Google Trends: Gay vs Straight

www.google.com/trends?q=gay%2C+straight



Someone at work (who shall not be named so as not to be tainted with these subject matter) told me about Google Trends today as a far more addictive toy to play with than Google Sets. I tried it out and he's darn right.

Here as per my own curiosity, I noted how while there are approximately twice as much "straight" news stories than "gay" news stories, there are more than 10 times as many "gay" searches than "straight" searches.

If Kinsey is right about that 10% of the (American) population is gay, then we see that the other 90% is at least very curious.





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Copyright 2008 See-ming Lee / SML Gay Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Pattern Recognition = Key to Fight (HIV + Spam)

Source: Business Week: 2007-10-01: print edition. pp.68, 70

David Heckerman (Google), a physician as well as a PhD in computer science at Microsoft Research, was doing research on better spam-blocking when he noted that those same technology can be applied to blocking HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS.

From Heckerman's perspective, HIV is like a cagey spammer. After attacking a cell, it injects its own genetic material and proceeds (much like a spam jockey who has commandeered as an unprotected computer) to manufacture thousands of copies of the virus.

The trouble? Complexity and mutations. HIV-infected cells often wear mutated nameplates that immune systems haven't learned to read. In this sense, vaccines have been like faulty spam filters, the ones that block e-mails promoting "Viagra" while letter ads for "V1agra" scoot through.

But Heckerman is upbeat. He argues that by revving up the computing power and blending thousands of new variable, researchers are making progress. One key, he says, is to map the patterns of mutation and incorporate them into medicine. These mutations, he says, appear to vary according to a person's immune system. If researchers can find the patterns, they'll be closer to making effective vaccines. Yet if they conclude that the mutations are utterly random, then "we're in big trouble," says Heckerman.

Read the full article here:

Business Week: 2007-10-01: Info Tech: Using Spam Blockers To Target HIV, Too: A Microsoft researcher and his team make a surprising new assault on the AIDS epidemic.


Copyright Notice
Copyright 2007 See-ming Lee / SML Gay Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.