Tuesday, April 17, 2007

One man's trash is another man's Ladmo Bag

A reporter here just got a story pitch from a PR person representing a text-messaging firm, suggesting we do a story on his firm and how text-messaging can be used for large-scale emergencies - like, say, a campus shooting. Nothing like a national tragedy to drum up a little publicity for your startup tech company.

(P.S. If you're confused by the headline, it's a reference to this.)

Monday, April 16, 2007

So much information, so little knowledge

 A recent Pew Research study finds that more than 30% of Americans can't name the vice president and 64% can't name the president of Russia. Wow.

The best part:

[T]he survey respondents who seemed to know the most about what’s going on — who were able to identify major public figures, for example — were likely to be viewers of fake news programs like Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”; those who knew the least watched network morning news programs, Fox News or local television news.

In better news, another Pew study says more rich people now say they're Democrats.

Source: New York Times