In April, Ohio State University rode the publicity wave provided by news outlets everywhere reporting the school’s finding that Facebook users had lower grades than non-Facebook users. A new study contradicts the first and the authors declare the opposite correlation while ripping on the first author’s methods.

An academic catfight ensued, and those are guaranteed as interesting as a solid round of knitting.

Un-academically,  here’s the thesis and conclusion together:

Facebook can’t give you bad grades. It can’t give you good grades, either. Video games, shopping malls, bars and clubs, keggers, iPods, the Internet, YouTube, Hulu, television telephones, texting, church, sports, sex, boyfriends, girlfriends, and porn can’t give you bad grades either, just like cookies can’t make you fat but eating cookies can, just like books can’t make you smart but reading them can.

Professors and teachers can give you bad grades but more often people give themselves bad grades because they spent too much time on Facebook/MySpace/YouTube/WOW, at the shopping mall/parties/boyfriend’s place, on and on and on.

People choose their behaviors, their addictions, their obsessions, not the other way around, and students choose whether to study or screw around on Facebook. End of story, no need for research. Something else we don’t really need a study to know: Social students don’t do as well in school as non-social students.

Personally, I did well in school despite blowing off studies to go to movies or whatever, but my engineering major roommate who hardly left the dorm room except to go to class, did even better. Go figure, huh?

Mega-thanks to BusinessPundit for naming Twellow one of 10 essential Twitter tools for business. We’re mighty proud of our creation and encourage our readers to give Twellow a go.

You can find Twitter users in any city, doing any profession, talking about just about any topic. You can search profiles or categories, or even see who’s tweeting in your “twellowhood.”

A kind of yellow pages for Twtter, we agree Twellow is an indispensable tool for business-minded people looking to expand their networks.

Well, if you can’t bomb terrorists directly, Google-bomb them I guess. Reportedly, the British government will be training sympathetic Islamic groups to use SEO in order to drown out extremist voices popping up in the search results.

In a different, saner world, we used to call that “government propaganda,” even if it seems used for a good end in this case. But imagine government officials in the future returning googlebomb volley to citizen googlebombers. You think the SERPs a are warzone now, just wait!

Matt McGee at Search Engine land is happy to note how Fox News’ describes SEO as “arcane strategy.” Yeah, Fox thinks it’s some kind of computer geek voodoo. No wonder Rupert Murdoch is gunning for Google lately. He thinks search is one of the dark arts!

Even the music industry is aware of its unsustainable business model; the RIAA & co. is just trying to squeeze money out of the old system as long as possible. Luckily, indie artists are experimenting all the time, trying out new deals that don’t alienate and criminalize their biggest fans.

Josh Freese, a drummer whose been playing for offbeat bands since the 70s—Devo, Offspring, Nine Inch Nails—released his second solo album this week and demonstrated the limitless possibilities for those willing to be creative.

Fans can get a single for free, download the whole album for $7, or get a CD/DVD for $15. Those are the conventional offers, obviously. But from there, the packages get extra special. For $50, fans get autographed discs and tees, and a thank you phone call. Freese is sold out of the $250 package, which includes signed drumsticks and lunch with Freese at the Cheesecake Factory, providing the fan will be in the LA area.

There are $500, 1000, $2,500, $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 and $75,000 packages. The big one wins the signed memorabilia, a 5-song record about their life, one of Freese’s drumsets, a shrooms cruise of Hollywood in a Lamborghini that belongs to a guy from Tool, and Freese will be their personal cabana boy.

Now that’s innovation. No suits needed.

A super interesting blog post by Greg Linden details a Googler keynote address that presents some staggering statistics.

Staggering statistic #1: Google uses 1,000 machines per search query. This is what makes Google fast.

Staggering statistic #2: Google crawls the Web—all of it, what used to take months—in nearly real time.

Staggering statistic #3: Google’s machine translation models use a million lookups and multi terabytes to translate one sentence

Sometimes good ideas are way overdue. PMSBuddy.com allows people to set up online reminders about that time of the month.

Other than the fact they have a way to add it to your facebook profile, that’s all I have to say about it because I’ve learned to keep my big, insensitive mouth shut.

