Occam’s Razor
After sitting on the Hot Abercrombie Chick story for a week, I still had an unsettling feeling that the story was unresolved. I decided to go back to my initial premonitions and check the IP addresses of the comments she posted to a few weblogs. Then I realized that I had been sitting on my own data the whole time, the IP addresses of sites added to Blogdex. Here’s what I’ve found:
Date Source IP Owner ---------------------------------------------------------- 2004-02-11 Blogdex 68.91.65.131 swbell.net 2004-02-21 Anil Dash 65.69.87.117 swbell.net 2004-02-28 Undisclosed 68.90.64.194 swbell.net 2004-04-14 Blogdex 68.89.157.59 swbell.net 2004-04-02 Blogdex 65.69.86.105 swbell.net 2004-04-07 Blogdex 128.252.173.54 wustl.edu
All of these IP addresses originate from St. Louis, Missouri, one directly from Washington University where Daniel Zeigenbein transferred to after leaving Vassar (also compare this to Amanda Doerty’s profile on MSN). While many open questions remain (the motive of the author, the identity of the girl in the picture, etc.), this is enough evidence for me to close the case on this one.
I find a great deal of pleasure in doing research on the internet, especially when it involves unearthing information that is nonobvious or difficult to procure. It’s the same type of excitement that one gets watching Woodward and Bernstein slowly uncover the trail of leads that eventually finds Nixon. I never had any intention of defaming HAC or Daniel Zeigenbein, it was simply a mystery where the facts didn’t add up and the truth should exist somewhere, buried in the internet.
Justin has also posted a more in-depth analysis of the evidence.
