Or more precisely, that Benford’s Law is followed by the distribution of the number of Twitter followers that each of my Twitter followers has in turn.

“Benford’s Law of Anomalous Numbers states that for many datasets, the proportion of data points with leading digit n will be approximated by log₁₀(n+1) – log₁₀(n),” says Carmody with a straight face.

So, if you look at the chart, you’ll see that there’s more followers with a follower count starting with a “1″ (so 1, 11-19, 100-199, 1000-1999 etc) than with a “2″ (2, 20-29, 200-299, 2000-2999 etc) than with a “3″ (3, 30-39, 300-399, 3000-3999 etc) and so on.

He does note in another chart that there seems to be a spike of followers with just one follower each. I’m wondering whether that’s about spammers.

• Viral Wedding Video’s 10M Views Drive Chris Brown Buzz and Sales | Nielsen Wire: That “viral” (by which they just mean “popular”) video of a wedding party dancing into the church [was it a church?] reminded everyone of Chris Brown’s tedious autotune’d song again, with the result that it ended up in iTunes’ Top 10. Yet another example of how something being given away increases its sales.
• Who needs newspapers when you have Twitter? | Salon News: A massive troll by Wired editor Chris Anderson, seeking attention for his new book Free, which is not free. He starts by saying he doesn’t use the words “media” or “news” or “journalism”, but doesn’t offer any alternatives. Wanker.
• Techfest 2009 | NICTA: On 12 August 2009, NICTA showcases some of the new ICT research and development they’ree working on at this most-of-the-day event in Sydney. Let me know if you’d like to join me.
• Women In Film | YouTube: A morph-montage of some of the most famous female faces in film. Note how the eyes are so similar.
• Men In Film | YouTube: A morph-montage of some of film’s most famous male faces. It’s a challenge to spot all of them. Note how similar most of the noses are.
• Ashes 09: Hughes’ Twitter drop – Gen Y meets the Baggy Green | Crikey: Twitter, Criket Australia style: “We get the Twitter from Phillip and I feed them into our IT guy.” Somehow I don’t think they get this “personal” and “spontaneous” stuff.
• 栏目（目录): China’s PLA Daily offers free downloads of (military) music, plus some cheesy animated GIFs.
• Real Black Hats Hack Security Experts on Eve of Conference | Wired.com: Infosec “expert” Dan Kaminsky has been pwn3d, and his lame choice for passwords exposed.
• Tesla_Downunder: Some amazing photos of electrical effects from an Australian who’s been building large Tesla coils.
• AdViews: A digital archive of thousands of vintage TV commercials from the 1950s to 1980s, created or collected by ad agency Benton & Bowles or its successor, D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B).
• Profile: Gary McKinnon | guardian.co.uk: 43yo Gary McKinnon, diagnosed last August with Asperger’s syndrome, admits to hacking US military computers to fuel his UFO obsession.
• Template Twitter strategy for Government Departments | UK Cabinet Office: The UK has developed a standard 20-page template which departments can use for their own Twitter strategy. I can’t help think that it’ll kill spontaneity before it starts. “All other tweets will be cleared by staff at Information Officer grade and above in the digital media team, consulting relevant colleagues in comms and private offices as necessary.” Gawd.
• The Mind Of A US Army Sniper | newmatilda.com: A fine article on what it means for a soldier, particularly a sniper, to kill a person. And then do it again. Not an easy read, but an important read.
• Reconceptualising “time” and “space” in the era of electronic media and communications | Australian Policy Online: “This paper examines to what extent electronic media and communications have contributed to currently changing concepts of time and space and how crucial their role is in experiencing temporality, spatiality and mobility.”
• Cutthroat Capitalism: An Economic Analysis of the Somali Pirate Business Model | Wired: “Like any business, Somali piracy can be explained in purely economic terms. It flourishes by exploiting the incentives that drive international maritime trade. The other parties involved — shippers, insurers, private security contractors, and numerous national navies — stand to gain more (or at least lose less) by tolerating it than by putting up a serious fight. As for the pirates, their escalating demands are a method of price discovery, a way of gauging how much the market will bear.”
• Mark Thomas Info: I first encountered Mark Thomas by reading his book As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandala: underground adventures in the arms & torture trade. The stand-up comedian and activist for human rights is worth paying attention to.
• The Arms Trade | A Stubborn Mule’s Perspective: Sean Carmody turns his data analysis skills to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Arms Transfer Database, which I mentioned the other day. This initial foray generates some nice maps.
• The Coming Upstream Revolution. And We Need It | Gigaom: Just as I thought, increasingly two-way communication on the web leads to increased demand for fast uplinks as well as downlinks.
• Metadata for news | BuzzMachine: Jeff Jarvis’ write-up of Associated Press and the Media Standards Trust proposal for a new standard for metadata for news, plus his own thoughts.
• SIPRI Arms Transfers Database | Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: A searchable database of all international transfers in seven categories of major conventional weapons from 1950 to the most recent full calendar year.

• Medals per mil. Population by Country | Swivel: Sean Carmody continues his data mining on the Beijing Olympics that discover that the Bahamas is the highest medal winner per capita, followed by Jamaica, Slovenia, Australia and New Zealand.
• Ohio Voting Machines Contained Programming Error That Dropped Votes | washingtonpost.com: “A voting system used in 34 [US] states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.” Yet another argument against computer-based voting.

• Boston Dynamics’ BigDog | YouTube: An amazing video showing of the capabilities of a 4-legged robot. Impressed.
• Liu Xiang Sent to Olympic Death by China’s £1 Billion Image-Building Exercise | China Digital Times: An example of how China’s Internet users avoid the censorship of the Great Firewall of China: using the words “Surrender Liu” (刘降 vs 翔) to avoid censorship of any negative comments about athlete Liu Xiang’s withdrawal from the Olympics. The words are pronounced the same, but different in writing.
• Stingray TV intro (1964) | YouTube: “Standby for action! We’re about to launch Stingray!” Another opening theme from another Gerry Anderson favourite.
• Putting A/B Testing in Its Place | Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox: While the A/B testing of website design changes can be important, this article from 2005 points out its limitations as well as its strengths.
• The Avengers intro 1960s | YouTube: I’m on a bit of a 1960s bender at the moment. Here’s another superb opening sequence for a fine TV program starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg.
• Olympic Medal Count by Population and GDP | A Stubborn Mule’s Perspective: Sean Carmody’s done another fine bit of data mining, this time seeing how Olympic nations rate when compared in the basis of their population of GDP.
• Marine Boy (1968) | YouTube: Opening theme for one of my favourite childhood TV programs, Marine Boy.
• Sticky Tuk Tuk | Out To Space: My partner Trinn ('Pong) Suwannapha’s video Sticky Tuk Tuk has been shortlisted for this year’s Marrickville Contemporary Art Prize.