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3465 25th Street, Suite 17
San Francisco, CA 94110 | (noun)
[BEL-weth'-ahr] 
1. somebody who takes initiative or assumes leadership, or somebody or something that acts as an indicator of future trends: "Sandy had an extremely impressive resume, so she was our bellwether candidate on the market, and we were all very discouraged when her job search began to drag on."
Origin:
13th century; from Middle English, 'bellewether': leading sheep of a flock, often with a bell hung from its neck, leader ('belle': bell + 'wether,' same as English 'wether': a castrated male sheep). In action:
"In other featured commodity trade, gold steadied in line with the euro while oil surged to a three-month high as concern about U.S. supplies returned with weekly stocks estimates.
At the Chicago Board of Trade's grain pits and New York Commodity Exchange's cotton market, all eyes were on the monthly USDA estimates issued before the markets opened.
The reports are a bellwether for the agricultural markets, and cotton showed the biggest reaction after the latest USDA assessments, pushing to six-week highs on supply worries."
Reuters. "Commodities - Corn, cotton, gold and oil close higher," (June 11, 2003).
"Before getting too weak in the knees about paying eight cents a minute to ring Jakarta, consider the caveats. Whenever your Internet connection flickers out, your phone's unusable, so patrons of dodgy ISPs may be frustrated often. You'll need to buy a router in order to surf the Web while you talk; a serviceable one is about $40. And though the quality's more or less up to snuff, a hiccup in bandwidth will still garble your speech.
Wait if you'd like, but odds are you'll be VoIP'ing [voice over IP] sooner or later. Mr. Roboto just returned from Tokyo, the ultimate technology bellwether, where Internet calling's hotter than Ryoko Hirosue. Stateside, the Baby Bell phone companies know which way the wind's blowing, and have asked the FCC to start regulating VoIP calls. Here's to praying they won't succeed, and that the days of the 10.6 cent Verizon local call--not to mention the 30-cent-a-minute call to Minsk--will get dinosaured shortly."
Brendan I. Koerner. "VoIP a Dope: The Current Quality of Low-Cost Calls Over the Net." The Village Voice (April 28th, 2003).
"More than any other state, Missouri is a bellwether for the rest of the nation during presidential election years. In the 20th century, Missouri has voted in favor of the winner of the presidential contest in every single election but one (Eisenhower in '56). But so far, the national candidates have focused elsewhere -- according to a Kansas City Star poll released yesterday, Bush currently leads Gore among likely voters by more than 10 percentage points."
Ben Domenech. "Bloody Missouri: The ultimate heartland battleground of the year." National Review Online (July 12, 2000).
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