy savings" and "how high will gas prices climb" to "fdic insurance" and "credit card debt consolidation." Will Pickens be a dark knight or the joker? Stay tuned.
Baby Boom
History will mark these moments: tea-party independence, men on the moon, and the twins of actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The paparazzi-fueled saga dragged out the gestation period to soap opera lengths, but Jolie finally delivered, literally, fraternal twins (as per the latest celebrity trend).
The double coming resulted in a Jolie family reunion and a huge charity benefit, which rumors so far point to People magazine as the main $10-$15 mil contributor. While the Jolie-Pitt offspring overshadowed newborns from Nicole Kidman/Keith Urban and Matthew McConaughey/Camila Alves, searches went on overload for baby photos of Thomas "Pregnant Man" Beatie's little girl. Price to publish photos of a medical miracle? A rumored steal of $300K.
Other searches that buzzed in July...
- Dame Diana Rigg (+17,157%), who immortalized Mrs. Peel in the 1960s British camp spy series, turned 70 this month.
- Space Agency NASA (+25%) marked its mid-century of existence. Just in time, Dr. Edgar Mitchell—man number six on the moon—said aliens indeed existed.
- Cancer claimed two well-known personalities this month: Carnegie-Mellon professor Randy Pausch's passing once again fueled searches for his lecture (see chart). Former journalist and White House press secretary Tony Snow lost to a second bout of colon cancer.
- As expected, "dark knight" cast its bat shadow, with Heath Ledger getting the last laugh as the Joker... and as "keith ledger," perhaps the most popular misspelling of the month.
Fastest Movers in July Searches
1. Thomas Beatie Baby Photos (+infinity). See above. 2. T. Boone Pickens (+67,360%). See above.
3. Daisy Lowe (35,881%). Supermodel dating producer Mark Ronson, brother to DJ Samantha Ronson who's linked to Lindsay Lohan. Get all that?
4. Abigail Adams. Wife of 2nd U.S. president John Adams, mom to number 6 John Quincy Adams, and subject of an HBO miniseries.
5. Riyo Mori (+22,139%). The outgoing Miss Universe gave up her crown to Miss Venezuela.
6. American Teen (+21,799%). The Sundance Festival documentary favorite keeps it real, and opens in some theaters this Friday.
7. William Sisters (+21,552%). Venus finally beat younger Serena in a Wimbledon match-up, and they teamed up to win doubles.
8. James Haven (+19,986%). See above.
9. Dara Torres Maxim. (19,923%). Aiming for Olympics number five, the gold medalist's element is water, but for fans it's glossy paper.
10. Randy Pausch, the Last Lecture Video (+19,748%). See above.
Filed under: NASA, Celebrities, Monthly Wrapup, Recaps, Gas Prices, Space, Money, Babies, Wimbledon, Pageants, Wrap Up
On Martian Time
It's hard enough getting up when the alarm blares every morning. Imagine if the dang-blasted thing set itself ahead 40 minutes every day. This sounds like a cruel hoax, but for a group of NASA scientists and engineers, it's the real deal.
The men and women working on the Phoenix Mars Lander mission have committed themselves to living on Mars time. And it ain't easy. Due to the Red Planet's orbit, its days never run parallel to Earth's. Instead, each dawn shifts forward 40 minutes. According to this popular article on Space.com, the project controllers are conforming to a schedule that's "like traveling two time zones every three days." Ouch.
Hopefully, the bleary-eyed space workers won't be too wiped out to celebrate a milestone birthday. Today marks NASA's 50th birthday. To mark the occasion, Popular Mechanics has a cool interactive graphic charting every space launch ever, from the earliest days of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry to the sleek design of Burt Rutan's suborbital plane.
top movers
| Rank | Subject | 1-Day Move |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Worst Airports For Delays 2009 | Breakout! |
| 2 | How To Survive A Recession | Breakout! |
| 3 | Ice Cream Calorie Counter | Breakout! |
| 4 | Jayson Williams | Breakout! |
| 5 | Alexandra Kerry | Breakout! |
| 6 | Chaz Bono | 10707% |
| 7 | Kelly Osbourne | 3298% |
| 8 | Jennifer Hudson | 3218% |
| 9 | Nicole Richie | 2075% |
| 10 | Thierry Henry | 1125% |
top leaders
| Rank | Subject | Move | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Friday | +413 | 1016 |
| 2 | Elizabeth Lambert | -677 | 263 |
| 3 | NFL | +66 | 235 |
| 4 | New Moon | +74 | 213 |
| 5 | Bing | +83 | 209 |
| 6 | Kelly Osbourne | +193 | 199 |
| 7 | Hulu | +7 | 139 |
| 8 | Nicole Richie | +124 | 130 |
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.
For more detailed information, visit our FAQ.