Here’s the pitch: “we will not only keep you informed, but will give you some free advice on what to do about it. With PMSBuddy.com, there is no reason to ever be blindsided by PMS again.”

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll check it out. Cheers.

Who knew when socialism came to America it would be wearing a Brooks Brothers suit?

Before I complain, I guess I have to say a bailout of the Big 3 seems necessary and suddenly fair. After all, the gov’t (Bush, Bernanke, Paulson) was more than willing to throw money, lots of it, even if we have to print it, no questions asked, no oversight required to their buddies in the banking industry–the same buddies whose greed caused the problem to begin with. The executives at the Big 3 placed their companies at the top of a giant Plinko board and let them fall to zero. In a real free market, they’d fail and be bought by some (likely Japanese) company that had some actual foresight regarding things like, I don’t know, how customers like quality, how you shouldn’t need more than a decade to prove you make quality products again, how in an increasingly costly energy environment it might be a good idea to focus on more fuel-efficient autos. Yet these executives act like they were blindsided and not at fault. And just as they go begging for money from Congress, they launch expensive ad campaigns on TV asking people to contact their legislators.

They’ve also taken their cause to the Web: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, asking people to support them.

Truth is we don’t have a lot of choice but to support these idiots. Not supporting them means lots and lots of American workers and communities suffer, which is why it’s so surprising the gov’t has been so reluctant. Seems like when a bailout could benefit the working class, suddenly socialism is just plain evil instead of being a necessary evil like when corrupt bankers take down the entire planet’s economy. I say let the gray-suit, short-sighted executive class fall into their self-generated greed-holes and learn what it’s like to make a living like the rest of us. I say secure those mortgages from the renegotiated bottom up, suspend property taxes, and let that money trickle up for a change. I say if we’re going socialist–are we really?–then go socialist where it counts, where it was meant to help, amongst the proletariat.

But then again, nobody’s put me in charge of anything, have they?

PS. Might want to actually level the playing field in Asia, especially Japan, where we still can’t export American cars.

Just read Mike’s piece on KY Gov. Beshear’s demand that international gambling sites block access to Kentucky users or forfeit their domain names. I’ve liked Beshear mostly, he took down a real crook of a predecessor in the last election and backed casinos amid a firestorm of opposition to raising much needed revenue—objections have been either speciously moralistic (lotto and horse racing are okay but slots are sinful) or based on illogical scare tactics. But this move is not just weird, it’s disturbing.

Granted, online poker sites are illegal in the US; here in the Land of the Free we’re only allowed to gamble via state-approved venues. And granted, these gambling sites are suspect—just read last week one got in trouble for spying on players’ poker hands and rigging the games.

In short, I ain’t risking my money in these joints.

But Beshear is demanding jurisdiction over sites already policed by ICANN and operated in foreign countries? Really? That’s the first thing that doesn’t make any sense at all.

The other thing is his defense of it. Without giving any support or data whatsoever, he says these “illegal sites” deprive KY of “millions of dollars in revenue.” Um, what? The only gambling revenue the state gets is via state lotto taxes and taxes on earnings from horse races. Is the state thinking of imposing a backroom poker tax? How much of the money we weren’t getting anyway are we losing, Beshear?

He also says it undermines the horseracing industry, I’m guessing by betting on horse races outside the horse tracks, which is just more government hypocrisy. Once again, I’m granted the liberty to go to a state-approved place to gamble, so long as the government gets its cut. Let me put that another way: I’m allowed to exercise my freedom to do with my money as I choose, so long as I choose to do it in a certain way and the state benefits from it—otherwise its illegal and immoral.

I hate gambling. Just sayin’.

The worst part was when he brought the kids into it and said online gambling posed “a unique threat…particularly to our youth.” There doesn’t seem to be one shred of data to support that.

This strikes me as serious political posturing. Beshear’s efforts to get casinos approved has been stalled by the moralistic and/or illogical in the General Assembly—if he can appear tough on unregulated gambling maybe they’ll soften up on the regulated kind.

In the end it was pride that kept me from posting about the search, online and off, for Bigfoot last week; pride in my own skepticism won out over the hope to see a myth proved. And sure enough, all that jazz about a couple of Georgia boys stumbling onto a Bigfoot corpse last week turned out to be a great big pile of mythical Bigfoot doodie.

