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Blowing away the hype

Oh my goodness, did you hear the news?

New Zealand is a nation of crazed bomb-makers, hell bent on scouring the Net for newer and better recipes.

What's more, the core offenders seem to be congregating in two key areas: Auckland and New Plymouth.

These earth-shattering revelations were all over the papers yesterday after the horrific truth was revealed by a former Scotland yard terrorism expert at a security conference in Sydney.

Yes, according to Google's own report, we do lead the rest of the world by a healthy margin when the total searches for the search-term "make bombs" is tallied up.

But hang on, is this perhaps just a stupid beat-up?

I wonder what kind of bombs Kiwis are keen to make?

Well we certainly seem interested in the query "pipe bomb" but the Americans and Aussies seem to be more focused on the "atomic bomb"..

Gasp! Does this mean that there are legions of yanks and ockers trying to build nukes in their basements?

It also seems that Kiwis are nowhere to be seen when it comes to the kind of bombs that terrorists might actually want to use, such as a "dirty bomb"

And what about this search? Sure, we're only second in this list and there's no sign of New Plymouth.

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Or could it be that Google's trends analysis is simply a rather blunt and inaccurate tool when it comes to ascertaining the search preferences of a country or region?

To put that to the test, I'd like you to guess which country does the most searching for the following -- *before* you click the link and find out what Google says:

• "global warming"
• "pit bull"
• "television"
• "paris hilton"

How many did *you* get right?

I think that proves there may be some rather strange things going on deep in the bowels of Google's trends engine.

The other factor here is that Kiwis really are inquisitive and hard-core Net users. For proof of that, just check out these queries where, just like "make bombs", we come out number one.

• mars lander
• whaling
• protesters
• spam

So yes, it's another media beatup, fed by some idiot "security" experts who clearly have little to do with their time but to google their fingers off every day.

Hooray for Kiwi inquisitiveness! Hooray for the fact that we're obviously not letting the lack of cheap, fast broadband slow us down too much when it comes to using the Net.

Boo, hiss to those segments of the media who thought (yet again) that it would be a great idea to publish yet another story without doing any real research on the facts involved.

What do you think this whole stupid situation says about Kiwis, the media and so-called security experts?

When will the decline of journalism standards within the mainstream media stop?

Have your say on this...

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