Santorum Victories Set New Time for GP Race

Republican long shot Rick Santorum poked holes in Mitt Romney's aura of inevitability Tuesday night with a trio of upset victories that shifted the dynamic of the 2012 presidential contest.

The former Pennsylvania senator's wins in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and Missouri primary were setbacks for Romney, the national front-runner, who had been expected to cruise easily through a series of relatively minor February voter tests. He must now wait three weeks to regroup, when Arizona and Michigan hold what suddenly are shaping up as unexpectedly important primaries.

In remarks to delirious supporters in St. Charles, Mo., Santorum took a swipe at Romney's big advantage in money and the negative ads he's used to defeat his opponents in previous states. He also lashed out at President Obama, describing him as someone "who thinks he knows better" and doesn't listen to the American people.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I don't stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama," Santorum said, setting off chants of "We pick Rick!"

Reflecting what he sees as the altered shape of the race, Santorum told CNN that "now we're in a little bit of a no-man's land" as the candidates move into states where they haven't had months, or years, to campaign.

Romney, who won Minnesota four years ago, was running a weak third behind Santorum and Ron Paul.

Speaking to a deflated crowd of backers in Denver, Romney said he was "pretty confident" he would come in either first or second in Colorado's caucuses, his last hope for salvaging a bad night. But hours later, state Republican Chairman Ryan Call announced over CNN that Santorum had won.

He congratulated Santorum and said that he looked forward to coming contests and a united party when the primaries ended. But he also struck a pose as a populist outsider, speaking of his father's humble roots and casting himself as the antidote to the problems in the nation's capital.

Movie Review: 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close'

At the Hollywood Reporter, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Film Review":

Emotional fluency and literary pretense go hand in hand in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, an affecting, well acted tale of 9/11 trauma and a boy's effort to piece things together after his father's death. A self-conscious prestige project with weighty thematic elements, a tony literary pedigree and top-tier actors, director Stephen Daldry's fourth film is dominated by the performance of a 13-year-old with no previous acting experience, Thomas Horn, who enables his character's pinball intellect and inchoate emotions to pulse through every scene. While the subject matter will keep some prospective viewers away, many who do come will be emotionally wrenched by the treatment of loss and the interplay between parents and child, indicating good commercial prospects in most markets.

I can only think of one other big screen epic of this sort, "World Trade Center," and I'm surprised we haven't had more. And "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is another film that's on my list of movies not to miss.

How Tracking Cookies Work (How to Control Your Privacy Online)

Fascinating piece at WSJ, "On the Web's Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only":

You may not know a company called [x+1] Inc., but it may well know a lot about you.

From a single click on a web site, [x+1] correctly identified Carrie Isaac as a young Colorado Springs parent who lives on about $50,000 a year, shops at Wal-Mart and rents kids' videos. The company deduced that Paul Boulifard, a Nashville architect, is childless, likes to travel and buys used cars. And [x+1] determined that Thomas Burney, a Colorado building contractor, is a skier with a college degree and looks like he has good credit.

The company didn't get every detail correct. But its ability to make snap assessments of individuals is accurate enough that Capital One Financial Corp. uses [x+1]'s calculations to instantly decide which credit cards to show first-time visitors to its website.

In short: Websites are gaining the ability to decide whether or not you'd be a good customer, before you tell them a single thing about yourself.

The technology reaches beyond the personalization familiar on sites like Amazon.com, which uses its own in-house data on its customers to show them new items they might like.

By contrast, firms like [x+1] tap into vast databases of people's online behavior—mainly gathered surreptitiously by tracking technologies that have become ubiquitous on websites across the Internet. They don't have people's names, but cross-reference that data with records of home ownership, family income, marital status and favorite restaurants, among other things. Then, using statistical analysis, they start to make assumptions about the proclivities of individual Web surfers.

"We never don't know anything about someone," says John Nardone, [x+1]'s chief executive.

Capital One says it doesn't use the full array of [x+1]'s targeting technology, and it doesn't prevent people from applying for any card they want. "While we suggest products that we believe will be of interest to our visitors, we do not limit their ability to easily explore all products available," spokeswoman Pam Girardo says ....

Its technology works like this: A visitor lands on Capital One's credit-card page, and [x+1] instantly scans the information passed between the person's computer and the web page, which can be thousands of lines of code containing details on the user's computer. [x+1] also uses a new service from Digital Envoy Inc. that can determine the ZIP code where that computer is physically located. For some clients (but not Capital One), [x+1] also taps additional databases of web-browsing history.

Armed with its data, [x+1] taps consumer researcher Nielsen Co. to assign the visitor to one of 66 demographic groups.

In a fifth of a second, [x+1] says it can access and analyze thousands of pieces of information about a single user. It quickly scans for similar types of Capital One customers to make an educated guess about which credit cards to show the visitor.

And check the interactive page, "How to Control Your Privacy Online."

Old Spice 'Smell Like a Man' Campaign Cleans Up

I guess there's a market for unhindered masculinity, "Old Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success, Too":

HAT TIP: Snark and Boobs.