A short, irrelevant interlude while the world burns

I'd like to interrupt TPV's ongoing coverage of the Axis of Evil with a brief note on the occasional stupidity of the NY Times. Today, the Times ran an unnecessarily long piece on whether people with Tivo's watch commercials. Here's the summary:

It turns out that a lot of people with digital video recorders are not fast-forwarding and time-shifting as much as advertisers feared. According to new data released today by the Nielsen Company, people who own digital video recorders, or DVRs, still watch, on average, two-thirds of the ads.

The critical piece of information that the Times fails to mention is that Neilsen Company is paid by television advertisers for the data it collects on their viewing habits. Thus, we might expect the Neilsen Company to be proverbially "shitting bricks" at the prospect of migration of viewers from live television viewing to Tivo. Trusting Neilsen as a source on this subject is somewhat akin to relying on the Marlboro-Camel Institute of Health for statistics on smoking.

The other reason I'm linking to the piece? Why, this pointless photo of Emma and Jeff Staples and their dog, Sable, that inexplicably accompanies the article:



Looks like a fun couple, don't you think? Even the dog is bored.