pot, kettle, etc.

[waider]

Why, asks the BBC, is Los Angeles so obsessed with troubled singer Britney Spears? Let's have a look at some data from BBC's RSS feed to see if we can find out who's obsessed, exactly: (RSS data collected every half-hour. "feedid = 2" refers to my archive of the BBC's RSS feed. Multiple near-identical headlines reflect updates in either the article text or its subject.)

mysql> select subject,ts from items where feedid = 2 and ( lower(subject) like '%britney%' or lower(subject) like '%spears%' ) order by ts;
+-----------------------------------+---------------------+
| subject | ts |
+-----------------------------------+---------------------+
| Police called to Britney's house | 2008-01-04 10:30:05 |
| Britney stretchered out of home | 2008-01-04 16:00:09 |
| Spears barred from child visits | 2008-01-05 03:30:08 |
| Spears barred from child contact | 2008-01-05 09:30:06 |
| Spears is barred from seeing sons | 2008-01-05 10:00:06 |
| Spears barred from seeing sons | 2008-01-06 11:00:06 |
| Britney Spears 'leaves hospital' | 2008-01-07 10:30:06 |
| Spears' father takes over estate | 2008-02-02 16:30:06 |
| Spears' father takes over estate | 2008-02-03 12:00:08 |
| Court restrains Spears' manager | 2008-02-06 11:00:06 |
| Court restrains Britney's manager | 2008-02-06 11:30:06 |
| Britney's manager 'drugged star' | 2008-02-06 12:00:06 |
| Britney's manager 'drugged star' | 2008-02-07 01:00:06 |
| Spears 'released from hospital' | 2008-02-07 06:00:06 |
| Spears' life at risk, say parents | 2008-02-07 06:30:09 |
| Spears's life at risk say parents | 2008-02-07 08:00:08 |
+-----------------------------------+---------------------+