Why is the US senator Tom Harkin in my Google search for how fry steak?

Having steak for dinner, by the way. Must be the first time like… ever?

Horrified about the sudden burst of activity here? Blame ScribeFire.

BBC reports that scientists have managed to selectively erase memory from mice, without hurting the little fellows. According to the article, “The scientists say that in the long-term it should be possible to develop a pill that wipes out traumatic and fearful memories in humans.”

That’s pretty neat. I’d love a pill that would erase selective memories. The first thing I’d do would be to erase all memories of watching Akira Kurosawa’s films, then go back and watch them all again. There’s nothing like seeing them for the first time.

And yeah, I’m still testing the ScribeFire extension.

The title may make no sense, but BBC News reports that eating your meals really fast may be enough to double your chances of obesity. What the report doesn’t say, though, is whether this is simply because those who eat fast also tend to eat more.

I’m actually really only posting this because I thought I’d try the ScribeFire blogging extension for Firefox.

Many of those who follow British football are of the opinion that the Premier League system, introduced in the 1992-1993 season, is killing football in England, and that smaller teams have more difficulty making it these days. The eternal sceptic that I am, I decided to look at the numbers.

England vs. other countries

Obviously, it would be great if they could come up with a working plan to at least halve the distance between the Big Four and other Premier League teams. But is the fact that this gap exists any different from what is going on in other countries?

Since 1992, there have been five different Premiership champions. During that time, Spain, Italy and Germany have also had five different champions. France has had seven, but Lyon has won the title for the last seven years in a row. There have been four different champions in Portugal (with Porto having taken 11 titles in the past 16 years), three different champions in Holland (PSV having won 9), and three in Greece (with Olympiacos having won 11 times in the past 16 years). In Scotland, meanwhile, either Celtic or Rangers have taken the title for the past 23 years!

Clearly, the Premier League isn’t in this respect different from other major footballing countries in Europe.

Then and now: Champions

If you turn your attention to looking at the English champions in the 16 seasons before the Premiership, i.e. between 1976/77 and 1991/92, the total number of different champions is six. Compared to Premier League’s five, this is again not a big difference.

Having said that, though, at least in the mid-90s there was talk that someone from outside of the Big Four could take the title — today, any such notion seems like a pipe dream.

Then and now: Small teams

Rather than looking at big teams, I have been told that what Premier League really is doing is it’s destroying any hope for smaller teams to succeed. Is this true?

To get some idea, I looked at the way teams are promoted to and relegated from England’s top division now and in the past.

If I count right, so far in the Premier League’s history 46 newly promoted teams have played in the League during the 16 years of its existence. Of these, 23 — or a staggering 50% — were relegated at the end of the season.

In the old league, during the 16 seasons between 1976/77 and 1991/92, altogether 48 newly promoted teams fought for their place in the top division. Of these, only 9 (19%) were relegated at the end of the year!

This does, indeed, look quite sad. And I think that this is where the problem lies — more so than the gap between the “really big” and the “big”, the gap between the “big” and the “not so big” has widened. These days, it is really difficult to break it into the top division — you have only a 50-50 chance of staying up for another season once promoted.

Of course, all this is something of a moot point in the case of my favourite team, Doncaster Rovers, who currently reside inside the Championship relegation zone. Sigh.

With nothing better to do while eating my afternoon salad, I thought I’d do a few Google searches to see what the quantitative media coverage of the US elections looks like.

Rather than trying to explain the results, I leave the interpreting to you. I am not going to vote in these elections (not that I’m even allowed to), and neither candidate really excites me all that much. (But to be entirely honest, if I was held at gunpoint and told to vote, I’d probably pick Obama.)

So, here’s the raw, uncooked data. These were valid as of 19 October, 2008. For me, that is. The Google search accuracy may be debatable.

CNN

On the CNN website, Obama has somewhat more mentions than McCain.

Fox News

Just as with CNN, Obama leads in mentions with Fox News. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly so?

ABC News

ABC News seems to have given quite equal coverage to both candidates. (I wasn’t sure whether to search for abcnews.com or abcnews.go.com, but since the latter gave hardly any results I went with the former option.)

MSNBC News

MSNBC’s coverage slightly favours Obama — in numbers, that is.

The New York Times

I would call the this quite even, although also something that illustrates the main problem of my method, which is search engine indexing. Obviously, the New York Times didn’t publish 1.5 million McCain related articles in the past year! (While the numbers themselves are not accurate, I think that the McCain-Obama comparison itself can still be interesting.)

BBC News

With BBC News, Obama has on average something like one third more mentions than McCain. Interestingly, the difference is notably larger with “in title” searches.

Sky News

Once again, Obama gets more mentions. And not by a small margin, either.

Interestingly enough, Sky News seems more fascinated with Palin than McCain: I get 225 results for her (last month, “all in title”).

Euronews

Quite a clear difference here, with Obama apparently quite clearly favoured (in quantitative terms) by the leading pan-European news channel.