weeks - 1:46 pm on Jun 26, 2009 (gmt 0)

I once had access to AP's complete stats on the news flowing to some 399 newspaper web sites. I learned a lot about human nature. The second biggest lesson was that people respond to pretty women, even outside of context. (Yeah, I know--duh!--but it was a lesson that hit hard expressed coldly on a spreadsheet.)

But the biggest lesson was that it is difficult to overstate the response to sudden, unexpected death of a known personality.

We would see huge spikes on people who you only knew their name. If this follows form, the numbers will spike the return to normal quickly. Of course, we have all of this wonderfully entertaining video to show, so this it's likely NOT to follow form.

This is not about Michael Jackson some much is that it is about death. (BTW: Death out-performs pretty women by far. And there really isn't any one thing after death and pretty women that ranks.)