Jeez, remember when it was considered news for a dog to bite a man? Well, now they're ARMED!

DES MOINES, Iowa -- A hunter is recovering after he was shot in the leg by his dog, who stepped on his shotgun and tripped the trigger, an official said yesterday.

[The man's group] shot a bird, and when [he] went to get it, he put his gun on the ground and crossed a fence. As he crossed the fence, his hunting dog stepped on the gun...

 

Much has been made of Taco Bell's Steal a Base, Steal a Taco campaign, in which everyone in America is (was) eligible for a free taco at participating Taco Bell's today, October 30th, from 2pm - 5pm, because there was at least one stolen base in the 2007 World Series.

Not to be outdone, Chipolte is running a Boo-Rito campaign tomorrow (on Halloween). So says the website:

Come in on Halloween, Wednesday, October 31st, from 5pm to Close, dressed like a Chipolte burrito, taco, bowl or salad, and we'll complete you costume with a FREE BURRITO

Quite the master stroke, huh? Now if only they told anyone about it...

In the world of cheerleader video, this has got to be at least in the Top 5:

 

Here's something you don't see every day - an InstaPun:

A 410-year-old clam. "The clam, nicknamed Ming after the Chinese dynasty in power when it was born, was in its infancy when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing plays such as Othello and Hamlet." And for all those years, it was happy as a . . . well, you know.

Nice one, Glenn. I'm groaning with you, not at you, I swear...

But it does remind me of a story from my past.

My wife and I went to Israel in 1997 and toured around the country on one of those package deals. One of the first stops was Masada, the famous mountain in southern Israel where ancient Jews held off the Roman army for quite some time, until they eventually committed mass suicide rather than be captured.

When you're on Masada, your tour guide tells you that it's considered bad luck to remove rocks, stones, pebbles, etc. from the mountain. So, of course, everyone grabs a rock and puts it in their pocket. Here's the one I grabbed:

When I got it back to my hotel room, I washed it off, so I could put it in my suitcase without covering everything in dirt and mud. On doing so, I noticed the Hebrew letter (either a Vet or a Kaf - it's hard to tell) that had been written on it, likely thousands of years ago when the Jews were there fighting the Romans. I've kept it to this day, as an interesting historical artifact and a nice reminder of a wonderful trip.

But, as with Ming the Clam, I distinctly remember the following thoughts going through my head:

1) "Wow...a Hebrew letter! This rock was around in the time of the Romans. It must be thousands of years old!"

2) "Come to think of it...*ALL* rocks are thousands of years old. After all, it's not like they're making new ones..."

One month ago yesterday, I wrote about how the end of the 2007 baseball season was the best end of a baseball season ever. Three days later, I was not disappointed.

Which is why it's such a shame that the 2007 post-season was such a dud.

Now, it's no secret to those who know me that I'm a lifelong Yankee fan, but this isn't about the Yankees losing in the first round of the playoffs again. Well, it's a little bit about that. But not all about that.

Mostly, it's about good teams losing badly. After such a fantastic September, where four of the six divisions came down to the final weekend (and the other two had wildcard implications), the ALDS and the NLDS resulted in three sweeps, and one series that went four games (my beloved Yankees). That's four good teams - the Yankees, Angels, Phillies and Cubs, who fought valiantly right up until the last weekend of the season, and then simply collapsed in October, completely deflating the end-of-season drama balloon.

Then, in the NLCS, the Rockies took the Diamondbacks in four straight games as well. This was at least mildly interesting, since it gave the Rockies an unbelievable 21 wins in 22 games. But then, they waited around for eight days, while the only series worth watching, the ALCS, reached its dramatic conclusion.

At that point, though, all of the enthusiasm and adrenalin that had carried the Rockies to that point was gone, and the Red Sox rolled over them in the World Series, four games to none. It's almost as if, given all the other sweeps, the World Series would have been more interesting if the Red Sox had swept the Indians too.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting any sort of change to the process (although some are suggesting the Wildcard system needs tweaking, so that winning your division means something again, which is a valid point, I guess). The simple fact of the matter is that after 162 games, the championship goes to the team that can win eleven games the fastest. So it's always going to be a bit of a crapshoot. Some years (1986 comes to mind), it's wonderfully dramatic. Other years, like this year, it's all a big letdown.

