Wisdom of Amazon crowds?

I often find myself relying on the wisdom of crowds to guide my purchasing decision. How so? I go check out the customer reviews at Amazon. This has been a very a very good barometer for my purchase.

Analyzing my habit a little further, I realized that I don't just pick out the majority opinion. BTW, is there a way to get a summary of the customer reviews for an item? Such as,

Acme's New Super duper toaster ratings:
95% -- 4+ stars
2% -- 3 stars
2% -- other

probably could using Amazon web services. Anyway, what I seek out is the not-so-silent minority. I want to see why, while the page is filled with 5-star or 4-star reviews, there are a discordant few. I do read (some of) the majority opinions. However, you tend to get the drift after the first few. Have you noticed that the majority opinion cites similar reasons? However, the minority seem to have more variety -- or maybe its just a matter of numbers.

It is the gripes I pay close attention to: is the review just a sore rant or do the complaints seem to have merit. Are these reasons something that I feel is important to me -- or do I not care that the toaster doesn't have a mirror-like sheen?

Such an analysis has held me in good stead over the past few years of major and minor purchases. In retrospect, this seems to weight the few heavier than the many -- contrary to Surowiecki's contention.

President Edwards? A mathematical possibility

Stephen Marmon's article paints the scenario in which we could have John Edwards in the Oval office come Jan 2005. Interesting, if not anything.

Hey NASA! There's got to be a better way

NASA is going to use Hollywood stunt helicopter pilots to snag a space capsule from mid-air. Now if I had suggested some such escapade I would have been laughed off the lot. How about a splashdown in the ocean? The Russians have been doing hard earth landings -- with astronauts, nyet cosmonauts on board -- since the sixties....

Oh! And if I am looking for some mid-air snagging, I don't know about going with a company called Vertigo!

All jokes aside....good luck NASA. I hope you pull it off.

The aliens are coming....The aliens are coming!

For the last year or so, the SETI project has been following some unusual radio signals from a sector of space detected by the Arecibo observatory. Lately, while most of those signals have disappeared, one of them has become more pronounced.

Now, apparently there is a universal "Ahoy! mate" signal. Scientists poring over the SETI logs have matched the frequency of the signals to the aforementioned greeting. They feel that it is highly unusual for a natural phenomenon to repeatedly send such a signal.

Read more about SHGbo2+14a (now isn't that a cute name) at the Guardian.