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Mike Arauz asks if you’re counting the numbers behind the numbers:

What is the ratio of fan activity on your Facebook page compared to the total number of fans? (Is the community alive?)

What is the ratio of subscribers to your YouTube channel compared to the total number of video views or channel views? (Is you content genuinely compelling?)

What is your ratio of @replies and ReTweets on Twitter compared to your total number of followers? (Are people inviting you into their conversations?)

How many repeat positive mentions of your brand are you getting on the same blog? (Are you creating brand advocates?)

Waldo has an interesting find off of VDOT’s website: a 1976 report “The Route of the Three Notch’d Road: A Preliminary Report”. From the Abstract:

Of the many colonial roads constructed during the eighteenth century as settlement moved across Piedmont and Southside Virginia, a few have remained virtually intact and in service as state roads over most of their length. One of the most significant of these is the Three Notch’d or Three Chopt Road, which ran from Richmond to the Valley as a main eastwest route from the 1730?s to the 1930?s, when it was superseded by U.S. Route 250.

Probably originally an Indian and game trail, various sections of which were gradually improved to the status of roads during the 1730’s as the settlers moved into the upper Piedmont. Known first as the Mountain Road, or Mountain Ridge Road, it derived its name Three Notch’d Road from a system of marks it had received by 1742 or 1743. As early as 1737 it possessed milestones or numbered trees running from west to east along its route as an aid to travellers.

Although the road appears on late eighteenth century maps, it can first be specifically located on the maps prepared by the Confederate Engineers, and these indicate it very nearly on its present course from Richmond to the Valley.

The report itself is brief but there’s a bunch of information in appendecies that make it really worth looking through.

Interesting videos of the VCU area from around 1977 as shot by late art professor Glenn Hamm

VCU Part One

VCU Part Two

The Library Of Congress has released its report on it’s program to release thousands of images via Flickr to see what information doing so would generate.  The results look great.

StateStats is an interesting little toy that shows the popularity of a Google search query by state.  It’s interesting, though what value the data may have beyond that I don’t know.

Searching “Alaska” makes me sad for the state.

UPDATE: West Virginia loves your mom.

UPDATE 2: Comparing “walmart” and “god”

Walmart

Obesity    0.67 (Positive, moderate)
InfantMortality    0.64 (Positive, moderate)
VotedForBush    0.59 (Positive, moderate)
EnergyConsumption    0.5 (Positive, moderate)

***

God

Obesity    0.83 (Positive, strong)
InfantMortality    0.62 (Positive, moderate)
EnergyConsumption    0.52 (Positive, moderate)
VotedForBush    0.48 (Positive, moderate)

The more I play with this the more interesting it is.  Comparing queries with states and their rankings can give an interesting snapshot on things.  Now it’s not a guaranteed match but an awfully interesting correlation.

Google now makes it easier for you to watch the wave of influenza spread across America this flu season!

Today I picked up a copy of Milan Kundera’s “Unbearable Lightness Of Being” after seeing it on display with a couple other books that make up Harper’s new Olive Editions.  These are sharply designed $10 novels including Kundera’s work, Michael Chabon’s “The Mysteries Of Pittsburg” and Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Everything Is Illuminated”.  While I already have a copy of Foer’s book, I may pick that up with Chabon’s just to complete the series.  I’m a packrat like that.

In celebration of it’s 10th birthday, Google has released a way for you to search their database as it was in 2001.  The FAQ answers many questions like, “why 2001 instead of 1998?” and “who put the bop in bop shu bop she bop?”.

Kevin Kelly: 1,000 True Fans

This was debated by “Matt Bai of The New York Times, Garrett Graff of Washingtonian Magazine (and Howard Dean’s first political webmaster), and Joe Trippi, who ran Dean’s campaign”:

But the three did not agree with one another and sometimes with themselves about whether the Net is making us more partisan (”echo chambers”) or better informed. Is it manipulated by pols throwing out chum that predictably attracts the mindless sharks or, as Trippi replied, is that more characteristic of cable news than the Net? The fact that we are so uncertain about this might indicate that it’s just too soon to tell, but I suspect it indicates that there’s something malformed in the question.

