Avid tech consumers were also likely to be low in modesty and may be perceived as conceited or arrogant by others.

Low levels of modesty also correlate with what Welch calls "badge-buying", or a tendency to buy luxury brands. "So there's an element of pride in being able to have the latest and greatest, not just in the realm of technology, but in all other areas."

The researcher behind the study said it could have implications for technology companies looking to attract new consumers. Coming soon: a gadget with the tagline, "You're better than everyone else. Now prove it."

"Gadget buyers more assertive, even arrogant" [Reuters via ZDNet]
(Photo: Getty)

Here's the gist of her argument:

I'm reasonably sure that many people do not make the same purchases when they pay with plastic. This isn't just a feeling or anecdotal evidence. Researchers have found that people's willingness to purchase more products or services increases with the use of plastic.

In their groundbreaking research, Drazen Prelec and Duncan Simester of the Sloan School of Management at MIT found that study subjects paid more when instructed to use a credit card rather than cash. In fact, they found people were willing to pay up to 100 percent more with plastic.

Credit cards empower us to spend more on the same junk we would normally buy with cash. According to science, this has many causes:

• The delayed payment makes us treat credit differently from cash.
• Charging several items to a card doesn't help you identify overspending on any single item.
• Forking out cash provides a strong visual clue that your wallet is getting lighter.

Singletary ultimately argues that credit may be fine, so long as you realize that it may exacerbate spending. She challenges all non-believers to put down their cards for a month and pay only with cash, and then compare their spending to previous months.

What do you think?

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Like it or not, it's unwise to use credit [Seattle PI]
(Photo: Getty)

"Glaxo Says Wine May Fight Aging " [New York Times]
(Photos: Getty)

Basically, the company tracks your spending habits by collecting data directly from your credit card statement. But rest assured, they say, that the data is in good hands:

Registering these accounts simply authorizes secure collection of monthly information from those accounts for research purposes only. Your specific credit card information will be collected through an infrastructure that ensures the highest level of security with a world-class network, data, and physical security system.

Password and statement data are stored and transmitted in encrypted format at all times. All data is securely housed in the Exodus© Vault™, a revolutionary Internet server hosting space that provides enhanced physical security, fire protection and electronic shielding.

My credit card information. My online financial statements. What the hell?! Even if this is legit, there's no way.
 
Thought you'd like to know. If this is a scam, I'd like to know, and I'm sure so would some other people. I'm sure the survey site won't like me sending this, but it's not like I make anything of value from watching pre-production commercials or telling people how often I buy shampoo.

The revelation raises several questions, including whether the tobacco company influenced the study, who knew the real source of the funding, and whether Weill Cornell Medical College—where Dr. Henschke is a faculty member—implicitly supported the foundation's creation to hide the source of the funding. Two Cornell officials who sat on the board of the foundation have denied any knowledge of Liggett's involvement.

Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine and the author of a book about conflicts of interest, said he believed that Weill Cornell had created the foundation to hide its receipt of money from a cigarette company. "You have to ask yourself the question, 'Why did the tobacco company want to support her research?' " Dr. Kassirer said. "They want to show that lung cancer is not so bad as everybody thinks because screening can save people; and that's outrageous."

10. Sales Associate (SA) A ignored you - did not say hello, smile, make eye contact 21
9. SA didn't listen when explaining what you wanted 22
8. Product/item was out of stock 22
7. SA not very polite, courteous 24
6. SA not interested in helping you find what looking for 27
5. SA insensitive to long check-out lines 27
4. SA acted like you were intruding on their time/conversations 29
3. SA followed, pestered when you wanted to browse on own 30
2. Could not find anyone when needed help 31
1. SA had 'that's not my department' attitude 32

Does this hold true for you? What most turns you off when you go out shopping?

Shopper Research Pinpoints Loyalty, Problems [ifoAppleStore] (Thanks to Jgodsey!)
What Customers Expect Sales Associates To Contribute Toward The In-Store Experience (Powerpoint)
(Photo: Getty)

To look in more detail, the team carried out a 12-year study of 46,000 men aged 40 years and over with no history of gout, asking them regular questionnaires about their diet.