In the end, I'm left saying what I always say this time of year - just 18 weeks until pitchers & catchers report for spring training! Go Yankees!

This morning on the way to work, I stopped by a newsstand and bought a box of Tic Tacs. Yeah, I know...I'm just not a big Altoid fan, OK? Anyway, to make matters worse, all they had was orange flavored. So I take my orange Tic Tacs, walk away from the newsstand and open the box to eat a couple. Check this out:

The Tic Tacs are white. The box they're sold in is semi-transparent orange, and the Tic Tacs themselves are white. Now granted, they still taste like orange (or at least as orange as orange-flavored Tic Tacs are supposed to taste), but they've obviously been packaged to suggest that they're actually orange in color as well. In fact, come to think of it, didn't they used to be orange in color?

Anyway, it doesn't really matter, but I felt a little duped, so I figured I'd share it with all of you. If just one Tic Tac purchaser is forewarned, I've done my duty to society...

Public Question #4, Union County, New Jersey, 22nd Legislative District:

Shall the amendment of Article II, section I, paragraph 6 of the Constitution, agreed to by the Legislature, revising the current constitutional language concerning denial of the right to vote by deleting the phrase "idiot or insane person" and providing instead that a "person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting" shall not enjoy the right of suffrage, be adopted?

And here's the Interpretive Statement that follows it:

Approval of this amendment concerning the denial of the right to vote would delete the phrase "idiot or insane person" and replace that phrase with "person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting" in describing those persons who shall be denied the right to vote. The phrase "idiot or insane person" is outdated, vague, offensive to many, and may be subject to misinterpretation. This constitutional amendment acknowledges that individuals with cognitive or emotional disabilities may otherwise be capable of making decisions in the voting booth and that their right of self-determination should be respected and protected in this regard. The amendment only denies the right of suffrage to those individuals determined by a court, on a case-by-case basis, to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting.

No word, of course, on what legal body, if any, would declare a person an "idiot or insane person" under the old law...

As Dave Barry likes to say, I am not making this up...

Since being linked to by IvyGateBlog, my site stats tell me that I'm getting quite a few visitors from Harvard University. Welcome, one & all. I thought, given my new audience, I'd share a joke I heard back during my (Penn) college days:

A Harvard Man and a Penn Man are standing at adjoining urinals. After both men finish urinating, the Harvard man goes to the sink to wash his hands, but the Penn man heads straight for the door.

Disgusted, the Harvard man says, "You know, at Harvard, they teach us to wash our hands after we go to the bathroom."

The Penn man turns and replies, "Really? Well, at Penn, they teach us not to pee on our hands."

 

But this is damn close.

Some highlights:

The deputy mayor of the Indian capital Delhi has died a day after being attacked by a horde of wild monkeys. SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys.

The city has long struggled to counter its plague of monkeys, which invade government complexes and temples, snatch food and scare passers-by. One approach has been to train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to go after the smaller groups of Rhesus macaques. The city has also employed monkey catchers to round them up so they can be moved to forests. But the problem has persisted.

As Glenn Reynolds would say, read the whole thing...

Watching the Red Sox rout the until-then-invincible Rockies last night, I was amazed that with a twelve-run lead, Terry Francona chose to keep Josh Beckett in the game, rather than save his arm for potential future use later in the series.

It seems the good folks at the Onion were wondering the same thing and, as is their way, they've come upon the answer: Terry Francona Announces Josh Beckett Will Start Games 1, 4, 7, 2, 6, 3, 5 - In That Order.

This from one of those "public service" e-mails I got at work today:

Scavenger Hunt at the American Museum of Natural History - Saturday, Nov. 3
11:45 - 4:00

Join students from PS11M school in Chelsea for a scavenger hunt at the Museum of Natural History. Volunteers will first meet at the school, eat lunch and then go to the museum for an interactive hunt. You will also see the Mythical Creatures exhibition with the children and then escort the children back to the school.

