Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 00:46:50 -0500 (EST)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFAList at KeithLynch.net
Subject: [WSFA] Followup to last night's meeting
Cc: leeandalexis at hotmail.com, macbuccfo at email.msn.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

There was discussion after last night's meeting about some famous
baseball player being knocked out by a baseball dropped from a
dirigible.  This discussion inspired a cartoon from Alexis.  I said I
didn't remember when or where I had heard about it, but that I bet I
could find it via Google.

Sure enough, I found one page discussing it, at
http://www.baseball1.com/carney/index.php?storyid=73

I didn't remember it very accurately.  Homer Hartnett successfully
caught two baseballs dropped from a dirigible 800 feet up in 1930.  In
1939, Joe Sprintz tried the same stunt, and got some *teeth* knocked
out.  The article also mentions that these falling baseballs were
going *slower* than thrown baseballs.  I guess there's nothing limiting
a thrown ball to terminal velocity.

In another conversation last night, Bob MacIntosh wondered what Joe
Mayhew would have thought about the current molestation scandals in
the Catholic Church.  I thought the scandals went back many years,
rather than being recent.

This time I had Google tell me how many newsgroup messages containing
both "priest" and "molestation" were posted each half year.  The
numbers show that the scandal has been simmering for a long time,
but really took off about a year ago:

2002  1230
      2900
2001   471
       379
2000   352
       625
1999   317
       326
1998   318
       352
1997   202
       157
1996   141
       159

This technique can be used to track any topic, from the Disclave flood
(a total of 107 messages containing both "Disclave" and "flood" have
been posted at various times), to Osama bin Laden (255,000 messages,
not counting variant spellings), to Microsoft (23,700,000 messages).

Various WSFA-related words, and how many newsgroup postings have
contained them:

Disclave    3150
WSFA        1260  (but many refer to a TV station, not to us)
Capclave     545
WSFA meeting  57
WSFA Journal  52
WSFA Press     7
Datclave       5
WSFA list      0

Various other fannish words and phrases:

Fanzine       120,000
Worldcon       46,700
Dragoncon      32,000
LASFS          22,300
Bucconeer        5310
NESFA            5170
Philcon          4720
Balticon         3300
NASFiC           2560
BSFS             1620
SMOFcon          1550
Ackermansion      485
Crottled greeps   316
LASFS clubhouse   137
NESFA clubhouse    81
BSFS clubhouse     38
WSFA clubhouse      0

These can be broken out further by date, unlike tracking how many web
pages mention each of these terms, which is a completely different
question.
--
Keith F. Lynch - kfl at keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
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