Sure, Ross and pals might say it’s coincidence, but I think RVABlogs takes a bit of editorial liberties with some of what it aggregates. Take my recent post on California for instance:

The US Census Bureau has released the first Census Atlas of the United States in nearly 80 years.

What exactly is the purpose of this?

Here’s what our elected officials just approved on a party-line, 45-29 vote. Every private, corporate or public operating foundation in California with assets of more than $250 million (of which there are more than three dozen) would be required to gather information about the gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation of its members and its board of directors and then publish that data on its website and in its annual report. Foundations also would be required to publish such “diversity data” percentages about its staff.

Imagine being the employee who has to ask each co-worker about his or her sexual identity and history. Many of these foundations have relatively small staffs; there won’t be many secrets if this bill becomes law.

But the bill’s shameless intrusiveness doesn’t stop there. The race, ethnicity and sexual orientation of the owners of all businesses with whom the foundation contracts is the next bit of data that the bill requires. Is the printer of foundation reports an Alaskan Native? The event caterer an Asian American? The landlord bisexual or transgendered? Those need to be tallied. The state wants to know the percentage of business contracts in those categories and more.

After that, foundations would have to drill down into the composition of the organizations to which it makes grants. How many grants went to groups with a board or staff that is 50% or more minorities? What percentage of foundation dollars did they get? That too would be reported to the world by the foundation.

The purpose of such legislation seems to be to enable greater funding to help those who need it the most.  The problem is, as the LA Times points out, that “the universe of the underserved” is unbiased towards race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.  To narrowly aim at and account for these factors reinforces stereotypes that do nothing to truly effect actual change.

Not only is this flawed in its measure, but it creates an unnecessary intrusion into the workings of private charity organizations.  Such legislation creates an environment where organizations may not want to or may be entirely unable to operate, further harming any efforts to help those that need it.

Peter Kafka notes that social networking sites are having a bit of trouble keeping folks around:

comScore has provided BusinessWeek’s Spencer Ante with user engagement numbers — time spent on each site, per month, per visitor — for a slew of social networks over the past year. The data looks particularly grim for News Corp.’s MySpace, which saw time spent on the site drop 24% from December 2006 to December 2007. But Spencer notes that all the social nets are either dropping or slowing.

It looks like MySpace’s loss is Facebook’s gain, though.  While it’s not an even tilt, as more and more competitors emerge, MySpace’s hold on users is going to dwindle.

Yesterday was International Delete Your MySpace Account Day.  Alas, maybe next year.

Canceled flight?  Remember Rule 240:

Rule 240 mandated that an airline facing a delayed or canceled flight had to transfer you to another carrier if 1) the second carrier could get you to your destination more quickly than the original line and 2) it had available seats. In pre-deregulation days, all the big U.S. airlines adhered to this practice.

VCU uses this clunky, not always working system called Banner to allow students to view their status, register for classes, get a copy of their transcripts, and all sorts of other things. They moved to this system a while back and keep adding features that don’t exactly work right. Now they’ve added a disclaimer I must accept before continuing:

Individuals using University technology resources agree to abide by applicable federal, state and University usage policies and standards, and agree to act in a responsible, ethical, and legal manner. For additional information please refer to the computing policies, including Computer and Network Resources Use and Information Security, located at http://www.ts.vcu.edu/policies and the Rights of Students Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) located at http://www.vcu.edu/enroll/rar/rights.html.

Use of these resources constitutes consent to monitoring such use. Users acknowledge that their activities may be monitored and that any misuse may be subject to University disciplinary action and legal prosecution. Although the University recognizes the ideals of privacy and confidentiality, users must be aware that any data contained in University systems may potentially be disclosed to authorized persons under provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, other state and federal laws and regulations, University policies or for appropriate University business needs.

Agreement to these terms of usage must be renewed each calendar year. If you agree, click Continue. Otherwise, please click Exit.

Which makes me wonder, who did what with Banner in the past to make this necessary? Maybe it’s because I’m all innocent and couldn’t possibly conceive what someone would do once they’re in Banner, but is this really needed? Ah well. Off to click “Continue”.

Debra Jean Dean reads the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Some rules and quirks in baseball:

Take the stolen base. Did you know that it used to be possible to steal first from second? Why would you want to do that? Well, if there is a runner on third stealing first from second could distract the catcher and allow the runner from third to score. The last recorded instance of this happening was on September 4, 1908 by Detroit’s Germany Schaefer in a game against Cleveland. Soon after the rules committee outlawed the practice as they thought it made a mockery of the game. I don’t know about you but it sounds kind of fun!

(h/t Kottke)

Are trends based on a few Influentials pushing them to their “tipping point” or are they more random?

Watts set the test in motion by randomly picking one person as a trendsetter, then sat back to see if the trend would spread. He did so thousands of times in a row.

The results were deeply counterintuitive. The experiment did produce several hundred societywide infections. But in the large majority of cases, the cascade began with an average Joe (although in cases where an Influential touched off the trend, it spread much further). To stack the deck in favor of Influentials, Watts changed the simulation, making them 10 times more connected. Now they could infect 40 times more people than the average citizen (and again, when they kicked off a cascade, it was substantially larger). But the rank-and-file citizen was still far more likely to start a contagion.

Grant Barrett searches for the origins of the term “w00t”:

As is the case for most words, the most popular question about woot is “Where did it come from?” Unfortunately, its origins are disputed and, also like most words, it’s impossible to say with any certainty what the true origins are. Trying to come close to the term’s roots is a game of odds, Occam’s razor, and believability.

(h/t Kottke)