If you're interested, please sign up on the website. For any questions, please contact [name withheld]

So here's my question: when the scavenger hunt takes place at the American Museum of Natural History, are you looking for small objects on a list, or are you actually looking for scavengers?!?

It all started, as most things do these days, with an e-mail.

The Harvard University Marching Band has set a Guinness World Record in October, 2006 by creating a baton measuring more than twelve feet long and using it to conduct the band during their halftime show.

As a proud alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania Band, I sent an e-mail to the band's director, R. Greer Cheeseman III and it's Assistant Director, Dr. Kushol Gupta, suggesting we show Harvard who's boss by shattering the record at our homecoming game the following year.

What ensued was a coordinated four month effort by more than a dozen members of the Penn Band (including several engineers) to build the baton, issue a press release, and throw a kick-ass party after the game to celebrate (complete with actual batons for the kids and other cool souvenirs!).

Here's a photo collection from the event, and here's the video:

Taken this past weekend in a West Philadelphia Dunkin' Donuts:

I understand the need for security in an urban setting where a lot of cash changes hands, but something about seeing this message in that ever-so-friendly font is just unnerving, no?

From Matthew Baldwin over at Defective Yeti, we have this:

Note three things about this picture:

1) The text of the news story: "Seattle was whipped by Thursday's wind storm, so much that one man was forced to hold onto a tree to keep from being blown over."

2) The tree in question is thin enough that the man seems capable of wrapping his hand entirely around it.

3) Despite the raging wind storm, the seven year-old boy in the background seems to be having no trouble walking his bike down the sidewalk.

Clearly, Seattle has a different definition of "raging wind storm" than does, say, Kansas, where a raging wind storm ends with green witches, ruby slippers and flying monkeys...

OK, now I can finally talk about why I've had so little time for blogging lately.

I've been helping the Penn Band to break a Guinness World Record:

Penn Band Attempts to Set Guinness World Record for Oversized Conductor's Baton
October 18, 2007

Penn Band Attempts to Set Guinness World Record for Oversized Conductor's Baton

WHO: University of Pennsylvania marching band
WHAT: Unveiling of 15 foot, 8 inch conductors baton
WHEN: Oct. 20, 2007, around 1 p.m.
WHERE: Franklin Field
33rd and Spruce streets

Penn's marching band will unveil the world's largest conductor's baton during the halftime program at the Penn football game against Yale. The band has submitted the baton for inclusion in the Guinness Book of World Records. Band Director Greer Cheeseman will lead the band using the oversized, nearly 10-pound baton. Its more than 15 times the size of an ordinary baton, which weighs several ounces and is 12 to 16 inches long.

Band members, many of whom are engineering students, and alumni crafted the baton using wood and cork, the same materials as an ordinary baton.

For full coverage, including pictures and behind the scenes commentary, watch this space on Sunday...

UPDATE: Did I say Sunday? OK, so it's late Tuesday night. Took a while to get the video done & uploaded. So sue me. Anyway, the full report (including links to pictures and video) is here.

With all apologies to Bill Maher:

New Rule: If someone's name rhymes with "Boo," people must find another way to cheer for him other than calling out his name.

I'm so sick and tired of watching players named Lou or Bruce or Moose or whatever succeed in a big game, and then have the fans jeer loudly. Then the announcer is forced to say, "They're not booing, they're saying "Looooooouuuuuu."

Well, you know what? If you need to tell me that, then they shouldn't be yelling that. I mean, if for no other reason, what happens if this guy screws up later in the game? How are they going to boo him? If they yell "Booooooo," isn't he just going to think they're shouting his name? As far as I'm concerned, it takes away options and provides no upside.

That is all...

Once again, the things I want to blog about have exceeded the time I have available to blog. Hence, we move into "quick hit" mode.