It was really tempting to buy into the hype and perpetuate what in my gut had to be a hoax. From the one photo provided, the creature in the freezer looked like a gorilla suit with link-sausage entrails spread across its abdomen. But how, in 500 years or so of exploration had these great primates gone undetected, alive or dead? No Bigfoot bones near dinosaur ones? No clear pictures of anything? Could it really be that 7 ½ foot tall apemen were this adept at hiding? Are they eating their own to keep themselves hidden?

The truth is no less ugly than the grizzly fantasy. Online last week, Bigfoot was all the rage. Last Friday, looking back on Google Trends, searches for Bigfoot were at fever pitch in anticipation of the big press conference planned for that afternoon in Palo Alto. The result of the press conference? Still no body because of an exclusive agreement with Fox News, which would be revealed on Monday? What a gyp!

All that time searching could have focused on the actual video of what observers are calling the elusive “chupacabra,” or something to the effect of goat vampire, in Texas. It looks more like a dog of some kind, now officially overshadowed by a fake corpse. The Web never did find out what that “Montauk monster” was the week before, and we won’t, since the body’s been stolen.

The biggest burning question was why someone would go to the trouble of a media circus for something bound to be found out as a ruse? Sounds like Matthew Whitton and Ricky Dyer had a scheme to wrangle some money out of Bigfoot hunter Tom Biscardi, and perhaps underestimated both the extent of the circus and the thoroughness of those involved. DNA sampling linked the initial hairs provided to an opossum, so maybe they didn’t think anybody’d actually check. The “body” was so encased in ice, according to independent investigator Steve Kulls, posting at Biscardi’s SearchingForBigfoot.com, that it took a few days to discover the rubber foot.

Motive? Well, Whitton, a police officer on leave, and Dyer did just open up a Bigfoot hunting club in the part of Northern Georgia where they claimed they’d found a whole colony. You, true believer, could pay them for guided hunting tours, and they’d gladly take your money and lead you out into the middle of nowhere on a glorified snipe hunt; it’s an old country boy trick. My bet is they tried to drum up some publicity for it and didn’t expect the eager thoroughness of Bigfoot enthusiasts.

You’ll notice the latest fraud revelations haven’t been mentioned on their website yet. Right after Biscardi asked for his money back, the two disappeared—maybe to where the real Bigfoot lives, which probably isn’t in Georgia.

I don’t know. Maybe Mexico?

Your first reaction to the idea some North Carolina parents agreed to let their 16 year-old drop out of school to pursue a career in Guitar Hero is likely similar to mine: um, what? I can imagine asking my parents a similar question in 1992. “Mom, Dad, school’s a drag and I think my time could be better spent playing Sonic the Hedgehog.”

That would have been extra stupid in 1992, when competitive video gaming was featured in an obscure movie only kids of video store owners like me actually ever saw. My dad would have laughed me out of the room while telling me to get on the August-heated roof and clean the gutters before I started my homework. Skateboarding would have been a more sensible suggestion among the “bad reasons to drop out of school” choices.

But in 2008, in the advent of Major League Gaming, your first question probably she be something like this instead: How much money’s in it?

For Blake Peebles, it could be a lot, up to $80,000 per year if he’s good enough—if he’s the best, but his parents, as quoted in this article, haven’t mentioned anything about money. Instead, they only say Blake hated school and wouldn’t shut up about it. I wasn’t aware it was that easy. Maybe if I’d ridden my parents enough, I could have talked them into professional TV-watching.

My grandfather was yanked out of school in the third grade to help “man” the potato fields. Lack of schooling didn’t hurt him much. He retired in his fifties—in the 1970’s. Peebles is home schooled, though, not out of learning altogether, and sometimes those home school kids can really kick academic butt when they want to. Sounds like he won’t want to, though, and his parents are fine with that, it sure seems, noticing how happy he is that he doesn’t have to go to school and can stay up all night playing video games.

Yeah, well, who wouldn’t be?

Air guitar contest at my house. Winner gets…a bag of Doritos.