A letter to Salon.com from reader Melissa McEwan responding to Farhad Manjoo's article on the Nick Berg beheading video:

Coincidentally, just before I read Farhad Manjoo's latest article, 'Horror Show,' my husband was pointing out to me the top searches list on MSN.com. For months on end, it has been the usual drivel; the week after the Super Bowl, the top five searches were something like Janet Jackson Super Bowl; Janet Jackson halftime show; Janet Jackson Super Bowl halftime, Janet Jackson breast; and Janet Jackson Super Bowl breast.' And for months on end, we've been bemoaning the complacency of the American public; why aren't they searching for Fallujah, Taguba, something — anything — that resembles an interest in something other than celebrity scandal?

Today the top searches include Iraqi Prisoner Photos and Abu Ghraib. He commented that it seems like the tide is finally turning; people are finally interested. Perhaps, I said. Hopefully, I said. But the only thing that's changed, the only thing we can be sure of, is that there are finally pictures. Does the average searcher on MSN make a distinction between searching for pictures of Janet Jackson's breast and searching for pictures of Iraqis being tortured? Is it just more of a titillating sameness, or are people really starting to pay attention, now that they have something almost unavoidable to pay attention to? I hope it's the latter.

It is ironic, then, that the AI-generated Sponsored Links listing at the bottom of the Salon page featured this:

In another of the recent juxtapositions of sport and war, Iraq qualified for the Olympics in soccer after only being reinstated by the International Olympic Committee three months ago.

STAGES	ENVIRONMENT
	PERMEABLE BOUNDARIES WEAK RULES OF EXCLUSION No spatial limits; uneven terrain; spatial interaction between "players" and "spectators"; diversified land use.
	ENCLOSURE Limits of pitch defined; players segregated from spectators.
	PARTITIONING Embankments, terraces, grandstands; payment for entry; segregation of spectators by social class; start of segregation within crowd; specialized land use.
	SURVEILLANCE Enclosed ground; synthetic pitch and concrete bowl; TV replay screen; total segregation within crowd; panopticism; diversified land use. RULES OF EXCLUSION STRONG IMPERMEABLE BOUNDARIES

A four-stage model of the evolution of the modern stadium. Lines refer to possible freedoms of movement for players and spectators (from Bale, 1993).