First up: Violent crime has increased for the first time in more than a decade. What is to blame for this distressing news? The Bush Administration? The Democratic Congress? A weakening economy causing increased pressure on low-income youth? No. Apparently, it's the iPod:

In the first three months of 2005, major felonies rose 18.3% on the New York City subway -- however, if cell phone and iPod thefts are excluded, felonies actually declined by 3%.

Thus far, in Washington, D.C., in 2007, robberies of iPods on the Metro alone account for approximately 4% of all robberies in the city, compared with well less than 1% of robberies in 2005. Likewise, in San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, there were 4 reported iPod robberies in 2004, 102 in 2005, and 193 in 2006. The increase in iPod robberies on the BART between 2004 and 2006 accounts for a 23% of the increase in robbery in the entire city over that time."

You see, it seems that iPods are criminogenic, which means they "create crime."

iPods [are] "criminogenic (creating crime)" because they lack antitheft protection, because they are not tied to a subscription service and can thus be used after they're stolen, because they're "high-status items and may be stolen for their status," because they make the owner less aware of his or her surroundings, and because they're easy to identify, thanks to the visible white headphone cord and ear buds.

It sounds crazy at first, but when I look at that list, it starts to make some sense...

---

Next, we have Apple's new OS X Leopard Operating System, due to ship on October 26. Apple touts more than 300 new features of the OS, although many of those are features of the applications that ship with it (like Address Book, Dictionary, DVD Player, iCal, iChat, etc.). Hey - remember when bundling applications inside your OS was considered anti-competitive, monopolistic behavior? But I digress...

What I found absolutely fascinating about this list of features was how many of them already exist in Windows Vista. There are semi-transparent window title bars, dynamically populated folders, live icons that show a preview of the application rather than just a static icon, improved Spotlight searching (including Boolean operators), e-mail stationary, group calendar scheduling, etc. In all, I counted roughly fifty of the three hundred changes as things that Vista already has up and running.

I'm not complaining, of course. These features are useful in Vista, and I'm glad they're in Leopard now. I'm just surprised, because an Apple OS release typically includes innovative interface ideas, which are then implemented by Microsoft in the next Windows release, sparking cries of "Foul!" from Mac Zealots who claim Microsoft is just parroting what Apple has done. It seems we've achieved more of a "leapfrog" model now, which is just awesome news for PC consumers...

---

Moving from technology to politics, the month of October was a big one for high-profile, liberal documentaries. First there was this report about Canadian, Belinda Stronach, formerly a Member of Parliament (MP) from the Conservative Party, who switched to the Liberal Party in 2005.

In 2004, she gave an interview with the CBC defending the Canada Health Act and arguing against a two-tier health system, in which those who could afford to pay more would receive speedier access to health care (the system touted as far superior to the United States' system in Michael Moore's Sicko).

In 2007, she was diagnosed with Ductal Carcinoma in Situ (a common form of breast cancer), which required a mastectomy and breast reconstruction. On the advice of her doctor, she flew to California and paid out of pocket to have the surgery done there (something Canadians can't do in Canada under the Canada Health Act she so stauchly defended).

And of course, if we're going to mention Moore, then we have to mention Gore. Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth (review here) has been distributed to 3,500 London schools, along with four other short films about the environment.

A lorry driver and father of two children, 11 and 14, sued to have the film declared unfit for schools because, he said, it was "politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and 'sentimental mush'." The British judge agreed that the film promoted "partisan political views," but did not ban it from schools, instead requiring that teachers "warn pupils that there are other opinions on global warming and they should not necessarily accept the views of the film."

Later in the month, Gore went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, although his opponent got more votes (kidding...)

---

Sticking with politics, a quick mention is warranted on the Iraq war:

A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that "civilian deaths have risen" during this year's surge of American forces.

A month later, there isn't much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 -- down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.

