Oh my gosh you guys, did you hear that Michael Jackson died!? It was like a totally big deal – can you believe that 30% of tweets when he died were about him!? Unbelievable.  People all over the internet were really interested. He died so hard that he almost broke the internet.  (You guys already [...]

I have previously determined that the semicolon is the gayest punctuation mark, ending decades of bloodshed and multigenerational feuds, but which letter of the alphabet is the gayest?  It’s a very important question.  If we want the New York state assembly to pass a gay marriage bill, or if we ever hope to overturn Prop [...]

What’s up, fellow grammar nerds! I read this article in the Guardian about exclamation points via Sullivan over the weekend.  The best bit in the piece:
Carol Waseleski’s unexpectedly diverting paper, Gender and the Use of Exclamation Points in Computer-Mediated Communication, found that women used more exclamation marks than men. But why was this?…[Waseleski] concluded that [...]

Short answer: Not actually that gay.
Long answer: Read on.
Facebook only allows you to view the past 7 days, so here’s the Google Trends graph for “swine flu” as a search term to keep in mind while looking at the data; the red line is where data collection begins:

How I did this gaynalysis
Using facebook’s friend filter, [...]

Confession.  I have a new hobby.  I’m a troll. 
I’m friends with the National Organization of Marriage (the makers of this ad and general anti-gay rabble rousers) on Facebook,  and every time they post something, which is usually something like “call your state senator’s unpaid intern and demand they provide umbrellas to all constituents for [...]

Bea Arthur was all up in my newsfeed this weekend, mostly in response to her now being dead.
Here’s a statistical analysis of this activity.  Be forewarned: this is real science. Prepare yourself accordingly.
Figure 1. Number of newsfeed items referencing Bea Arthur’s death, 48 hrs following death

Twelve gay people have mentioned Bea Arthur’s death on Facebook, [...]

In honor of Day of Silence on Friday (today if you’re Tufts and ur doin it wrong), in which the gays give it a rest already and shut up for just one hot second, here’s a totally scientific study I did about why it seems like all of your friends are gay when you go on Facebook and check out your newsfeed. Turns out, the gays really like to use Facebook.