Over the period, 755 newly diagnosed cases of gout were reported.

The risk of developing the condition was significantly increased with an intake level of five to six servings of sugary soft drink per week.

This link was independent of other risk factors for gout such as body mass index, age, high blood pressure and alcohol intake.

Diet soft drinks did not increase the risk of gout but fruit juice and fructose rich fruits (apples and oranges) were associated with a higher risk, the researchers said.

"Gout surge blamed on sweet drinks" [BBC News]
(Photo: Getty)

An additional 21 patients, about 10 percent of those studied, were also excluded from the reported results.

A Medicare official, Dr. Steve Phurrough, said 10 percent was unusually high. While it is impossible to tell what the outcome of the study would have been otherwise, Dr. Phurrough said, "it gives us pause." The agency decided last August not to cover the disk for most Medicare patients.

"Financial Ties Are Cited as Issue in Spine Study" [New York Times]
(Photo: Getty)

However, the study focuses on winning bids of $14 and found that on these bids, buyers were on average willing to pay about $4 more to win. We wonder two things: does this scale to big-ticket purchases on eBay, where presumably shoppers have a greater incentive to seek out the best deal? ($14 is awfully close to an impulse or emotional purchase for a lot of eBay shoppers, we'd imagine.) And does this prove that eBay is a good deal, or that eBay shoppers tend to err on the side of willing to spend too much for the goods they're buying, especially at lower price points?

One of the authors suggests eBay make similar data more transparent to shoppers in order to "reignite its auctions business." EBay has said it's going to start shifting away from auctions in order to focus more on fixed-price goods, which already account for 40% of eBay's marketplace revenue.

"Tracking Consumer Savings on eBay" [NYT Bits blog]

RELATED
"New Research Finds Consumers Save More Than $7B by Shopping on eBay " [Robert H. Smith School of Business]
"EBay's New Leader Moves Swiftly on a Revamping" [New York Times]
(Photo: Getty)

...research suggests that much of the time it's not the companies offering rebates that are creating the problem. It's the customers. Their tendency to procrastinate and inability to follow multistep directions—albeit often explained in tiny print—result in as many as half of all rebates going unfulfilled. "It's their own inability to have self-control and say, 'I'm going to get this done,' " says Tim Silk, assistant professor of marketing at the University of British Columbia.

Because people tend to believe they will redeem the rebates and then they don't, they often pay more for items than they expect. "You see something that has a rebate associated with it, and you are overly optimistic that you will do all of what's required," says John Gourville, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School.

...promotion managers informed us that redemption rates tend to be "very low" when the reward is below $10, that rebates of $10 to $20 on a $100 software product range between 10% and 30%, and that redemption rates on consumer electronics average approximately 40%.

Why Shoppers Love to Hate Rebates [U.S. News & World Report]
Why we buy but fail to redeem? (PDF) [Tim Salk]
Managing Mail-In Rebate Promotions (PDF) [Tim Salk]
PREVIOUSLY: Rebate-Processor Parago Caught In A Lie
HOWTO: Rebate Whore
Redeem Rebates With Hard Work And Luck
(Photo: Mecha Wendy)

In a study published in the journal Epidemiology, the team compared the dietary habits of 465 people with chronic kidney disease and 467 healthy people. After controlling for various factors, the team found that drinking two or more colas a day — whether artificially sweetened or regular — was linked to a twofold risk of chronic kidney disease.

The Claim: Too Much Cola Can Cause Kidney Problems [NYT] (Thanks to Sacha!)
Carbonated Beverages and Chronic Kidney Disease [Epidemiology]
PREVIOUSLY: Is Drinking 12 Diet Cokes A Day Healthy? Coke Thinks So.
(Photo: So Cal Metro)

Shopping momentum occurs when an initial purchase provides a psychological impulse whose momentum drives the purchase of a second, unrelated product... Momentum occurs because the initial purchase moves one from a deliberative to an implemental mindset, thus driving subsequent purchases.

