Statastico tries to provide a diverse look at world around us. I’ve written about butter cows, decapitation, planets the size of countries, even measured wieners. The result of this eclecticism is that some odd, disturbing (and anonymous) google searches have led people to my web site over the past month.

Some folks have pretty normal requests. Most web searches that end up on statastic.com are searching for one of three things: 1) nursing wage information, 2) video games, or 3) critiques of the Bottom of the Pyramid. These folks I can help.

Then there are the others…

Someone in Vancouver wants to know “how many breaths a human takes in a week?” All statastic can tell you is how much hot air from a politician it takes to fill up a balloon, but the good people of Vancouver are asking the right questions.

A Los Angelean wants to know the “definition of Joshua”. No idea, but have a look at joshuakucera.net, maybe he can tell you when he’s not worrying about The Rise of the Neo-Con Artists.

A Canuck wants to know about “cannibalism in Islam”. I’ll go ahead and field this one. Cannibalism is indeed a fundamental precept of the Muslim religion. And you are right to be worried: Most Muslims prefer the tender, maple-syrupy taste of Canadians. Now you understand why Bush is so concerned about Islamic Cannibal Extremism.

But maybe it’s the Romanians we should be focused on. Apparently someone in the San Francisco Bay Area is wondering about cannibalism in Romania. Hopefully, they were looking for this old Romanian folktale: The Cannibal Innkeeper.

Someone in Norcorss, Georgia (I’ll a assume an optimistic young man) did a google search on “super models AND alcohol”. Finally someone thinking straight. After reading my entry on how to drink the most alcohol per calorie, he now knows that supermodels prefer Keystone Light.

“Swiss cow subsidies” were on the mind of someone in Zurich, Switzerland. You know, I’ll bet Swiss cows are nearly perfect. They stand on two legs at the top of the hour when it’s time to be milked, and put the toilet seat down after using the cow-let. Well worth the EU subsidies, I’m sure.

Over in Utrecht, Netherlands, someone was wondering about Agassi and death. He’s alive and well, it was the death of American (men’s) tennis that had Statastico worried before Roddick’s encouraging run at the U.S. Open.

Finally, someone in Tucson, Arizona was thinking about “breast terror”. Dear god. Why anyone looking up breast terror on the Internet would click on a site called statastic! is beyond me, but a recent search shows that statastic.com still comes up third on the google search for the terms.

Perhaps the Arizonian was looking for a justification for getting breast implants during our Global War on Terror:

Shrapnel from rocket lodged in implants, sparing Israeli woman

August 15, 2006: JERUSALEM - An Israeli woman’s breast implants saved her life when she was wounded in a Hezbollah rocket attack during Israel’s war with the Lebanese group, a hospital spokesman said Tuesday.

Doctors found shrapnel embedded in the silicone implants, just inches from the 24-year-old’s heart.

It’s a weird world wide web.

Some bloggers like to pat themselves on the back for being ahead of the mainstream media. But how serious is the blogosphere compared to the print media? I though today’s sensational story about JonBenet Ramsey would provide a pretty good test of how serious the bloggers are.

According to Technorati, English language blogs with “a lot of authority” mentioned JonBenet 180 times so far today and Hezbollah about 550 times. This actually was a pleasant surprise to Statastico (who does not have a lot of authority). So I went out to see how the newspapers were covering the same two stories.

For lack of a better idea, I measured the size of the columns that referred to each of the two stories. Unfortunately, the newspaper sample reflects where I bought the newspapers - about 2 blocks from the Capitol Building - so I’m a little light on samples from anywhere but the East Coast.

For the most part the Israel-Lebanon conflict dominated space on the front page relative to JonBenet. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were the only two papers to carry the JonBenet story entirely below the fold. The average newspaper dedicated 3.4 times more column space to Hezbollah than to JonBenet. Serious bloggers wrote 3.05 posts referring to Hezbollah to every post referring to the JonBenet story. Imperfect measures to be sure, but somewhat encouraging.

As to which form of media is setting the conversational agenda, I would still vote for the broadsheets. Especially now that we bloggers are ever-so-aware of the fact that we can get free advertising by showing up in the Washington Post’s Who’s Blogging link to Technorati. I’ll see you there.

Source: Statastic research

Notes: Washington Times measure includes a story about the media and the Lebanon-Israel conflict.