Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Another One Of My Great Ideas, Stolen

Okay, my own laziness is the sole cause. Or, to channel my inner member of Congress, my strategic decision to take a measured approach has allowed the spirit of American initiative to produce results! All hail the free market!

Where was I? Ah, yes. There's a fun article in the NYT describing analysis that was done on their Most Emailed articles list, based on "checking it every 15 minutes for more than six months." (Full disclosure: I was thinking more like doing it once a day.)

There are some interesting and uplifting observations, not least of which was the large percentage of science articles that were, at least fleetingly, thought worth sharing. (By the coastalibrulintelleckshual elite, I mean.)

Nice bit of snark from Tierney, who says well what I'm sure many of us have thought at one time or another:

The results are surprising — well, to me, anyway. I would have hypothesized that there are two basic strategies for making the most-e-mailed list. One, which I’ve happily employed, is to write anything about sex. The other, which I’m still working on, is to write an article headlined: “How Your Pet’s Diet Threatens Your Marriage, and Why It’s Bush’s Fault.”

Anyway, here it is.

(x-posted)

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