For example, last night one of the audience members expressed concern that the Net is naught but a series of echo chambers. Bai earlier had maintained that he worries that the Net is not about persuasion but about confirmation: you only read that which confirms your views. Ellen Hume of MIT’s civic media project worried from the floor that we’ve lost a unified, authoritative press, feared enough by politicians that when they’re caught in a lie (”I said thanks but no thanks”) they’ll actually stop repeating it.

These are all good points. And yet the question of whether the Net is making us better voters or not remains unsettled, including, I suspect, in the minds of each of those speaking last night. Ultimately, I think it’s unsettled not simply because we lack evidence or because the Internet revolution isn’t over yet.

David Weinberger (wiki – author of a few things and a thinky type of guy when it comes to the Internets and stuff) makes some good points as to why this is still up for debate.  Check out the full post for his thoughts.  (Editor note: Weinberger is also a Dean adviser.  That’s a whole lotta Dean folks in one room.)

Lowell Feld thinks that America needs to go to war against Russia for oil and regional stability:

In all seriousness, though, the sad fact is that the United States of America – bogged down in the Iraqi “double strategic mousetrap” (as Jim Webb calls it) – is completely powerless to stop Russia from invading an ally, overthrowing its government, occupying the country, taking control of its oil transit infrastructure, changing the balance of power in the region, etc., etc. Heckuva job, Bush/Cheney et al!

While I agree that we need to be stern against Russia (McCain style, not Obama “um, er, uh..” style – by the way, nice endorsement of the McCain policy, Lowell) I wonder why it’s OK to be strong against Russia and even seriously consider a military response for the sake of regional stability and oil when doing the same with, oh, say Dictators in Iraq, Iran, Syria and the like is bad.

But perhaps Lowell and others need to take a step back and realize that responses to situations such as this are heavily influenced by factors such as the size and strength of the sides and the potential to tip off World War Three. We need to be strong, but we don’t need to be crazy.

UPDATE: In the Washington Post, Asmus and Holbrook’s “Black Sea Watershed”:

This moment could well mark the end of an era in Europe during which realpolitik and spheres of influence were supposed to be replaced by new cooperative norms and a country’s right to choose its own path. Hopes for a more liberal Russia under President Dmitry Medvedev will need to be reexamined. His justification for this invasion reads more like Brezhnev than Gorbachev. While no one wants a return to Cold War-style confrontation, Moscow’s behavior poses a direct challenge to European and international order.

What can we do?

Interesting to see and probably better visualizes thing than my Oil Vs. Dollar graph.

In an article concerning insurance and blogging, Christopher Boggs tosses out an interesting bit of information concerning lawsuits against bloggers:

Nearly 77 percent of ALL civil cases were found in favor of the blogger or saw the charges dropped by the plaintiff. And 92 percent of blog-related suits making it to trial end in blogger triumph (additional information availble at Media Law Resource Center). Odds at trial are overwhelmingly in the blogger’s favor, but there is no guarantee that this propensity towards blogger victory will continue.

As Boggs notes, nearly all of these victories have been on the grounds of the First Amendment. But that will only hold up as long as the bloggers themselves are responsible:

First Amendment protection requires, among other standards, bloggers, like journalists, to practice and prove due diligence in the gathering and reporting of “factual” information. Bloggers must also prove that no actual malice was intended by statements or information ultimately found to be incorrect or untrue. Opinions, stated as opinion and not fact, published by bloggers are also potentially immune from charges of libel under the First Amendment since there is no such thing as a false opinion.

The article specifically looks at a SLAPP, a lawsuit that is meant not necessarily to win but to scare others out of the conversation.  A “don’t talk or we’ll sue you, too,” type thing.  There are anti-SLAPP statutes in 27 states.  Virginia is not one of them.

Red State, Blue State has some interesting graphs of the ideology of voters compared to Congressmen and Senators: