Ugh....

Option 1
1) Survey available data sources
2) Determine their reliability
3) Understand other factors that influence the data
4) Develop hypothesis
5) If possible, test (in the real world, this isn't always practical)
6) Make decision and act on basis of data
7) Measure success
8) Course correct as necessary

Option 2
1) Form conclusion
2) Cherry-pick data that supports conclusion
3) Proclaim truth loudly and often
4) Get not-too-bright supporters to echo conclusion
5) Do what you intended to do from the start
6) Declare victory
7) Declare victory again, invoking echo chamber
8) Move on and let someone else clean up the mess

Guess which one Drudge seems to prefer.

Hey, they've pulled up the drawbridge and lowered the portcullis! We can have a siege! Who brought the grill and the steaks?

(They have to open their minds first.)

I've read Kos's book. It's interesting, occasionally grating on my nerves like fingernails on blackboard, and very much worth reading.

Can't we use the portcullis for that?

Can't we use the portcullis for that?

For what? the grill or the stakes?

Oy. I missed the latter punning opportunity; I was thinking of using it as a grill. Well done.

This link should take you to the top sellers in books. To get there from a book's page, look under Product Details, subhead Amazon.com Sales Rank.

Maybe it's the Non-Euclidean Bookscan they are after. If Republicans are disguised manifestations of pan-dimensional space authors, I suppose it could stay science fiction.

Also, do Republican authors have talking horses or robot servants? That would clear things up.

Not the Nielsen-Hayden Planetarium?

The economics of the publishing industry lie outside of my experience set.

There's something awesomely fin-de-siecle about that sentence. Now that liberals and progressives have a large and growing wind at their backs, suddenly political discourse is back to blathering talking heads that no smart person would bother to take seriously. Huh, a couple years ago it couldn't be more important, what with our civilzation under siege from islamofascism and stalwart anti-idiotarians bravely manning the rhetorical barricades. I guess modern conservatarianism has definitively entered its late decadent era now.

I'm doubly surprised that Simon is a part of this. I'd have thought that if anyone understood the numerics of low-selling books, it would have been him.

Wait, wait, I thought us gol-durn libruls were all ivory-tower intellectual wankers? Jeepers, Mr. Drudge, don't confuse my already fuzzy thinking with your clashing insinuations. :(

Making that pun was one way of keeping my brain from collapsing.

Adam Rice: Fair enough.

Yikes. (looks at calendar) Ah! End of term grading?

If so, I am doubly glad I never went into teaching (the first reason is my dreadful lack of patience).

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.

I may post a semester's worth, once the semester is over, if provoked. (Well, I'll post 'em on my own blog first.)

CTG was published by Chelsea Green, which is a tiny little publishing company in Vermont. Chelsea Green specializes in "sustainable living"-type books. They're good folks--and they publish some utterly gorgeous books--but they don't exactly have the marketing power of a major publisher.

It appears that Markos is trying to support his political allies, even if it forces him to do more of the marketing. With the traffic on DailyKos, he might just get away with it.

An Army of Davids: 0
Crashing the Gate: 6

I'm at work as I write this (don't tell), and am going to go put together a Crashing the Gate display right now...

Ok, done. Sorry Drudge.

On Amazon, the guestimates I found suggested that the relationship of sales rank to daily sales can be anchored at:
#100 = 10 books per day
#30 = 100 books per day
and that if you ever find out the corresponding values for the top 10, Jeff will personally drop by your house and offer you books in exchange for your silence until you give in. No one has said no. (Especially as the alternative is to be found smothered under thousands of remaindered paperbacks of dubious value. Jeff knows exactly what books you'd hate to be found with...)

Jack

An Army of Davids: 0
Crashing the Gate: 21

This is a substantial difference in my original numbers, so I thought it important to correct it.

I think that is actually the first six counts in the indictment of Ken Lay.

We saw another example of this in Saturday's Mallard Fillmore strip (yeah, I know, the Fckd Duck demonstrates his contempt for fact-based argument, film at 11), where his response to somebody suggesting he was basically talking out his tailfeathers was "Gee, it must be nice to live in 1958." (It's better than living in 2003, when the "patriotic T-shirt" flap to which he was devoting four strips actually fckng happened. Why did it take the Freepers so long to get up in arms about it?)