During the first 12 days of October the death rates of Iraqis and Americans fell still further. So far during the Muslim month of Ramadan, which began Sept. 13 and ends this weekend, 36 U.S. soldiers have been reported as killed in hostile actions. That is remarkable given that the surge has deployed more American troops in more dangerous places and that in the past al-Qaeda has staged major offensives during Ramadan. Last year, at least 97 American troops died in combat during Ramadan. Al-Qaeda tried to step up attacks this year, U.S. commanders say -- so far, with stunningly little success.

Things are still not going well enough over there, of course. And one large bomb can reverse all of these statistical trends. But regardless of what party you belong to, this has got to be good news...

---

And finally, it's been a while since a newspaper sent undercover reporters through airport security in order to embarrass the TSA, right?

WASHINGTON - Security screeners at two of the nation's busiest airports failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as passengers in more than 60% of tests last year, according to a classified report obtained by USA TODAY.

Screeners at Los Angeles International Airport missed about 75% of simulated explosives and bomb parts that Transportation Security Administration testers hid under their clothes or in carry-on bags at checkpoints, the TSA report shows.

At Chicago O'Hare International Airport, screeners missed about 60% of hidden bomb materials that were packed in everyday carry-ons - including toiletry kits, briefcases and CD players. San Francisco International Airport screeners, who work for a private company instead of the TSA, missed about 20% of the bombs, the report shows.

These studies, while making for great headlines, continue to miss the point. The goal of airport security is not to find every bomb. The goal is to make people who would consider bringing an actual bomb on the plane think twice about doing it because of the high likelihood that they will be caught. In other words, security works when it prevents people from trying to bring bombs on planes, not only when it catches someone in the act of doing so.

That number, of course, is impossible to measure...

Someone at work just pointed me to Hopstop.com. For those who live in & around the New York metropolitan area, this is a very cool site. It's like Mapquest or Google Maps, but it includes the New York buses, commuter rail lines, and subways.

So, for instance, I need to go from midtown (Rockefeller Plaza) to the Upper East Side tonight for a charity function. The map it generated is to teh right. Notice the break in the trip where you get on the subway and then get off at a new location? With the more common mapping tools, it would assume you were driving/walking, and take you across the streets for that distance.

The site also specifies the estimated time the trip will take (including estimated timings for each stop on the subway), so you can leave the right amount of travel time ahead of your trip.


I know this only useful for a specific niche of people/purposes, but it does what it sets out to do very well.

Watching Bruce Springsteen perform is like watching a freight train run at full speed. While standing on the track. In front of the train. Without earplugs.

At 58 years old, Bruce is still the hardest working man in rock & roll. He hit the stage with a hard rocking Radio Nowhere, and basically played straight through for more than two hours. And when I say played straight through, in most cases I mean he actually played straight through. A song would end, "Mighty Max" Weinberg would rattle the drums over the last chord, the crowd would go wild, and then Bruce would run to the back of the stage, grab a new guitar from a roadie, run back to the microphone and yell, "1, 2, 3, 4!" and off they'd go into the next song. The energy required to maintain this pace showed in Bruce's perspiration, but not in his music. Every hard rocking tune was loud and electrifying. Bruce's emotions ran from exhilaration (Candy's Room) to anger (Livin' in the Future) to fun (Dancing in the Dark) to unadulterated soul (American Land).

The E Street Band did its part, to be sure, and while the sound was amazing, I'd say their body language ranged from "keep up with him if you can!" to "man, I'm getting too old for this..." Of course, I can't say I blame them. The only true weakness in the band is Bruce's wife, Patti Scialfa, who's voice is really not strong enough to be doing duets with her husband on slower songs. But who am I to deny Bruce a little nepotism? After all, it's his show...

As to the setlist, I was once again impressed with Bruce's abilities as an artist and as an entertainer. Here's a man who released his Greatest Hits disc in 1995, and now, twelve years later, he can put on a 23-song show that uses only four of those greatest hits, and with nary a complaint from the crowd. It also speaks to his confidence in his new disc, Magic, from which he played eight of the eleven tracks. Bruce Springsteen has clearly never heard the term "filler."

