Maybe.

Egads. (If the embed isn’t working, click here.)

This Week in Tech has a fascinating deconstruction of the ad that begins one hour, eight minutes and 36 seconds into episode 159 . Here’s an AdAge article on the spot and here’s a USA Today article on the spot; as usual, the comments make for better reading than the articles themselves.

Meanwhile, this alternate-ending ad is pretty funny.

When it comes to broadband Internet, South Korea ranks #1 out of 31 nations with 24.6% of the population connected to the Web via high speed.

Norway leads the world in coffee consumption: 10.7 kilograms of coffee per person per year.

Brunei leads the world in the number of roller coasters per capita: just over 80 per 10 million people.

This is just a tiny sampling of the facts available at NationMaster, a fascinating site that strives to be "a central location that allows you to compare countries on any statistic you like."

This is terrific. In this hyper-political time, who wouldn’t create one and send it to all their friends? Or blog about it?

Everyone is waiting to see what the convention bump is in the various polls for John McCain and Sarah Palin. I’d love to know, though, what the traffic bump is for sites like Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish and Alaskan political blog Mudflats .

I’d also like to know why the Obama campaign, which in almost every way has been so smart about using the Internet and new media, hasn’t jumped on their paid keyword buying yet. I Googled "Sarah Palin" several times this morning, and each time I got one ad result — placed by the McCain campaign.

Takeaway for marketers: Keep an eye on news events: They might suggest smart modifications to your media buy.

SEPTEMBER 6 UPDATE: Well, duh. I could have answered one of my own questions if I’d paid closer attention to Sullivan’s site: He has SiteMeter installed. The answer: The traffic bump is friggin’ huge … which makes the Obama camp’s lack of presence in AdWords all the more surprising.