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Alexis Madrigal

Alexis Madrigal - Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor at The Atlantic. He's the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.
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The New York Observer calls him, "for all intents and purposes, the perfect modern reporter." Madrigal co-founded Longshot magazine, a high-speed media experiment that garnered attention from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC. While at Wired.com, he built Wired Science into one of the most popular blogs in the world. The site was nominated for best magazine blog by the MPA and best science Web site in the 2009 Webby Awards. He also co-founded Haiti ReWired, a groundbreaking community dedicated to the discussion of technology, infrastructure, and the future of Haiti.

He's spoken at Stanford, CalTech, Berkeley, SXSW, E3, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and his writing was anthologized in Best Technology Writing 2010 (Yale University Press).

Madrigal is a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley's Office for the History of Science and Technology. Born in Mexico City, he grew up in the exurbs north of Portland, Oregon, and now lives in Oakland.
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We're Approaching That (Brief) Time of Year When 'Christmas' Searches Eclipse 'Porn'

By Alexis Madrigal

Dec 20 2011, 11:12 AM ET Comment

searchvolume.jpg
In delving deep into the strange world of Christmas sites, I discovered this fine factoid: at the end of each of the last seven years, searches for 'Christmas' briefly peak higher than searches for the word 'porn.' We're approaching that time of year, and fascinatingly, based on the trends here, I'd have to say that Christmas ain't gonna make it in 2011. Porn will reign all the live long year.

Given this set of circumstances, if I worked for Fox News, I'd start a Christmas-Porn Watch. Porn defeats Christmas; Christmas defeats porn. You just can't lose.

Image: Google search volume from Google Trends.


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