Some other reviews of the show that I've read this morning called out the crowd as being more subdued than previous crowds. And while it's true that Bruce did say, "Philly was louder than you guys" at one point, I think it's relevant to note that the average age at the show probably pushed into the high thirties. Philadelphia was probably louder because it's more of a college town, and so Bruce probably draws a younger and more energetic audience. Ironically, here in New Jersey, where Springsteen exists somewhere between "Icon" and "Supreme Being" status, his shows are as much about nostalgia as they are about the music.

Whatever your agenda, though, you come away from this show fully satisfied, vicariously exhausted, and with a not-so-insignificant degree of hearing loss. And that, as they say, is rock & roll.

I'm on a 6:35AM flight from Newark, NJ to Charlotte, NC. It's one of those ExpressJet flights with about 50 seats on the whole plane. One of those seats is occupied by Dr. Cornell West, formerly of Harvard University, now at Princeton University, and frequent guest on various TV talk shows, including Real Time with Bill Maher.

At this moment, the passengers that know who he is are busily explaining him to those who don't. As for me, a 6:35AM flight means the alarm goes off at 4AM. Dr. West is one of those guys it would be fascinating to talk to for a couple of hours, but at this hour, the priority is getting back to sleep, only to be awakened by the plane landing in Charlotte. I'm guessing Dr. West feels the same way. So chock this up to opportunity lost.

As a wise man once said, "I should be sleeping."

The Categories

Category	September Count	August Count
Technology	146	128
Billy Joel	112	63
DSL	44	30
Adult/Porn-Related	33	9
Celebrity Look Alikes	30	38
Baseball	23	4
Cal/Stanford	22	17
Jimmy Buffett	21	0
Burning Taxi	18	0
Politics	17	8
University of Pennsylvania	16	2
concerts/Madison Square Garden	14	2
ISBS Song/Lyrics	14	28
Family	12	12
Overrated Films	10	24
Bob Dylan	9	0
Caitlin Upton	7	0
September 11th	6	0
iPod/iPhone	5	0
OJ Simpson	5	0

Queries were up dramatically this month (626 vs. 453), owing to several factors: the burning taxicab outside my office window (18 queries), the dramatic end of the 2007 baseball season (23 queries), a review I wrote of a Jimmy Buffett concert at Madison Square Garden (21 queries), the gathering momentum of the presidential race (17 queries), the start of the collegiate fall semester (16 queries), and various other topical items like September 11th, Caitlin Upton, and OJ Simpson.

Technology still leads the pack, followed by Billy Joel (who has regained his firm hold on second place). There was dramatic growth in the porn-related queries (no pun intended), and a dramatic drop-off in queries about that country song, "I Should Be Sleeping Instead of Thinking About You" (which I still have not heard).

The lesson, as always: blog about the topical stuff, let your archives take care of themselves, and you'll be Google's best friend...

The Referring Sites

If CNN was the darling of the referral section last month, this month it's my new favorite blog, The Gothamist. These guys seem to post running commentary on the goings on in New York City, and they seem to have quite an active following. As I mentioned in the Healthcheck post, one link in the comments on that site brought 870 visitors and more than 1,300 page views. It also, according to these stats, brought a high enough Pagerank to draw almost twenty separate Google queries to the site. So go, Gothamist, go!

The Keywords

All told, 626 queries resulted in hits to Familygreenberg.com in September (about 175 more than were used in August). Here are some samples:

We begin this month with Madison Square Garden:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
billy joel concert review msg	1 / 83,300	My review of a January, 2006 Billy Joel Concert in Madison Square Garden still remains #1 in the Google ranks, and the most widely read thing I've ever written
jimmy buffett madison square garden review	12 / 206,000	OK, now how weird is this? My review of a recent Jimmy Buffett concert at Madison Square Garden is also near the top of the Google ranks!
jimmy buffett madison square garden september 2007 greenberg	1 / 14,900	OK, this guy (gal?) seems to be looking specifically for my review. It seems I've become a well known concert critic without even realizing it...