Planning can derail mindless spending. Keep your money in separate places to create a pause between decision and purchase. Like with grocery shopping, make a list before hitting the mall to avoid extraneous purchases. If you want to browse, ask salespeople to hold items and come back the next day to re-evaluate your selections with a thrifty friend.

Buyer Beware: Shopping Can Lead to More ... Well ... Shopping [Stanford Graduate School of Business]
The Shopping Momentum Effect (PDF) [Journal of Marketing Research]
(Photo: enmanuel)

A is waiting in line at a movie theater. When he gets to the ticket window, he is told that as he is the 100,000th customer of the theater, he has just won $100.

B is waiting in line at a different theater. The man in front of him wins $1,000 for being the 1-millionth customer of the theater. Mr. B wins $150.

According to the Times, the average person choses "A":

Amazingly, most people said that they would prefer to be A. In other words, they would rather forgo $50 in order to alleviate the feeling of regret that comes with not winning the thousand bucks. Essentially, they were willing to pay $50 for regret therapy.

Regret falls under a psychological effect known as loss aversion. Research shows that before we risk an investment, we need to feel assured that the potential gain is twice what the possible loss might be because a loss feels twice as bad as a gain feels good. That's weird and irrational, but it's the way it is.

The article goes on to explain the possible evolutionary causes for such behavior. Evolution's effect on people's perception of money is such that the vast majority of people care more about "making more money than other people" than they do about how much money they're actually making:

Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.

Surprisingly — stunningly, in fact — research shows that the majority of people select the first option; they would rather make twice as much as others even if that meant earning half as much as they could otherwise have. How irrational is that?

According to Reuters, "the study found the largest racial disparity in providing stronger medications was found among patients in the most pain and those aged 12 or younger."

"There is no evidence that nonwhites have less severe or different types of pain when they arrive in the emergency department," Pletcher said. "We think our data indicate that opioids are being underprescribed to minority emergency department patients, especially black and Hispanic patients."

A factor may be that white patients are more likely to expect and demand relief from pain and better convey their symptoms in comparison to minority patients, the report said. Whites — who are more likely to have health insurance — may also be overprescribed the drugs, it said.

The investigators acknowledge that it is conceivable that the disparity represents overprescribing to white patients, but they think it a more plausible explanation is true undertreatment of pain in minority patients. This may not be a result of physician bias but could reflect expectations and assertiveness of the patients.

The results were stunning. Within three months, the rate of bloodstream infections from these I.V. lines fell by two-thirds. The average I.C.U. cut its infection rate from 4 percent to zero. Over 18 months, the program saved more than 1,500 lives and nearly $200 million.

A large body of evidence gathered in recent years has revealed a profound failure by health-care professionals to follow basic steps proven to stop infection and other major complications. We now know that hundreds of thousands of Americans suffer serious complications or die as a result. It's not for lack of effort. People in health care work long, hard hours. They are struggling, however, to provide increasingly complex care in the absence of effective systematization.

Excellent clinical care is no longer possible without doctors and nurses routinely using checklists and other organizational strategies and studying their results. There need to be as few barriers to such efforts as possible. Instead, the endeavor itself is treated as the danger.

RELATED
"The Checklist" [The New Yorker]
(Photo: Getty)

"Home Sweet Gadget: How Our Technolust Helped Bring Down the Housing Market" [Wired]
(Photo: Getty)

One of the big problems with HIPAA, they say, is it has increased the paperwork and legalese required to collect data, but done little to actually help protect patients: "The consent forms have become so long with the addition of HIPAA that subjects may not be understanding what they are agreeing to."

Some databases are leaving out data that doesn't meet HIPAA compliance, while some institutions are not even collecting certain types of potentially useful data because of HIPAA rules. This summer, the Institute of Medicine will make recommendations for "how to reduce the burden of HIPAA compliance on public health research."

