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 |
+-----------------------------------+---------------------+

The BBC's coverage of the British Airways staff strike is causing more than a few odd juxtapositions. This morning, the top story was "Cypriot plane crashes killing 121", while off to the side was "Thousands still stuck at Heathrow" (referring, obviously, to the strike rather than the Cypriot crash). Just now in the RSS feed I read, "thousands expected a VJ-day ceremonies" immediately followed by the same "thousands stuck at Heathrow" headline.

I still don't understand what the BBC are up to with their headlines. Today, we have

Bigley 'handed' to another group
Spain vows to 'crush' Eta

but despite this frequent use of scare quotes, they still managed

Psycho actress Janet Leigh dies

which IMHO could have done with said quotes to avoid implying that Leigh was short a few marbles.

From The Beeb's RSS feed:

The World Health Organisation is upbeat on TB Day, but a top medical charity claims drugs are archaic.

I can so imagine that. "Drugs, are, like, so 1960s, man! You should be using CRYSTALS and shit!"

Seen at the Beeb: Seven foreign al-Qaeda suspects are questioned in Karachi with guns and grenades, officials say.. Is "questioned with guns and grenades" some sort of euphemism?

The Beeb gives you the important details from the infamous Oval Office tape recorder(s):

LBJ: The crotch down where your nuts hang - it's always a little too tight. It's like riding a wire fence. See if you can't give me an inch where the zipper ends, right back to my bunghole. (The president then lets out a magnificent belch.)

huhuh. he said "bunghole".

At least, that's the impression you'd get if you read their listed-on-front-page article about bad scifi movie science.