Then, there are those folks who want some more specific information about Madison Square Garden:

liberty devitto job	10 / 69,900	I know he's not touring with Billy Joel anymore, but do you think that means the job's available? And if so, was this person looking for an online job application?
madison square garden singing national anthem	15 / 240,000	Well, I guess if you can't have Liberty's job, but you're in the Garden anyway, you might as well apply to sing the Star Spangled Banner.

Moving to politics, we in New York had the (ahem...) pleasure of hosting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This drove several folks to my site as well:

ahmadinejad pictures sleeping	>500 / 1,290,000	Put the term "sleeping" in your blog name, and you'll learn that people are interested in pictures of just about anyone while they're asleep. So weird...
glad ahmedinajad	>500 / 1,040,000	And if he's awake, we'd like to see him happy, please...
iran president wearing red sox cap	>500 / 131,000	And you thought the whole holocaust thing was insulting?!? Actually, this comes from a Jon Stewart bit, where they photoshopped a Red Sox cap on Ahmadinejad's head. I guess since I've blogged about both Stewart and Ahmadinejad, this query led folks here. In Googleland, every road intersects every other, I guess...

Speaking of politics, I Should Be Sleeping is apparently an online political tutorial for at least two people:

what will hillary clinton do for people?	>500 / 4,580,000	Wait, let me get my crystal ball...
how does the supreme court work?	>500 / 6,910,000	Oh come on, ask me a tough question...

This year, September also contained Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I didn't blog about it much, but apparently what I did say was helpful to some folks:

rosh hashanah ipod	>500 / 152,000	New from Apple: contains pretty impressive playlists, but shuts down on Saturdays...
rosh hashanah song lyrics	>500 / 58,800	This has got to be the same guy. Note: they're not called song lyrics, they're called "prayers."
thoughts on rosh hashanah iraq	>500 / 110,000	I guess even Iraqi rabbis need a sermon...
what religious ritual involves sleeping on a bed of nails	>500 / 323,000	OK, I'm guessing this one wasn't about Rosh Hashanah...

Moving on once again, we have the monthly dose of the purely wild & wacky:

lacrosse -duke	>500 / 3,870,000	Sign of the times: if you want lacrosse news, you have to filter out stories about Duke University
caitlin upton dumb bitch	n/a / 355	Here's what bugs me about this: the guy that ran this query probably found a bunch of sites to validate his implicit assumption (not my site, mind you...). A great example of how doing research doesn't always mean you have all the facts...
do you need a search warrant for pay as you go cell phones	>500 / 874,000	Gosh, I hope not - I so rarely get a search warrant before calling someone...
drove my chevy to the levee but crossed it this way	13 / 16,300	No matter how many times I read this, I can't help but draw the conclusion that this isn't about American Pie, and that this guy actually did drive his Chevy to a levee...
my blood pressure is 86.55	n/a / 236	Doctor's orders: 1) Take your blood pressure. 2) Type the result into Google. 3) Click on a random result in the search. 4) Follow all instructions on that site to the letter...
time magazine most overrated thing 2006	5 / 670,000	So you think they meant that the magazine was the most overrated thing in 2006, or are they looking for what the magazine thought was the most overrated thing? Maybe a little of both, huh?
virtual surgery the game	>500 / 2,040,000	Fun for the whole family! Rated BG for excessive Blood & Guts

And finally, the ahem...adult queries. As I mentioned above, there were more of them this month than ever before. On the one hand, traffic is good. On the other hand, exactly what kind of audience am I attracting here?

naked guys washing cars	r / r	I have no idea...
moa and son sex pics	r / r	I have the sinking feeling that "moa" was a typo for "mom." <shiver>
my wife sleeping sex pics	r / r	An interesting way to check up on your spouse...
sodomy pictures	r / r	Seriously? Who types that in & then clicks over to my site? Sheesh...