"Too much privacy? U.S. law makes research harder" [Reuters]
(Photo: Getty)

The study doesn't point the finger directly at caffeine and taurine—they're just saying the drinks in their entirety seem likely to raise blood pressure. And the American Beverage Association Industry disagrees with the whole concept, releasing the following statement in response:

While the amount of caffeine in energy drinks or coffee may cause a slight and temporary increase in blood pressure, it would have no greater effect than walking up a flight of steps.

The researchers didn't reveal which energy drink they used in the study, but they pointed out that all of the drinks use pretty much the same basic ingredients. "By giving the brand, it would dilute the message that all of these drinks need to be looked at." We just picked Red Bull because that's the one slogan we actually know.

"Energy drinks jolt blood pressure, study finds" [Reuters]
(Photo: Red Bull and Getty)

The notes for the test are a monument to scientific inquiry—we think Consumer Reports or the CPSC might want to take a look:

4:43 PM - Initial big "sugary" rush of flavor is gone, but minty flavor remains strong.
5:07 PM - I feed the cat. I let it smell the gum and it wasn't interested.
5:13 PM - OK, now starting to notice a definite loss in both minty flavor and the sweetness of the gum. I'm almost glad that sugar-free bleah taste has gone away. It's beginning to taste like clay. How do those baseball ball-players do it? Oh, right - they're chewing steriod-infused tobacco, not gum.

When subjects were asked to estimate how many calories they thought they consumed after eating a meal from MacDonalds or Subway, those who ate at Subway guessed on average 150 calories less. (Both groups underestimated total calories regardless.) Says study organizer Dr. Pierre Chandon:

People think that the same 1,000-calorie meal has 159 fewer calories if it comes from Subway... If they choose to consume this fictitious 'calorie credit' on other food, and it they eat at Subway twice a week, they could gain an extra 4.9 pounds a year.

"Calories underestimated in 'healthy' restaurants" [Reuters]
(Photo: Simon Shek)

(Photo: Getty)

The study found that shoppers look for discounts and special offers for canned tuna, canned fruit and pasta sauce, but they want products like cheese, mayonnaise and coffee to be recognizable and easy to find.

For energy drinks and chocolate, shoppers care little about price but want eye-catching ads and snazzy packages. When it comes to salad dressings and chewing gum, they want to try out new products.

"POV: Brands in the Dark" [Adweek]
(Photo: Getty)

Prudent shoppers, on the other hand, forget the rush and tend to only remember the negative associations of wasteful spending, say the study's authors. Says study co-author Patti Williams, "If we ask them a couple of days later how [prudent shoppers] feel about that impulsive act, they only feel the guilt and regret."

"Most of the research had said that when you're impulsive, immediately you'll feel positive emotions and with delay you'll feel negative emotions. What we find is that right after being impulsive people feel both positive and negative and in fact some people feel guilt with delay and some people just don't."

Guilt won't stop impulsive shoppers, researchers say [CBC News]

(Photo: Getty)

"Most ads (82%) made some factual claims and made rational arguments (86%) for product use, but few described condition causes (26%), risk factors (26%), or prevalence (25%). Emotional appeals were almost universal (95%). No ads mentioned lifestyle change as an alternative to products, though some (19%) portrayed it as an adjunct to medication. Some ads (18%) portrayed lifestyle changes as insufficient for controlling a condition. The ads often framed medication use in terms of losing (58%) and regaining control (85%) over some aspect of life and as engendering social approval (78%). Products were frequently (58%) portrayed as a medical breakthrough."

Another Reason Not To Watch Drug Commercials [Situationist]

Mobile phone use 'linked to tumour' [Telegraph via Gizmodo]

"Two Australian doctors have found that entering the symptoms of a tricky case into the internet search engine often results in accurately diagnosing the illness.

They put Google to the test by entering the symptoms of 26 difficult cases recorded in the New England Journal of Medicine into the search engine to see how accurate an aid to diagnosis it was. And in 58% of cases using the search engine led to the correct diagnosis."

Doctors Turn to Google for Tricky Cases [Guardian]

Stay tuned for the lawsuit, folks.

From CBC News: Menthol and regular cigarettes appear to be equally harmful to the cardiovascular system and lungs, but smokers of menthols may have a harder time butting out for good, new research suggests.

In a study that followed more than 1,500 smokers over 15 years, U.S. researchers found that those who smoked menthol cigarettes in 1985 were more likely to still be smoking in 2000: almost 70 per cent of those whose tobacco of choice was menthol were still smoking compared with about 55 per cent of those who chose regular cigarettes.

The authors found that smoking menthols was associated with "a lower likelihood of trying to quit in the first place."

The reason why is totally gross. Researchers think menthol "anesthesizes nerve endings in the throat and air passages, smokers may inhale deeper and be able to tolerate more cigarettes." That's disgusting, but not as disgusting as those "look at all the fat in this dead aorta" commercials that we non-smokers are forced to watch. Those commercials are a mental health hazard. Yuck

Greg writes, "I am saddened by this news. It is very disappointing."

Yes, the feeling of melancholy it creates is something akin to the sensation the your personal search history had been released on the internet with enough info that people could identify you and knock on your door.

Linden is the same fellow quoted in NYT as saying of the history release, "I don't think there is a real privacy concern... especially in a day when we see millions of credit card numbers leaked by one group and millions of Social Security numbers released by another government agency."

Very sad, indeed.

"Leading the AOL Search & Navigation group in terms of research, evaluation and design of over 70 AOL search Systems for CNN, CompuServe, Netscape and AOL."

Gawd, what else has he fucked up?

(We also enjoyed the title of one of his papers, "Temporal Analysis of a Very Large Topically Categorized Web Query Log")

A fellow researcher of his and coauthor of several search optimization papers, Eric Jensen, told NYT, "Their [AOL's] response has served to inflame the situation rather than address the problem...I think that rather than making scapegoats out of people, you could have explained what this data was for."

Gee, firing the people directly responsible and blaming it on them without addressing underlying issues, where have we heard that one before?

Jensen added, "he had been told that the posting of the data had been approved by all appropriate executives at AOL, including Ms. Govern."

AOL: We care when the media makes us.

A cursory search revealed why Maureen didn't give a diddlydarn about AOL users: she used to work for Convergys.

AOL's intent was to provide open source tools to academics researching the science of how people search for information.

In reporting the story, NYT gave the kill quote to Greg Linden, CEO of Findory, a news search company,

The uproar, he said, would hurt university researchers trying to explore new types of searches who did not have access to data about users. "This is going to slow progress of those who want to find ways to help people find what they are looking for faster," he said.

Bad bloggers, pointing out privacy breaches! Although it's beyond us why anyone would find the searches useful.

Did you see what these people typed in? Any librarian would self-combust at how poorly formulated the queries were. Didn't anyone teach these people about Boolean operators?

"This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it. It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant."

Guess what? If personal data is collected, some day it may be improperly divulged and used by hacky writers to make endless blogfood from "strange things are being done in the same households as searches for mundane crap."

The question now is what will be done with the data already released? We shall wait, and breathlessly watch Digg.

But let's not be prudes. We have all searched for crazy stuff. Things that we will never tell anyone else about. Things that we thought would never be revealed.

Nonetheless, user 231392 proves without a doubt: when they say it's America Online, they're not kidding.

First we have a search for DebShops, which offers young women and teen fashion. Then we promptly move into incest sex. Then we move into "celestial bride shops." Then "Atlanta Nascar Race." Who is this searcher? A pedophilic car lover? A moonshine mistress getting ready for the prom and checking on her favorite racer stats?

Further searches query "prom hairstyles" "prom gowns," more Nascar, some Rascall Faltts concerts, a little more incest sex, sex with animals and finally, the Cambria County Fair of Ebensburg, PA.

Not sure if that's a family outing we want to be privy to.

231392's full search profile inside.