 

Metric	August	September	% Change
Visits	838	2,203	+162.89%
Pageviews	1,253	3,573	+185.16%
Pages/Visit	1.50	1.62	+8.47%
Avg Time on Site	0:48	0:38	-20.12%
Bounce Rate	83.29%	80.44%	-3.43%
% New Visitors	84.25%	91.47%	+8.57%

Well, well, well - a New York taxi driver's misfortune was my windfall this month. A did a post about a cab that caught fire in front of my office and linked to it in the comments on a site called The Gothamist. That post, on its own, generated more than 870 visits and 1,300 pageviews (or, more than my entire site generated in the month of August). I'm reveling in the glory now, but dreading the October stats, when everything comes back down to earth. To prepare for that eventuality, here are the same stats, excluding September 18-20, when the bulk of those hits occurred:

Metric	August	September'	% Change
Visits	838	1,080	+28.88%
Pageviews	1,253	1,570	+25.30%
Pages/Visit	1.50	1.44	-4.32%
Avg Time on Site	0:48	0:48	0%
Bounce Rate	83.29%	83.43%	+0.16%
% New Visitors	84.25%	86.56%	+2.74%

Still a pretty good month. In fact, this (momentary) flash of (relative) noteriety has shown me something similar to what John Scalzi noted just after his (slightly more, but only to geeks like me) famous Bacon Cat Incident. When a single post generates a lot of traffic, there is a residual effect. Apparently, people come for the burning taxi, but they stay for the family homepages, concert reviews, and photographs. Here's a list of pages that showed a 100% or greater increase in traffic (minimum August pageviews = 10):

Page	% Increase
brian.htm	500.00%
brandon.htm	457.14%
avery.htm	450.00%
sherry.htm	324.00%
photos_sol.htm	172.73%
index.htm	169.23%
2007_02_01_archive.html	160.00%
blog.htm	114.36%
friends.htm	107.14%
billy-joel-all-my-life-lyrics.html	104.76%
concert-review-billy-joel-at-madison.html	101.45%

Unlike Scalzi, though, the upsurge seems to have quelled. If anyone came here because of the burning taxi and is still reading the blog semi-regularly, could you drop me a comment and let me know? Thanks! You'll have gone a long way to fuel the ego of a dedicated micro-blogger.

Well, as promised, it was an exciting weekend. Here's the recap for those who missed some or all of it:

AL East
The Yankees and the Red Sox both won two games, so the Red Sox took the AL East (sniff...), while the Yankees took the Wildcard. The Red Sox will play the Angels in Boston, the Yankees will open with Cleveland in Cleveland.

AL Central
The Indians kept pace with the Red Sox as well, tying them for the best record in the American League. But the Red Sox won the season series between the two teams (5 games to 2), so if they wind up facing each other, Boston would have home field advantage. Basically, Boston has the home field advantage all the way through (including the World Series, because the American League won the All-Star game...again!)

AL West
The Angels also kept pace with the Yankees, but seeing as how the Red Sox and the Indians didn't accommodate by falling apart this weekend, it doesn't matter. They play the Red Sox in Boston first, and if they win, they'll either face the Indians in Cleveland or the Yankees in Anaheim.

NL East
The picture says it all. The Mets completed their meteoric fall from grace, losing the division to the Phillies (and the Wildcard as well). The Phillies will play the Wildcard team (see below) in Philadelphia. The Mets will play golf, and talk about who's getting fired for all of this...


NL CENTRAL
The Cubs held off the Brewers, so they won the Central. They'll open against the Diamondbacks in Arizona.

NL WEST
OK, you didn't think we'd make it through all of that without at least one tie, did you? Well, we came close. The Padres were ahead most of the way through their game, but then fell apart and lost their chance to end it all on time. The Rockies also had an exciting game (took a 3-run lead in the eighth, and then gave up two runs in the ninth to win by one run), but heck - it all counts. So, the Rockies and the Padres are tied for the Wildcard. The (one and only) playoff game is tonight in Colorado, with the winner earning a trip to Philadelphia to take on the Phillies. The losers may want to contact the Mets about tee times.

So, there you have it. One more game to decide everything, and then it's playoff season! May the best team (from the Bronx) win...

(What??? Did I SAY I was impartial here???)