231392 deb stores 2006-03-04 23:06:43 1 http://www.debshops.com
231392 comhttp 2006-03-17 17:42:51
231392 ross thomas 2006-03-17 17:48:13 4 http://www.rossthomas.net
231392 incest sex 2006-03-17 18:00:03 2 http://scripts.cgispy.com
231392 incest sex 2006-03-17 18:00:03 4 http://insest.startspot.nl
231392 incest sex 2006-03-17 18:00:03 5 http://duboard.proboards57.com
231392 incest sex 2006-03-17 18:00:03 7 http://www.ultraguest.com
231392 incest sex 2006-03-17 18:00:03 10 http://pub15.bravenet.com
231392 celestial bride shops 2006-03-19 12:07:15 3 http://www.decidio.com
231392 celestial brides 2006-03-19 17:46:02 1 http://www.celestialbrides.com
231392 atlanta nascar race 2006-03-19 17:57:42 1 http://www.atlantamotorspeedway.com
231392 atlanta nascar race 2006-03-19 17:57:42 3 http://www.nascar.com
231392 summer swimwear 2006-03-25 19:58:12 1 http://www.fazed.com
231392 summer swimwear 2006-03-25 19:58:12 2 http://www.kidzworld.com
231392 prom hairstyles 2006-03-26 17:31:49 1 http://www.promhairstyles.net
231392 prom hairstyles 2006-03-26 17:31:49 2 http://hairstyles.free-beauty-tips.com
231392 prom hairstyles 2006-03-26 17:31:49 3 http://www.prom-hairstyles.org
231392 prom hairstyles 2006-03-26 17:31:49 4 http://www.2promhairstyles.com
231392 prom hairstyles 2006-03-26 17:31:49 7 http://beauty.about.com
231392 prom hairstyles 2006-03-26 17:31:49 8 http://www.beautyriot.com
231392 jc penny prom gowns 2006-03-26 18:01:35
231392 prom shoes 2006-03-28 16:07:29 6 http://www.weddingaccessories.net
231392 adam farabaugh 2006-03-28 22:02:58 6 http://www.aviators.stark.k12.oh.us
231392 california postcards 2006-03-28 22:03:24 2 http://www.scripophily.net
231392 rascall flatts concerts 2006-03-28 22:10:02 1 http://www.rascalflatts.com
231392 rascall flatts concerts 2006-03-28 22:10:02 4 http://www.bestshowticketslasvegas.com
231392 tuscany 2006-03-30 20:25:08 3 http://www.castellitoscani.com
231392 hawaii 2006-03-30 20:29:51 2 http://www.hawaii.com
231392 kristin cavallari 2006-04-03 15:40:46
231392 5l3n4rncuddlecove.com4946r53v3228 2006-04-03 16:34:28
231392 wedding hairstyles 2006-04-04 19:54:40
231392 country concerts in pennsylvania 2006-04-05 15:40:59 1 http://countryscraps.tripod.com
231392 proms hairs styles 2006-04-05 16:17:32
231392 proms hairs styles 2006-04-05 16:17:36
231392 proms hair styles 2006-04-05 16:17:38
231392 proms hair styles 2006-04-05 16:17:39 3 http://www.promspot.com
231392 proms hair styles 2006-04-05 16:17:39 3 http://www.promspot.com
231392 proms hair styles 2006-04-05 16:17:39 3 http://www.promspot.com
231392 incest sex 2006-04-10 16:10:11 2 http://freeincstories.to.pl
231392 free incest sex 2006-04-10 16:11:59 8 http://hot.anzwers.net
231392 free incest sex 2006-04-10 16:11:59 10 http://domby.3.forumer.com
231392 sex with animals 2006-04-10 16:36:44 7 http://www.midon.com
231392 sex with animals 2006-04-10 16:36:44 10 http://www.westtexasonline.org
231392 love quotes 2006-04-10 17:32:15 3 http://www.best-love-poems.com
231392 richland cinemas 2006-04-12 16:28:03 1 http://www.richlandcinemas.com
231392 heath ledger 2006-04-21 20:59:22
231392 myrtle beach hotels 2006-05-27 22:20:42
231392 rascall flatts 2006-05-27 23:20:00 1 http://www.rascalflatts.com
231392 cambria county fair 2006-05-27 23:24:39 1 http://www.cambria-county-fair.com

They wanted their users examined in aggregate. Look at all the dot graphs and charts. Watch the pretty gradient map of America. Revel in the statistical analysis. Wallow in the private made public.

Previously, the DOJ asked all the major search engines for a swath of their data. Everyone complied (except for Google). Now AOL released the info to the public, with the intent of attracting profit. Not to mention the handy benefit of, "getting others to figure out their metrics for them for free," says Vinny.

AOL: We don't give a fuck.

"Combine these ego searches with porn queries and you have a serious embarrassment. Combine them with "buy ecstasy" and you have evidence of a crime. Combine it with an address, social security number, etc., and you have an identity theft waiting to happen. The possibilities are endless."

As of 10pm Sunday night, AOL took down both the data and pages that referred to it.

However, the data has already been downloaded numerous times and passed around. Peoples are racing to develop easily searchable databases.

They might come across the entry for User 17556639 who searched for: "how to kill your wife," "wife killer," "how to kill a wife" and "poop."

Scatological murderer or niche-interest crime screenwriter? The possibilities are endless with the power of conjecture.

The record starts out blandly enough in March. First he's concerned about how long it takes broken legs to heal. Then he investigates human mold. Perhaps staying at home after an accident? Then he peeks into a little dog sex, but the leash isn't very long, the most prurient site he reaches being SFweekly.com, a regular ol' newspaper.

Later that day he looks up flowers. flowers aster. butterfly orchid. The next day, more flowers, followed by a little forced rape porn, testicle festivals and slow-dancing steps. Must be planning a big night.

Fast-forward to May...

Queries include: beauty and the beast disney porn, holocaust rape, japanese child slave, molestation and rape porn, virtual children, 3d molestation and rape porn, topped off with a little, "oh i like that baby. i put on my robe and wizards hat."

But since he was using AOL he never got to see anything that might have potentially tainted his fragile, mold-ridden mind.

Download User 927's file

Some people consider it a privacy invasion, even though the user id's are anonymized. 13SpiceyKandygrrl becomes User 10004.

You can download the full data set at one of the many working mirrors here. (A little bird tells us that a more user-friendly way to look the might be showing up soon...)

The point of the release seems to be to earn cred with data-mining orgs or any other research endeavor, or simply to put up the OPEN sign on the user info shop.

We're going to use it for our science fair project this year. Watch out, electric potato!

They then ask:

What if that money could be spent elsewhere? How many schools could be built with 12.4 billion dollars? How many women's shelters could be erected? What sorts of advancements could be made in lung cancer research with those funds?

You can make this sort of argument with just about anything, but guess what? It's not the tobacco industry's job to build schools. It's the government's job. So perhaps a more apt question would be "How much of the settlements the tobacco industry has made with state and federal governments has actually gone to building schools?" That's mostly rhetorical; finding out the answer to that question would take more time than I have seconds before I gallivant off to hop on a plane, but according to this page, detailing what California planned on doing with its settlement: "Proceeds of the settlement funds will not increase the state's school spending guarantee, which depends on tax revenues."

The same goes for women's shelters — building them is not the tobacco industry's job. As for lung cancer research, yeah, that would be nice. Except companies with vested corporate and political interests in the results of a scientific study should absolutely not be funding what should be objective, independent research. You only need to look at the pharmaceutical industry to see that trials sponsored by a pharmaceutical company skew wildly in favor of that company's product.

Tobacco is a legal product. It has a legal right to advertise and spend as much damn money on advertising as they want. Some people may not like that; hell, I may not like it. But that's what capitalism is all about. If you think tobacco should be illegal, just state your reasons, point to your research, write your congressman. But can we please stop manipulating the subject for utterly stupid talking points?

The true cost of tobacco advertising [Cancer Blog]