Quick Roundup 112
Monday, October 23, 2006
Light Blogging Possible
From now until Wednesday, I will be busy enough that I may post less regularly than usual.
Google Ads
I have briefly fooled around with the ad filter for Google Ads, but have so far found (incorrectly, I hope) that the only way to be selective with the ads is to blacklist individual URLs. It also takes far longer than the advertised four hours for such ads to disappear.
Given the kind of ads I have been drawing as pro-war blogger, this filtering strategy strikes me as being about as effective as -- oh, I don't know -- treating every single terrorist as if he were a lone criminal rather than an enemy combatant in the service of a death cult.
I have only two questions at this point: (1) Why would any of my regulars -- besides the occasional blogger in need of material -- click on any of these ads? (2) How useful is this to me as a someone who wants to generate income?
I don't expect to agree with every ad that gets placed here, but this is a little ridiculous.... I will either find a better way to filter or I will drop Google Ads.
Karl Marx wins "Greatest Philosopher" at the Beeb.
Reader Apollo notes, "The BBC decided to do the 'Greatest Philosopher in our Time Vote'. And of course Ayn Rand wasn't even mentioned, and even worse Aristotle wasn't number one." [link added] Unfortunately, given the cultural climate of Europe, I find neither the omission nor the final result too surprising.
Ain't Nothin' on Mine!
After asking, "What's on your iPod?" Craig Ceely notes a strange coincidence: The Beirut Bombing and the introduction of the iPod share an anniversary.
My wife got me an iPod for my birthday recently. And then she exchanged it for a better one she found at the same price. The fun will begin Thursday, when I have some time to iron out a kink and figure out which software is best for making it talk to my Linux computer!
Greg Packer
Somehow, I don't think that Ayn Rand was thinking about this guy when she used the colloquialism "the man in the street" in some of her writings and lectures.
He's not just another face in the crowd at concerts, book signings, and sporting events. Somehow, over the course of 10 years, one man has managed to become the media's go-to guy, quoted more than 100 times in various publications, including several prominent newspapers. Greg Packer is the "man on the street."For awhile, this guy was getting into the papers so often that the Associated Press put out a memo for its reporters to avoid him! And yet he still gets in!
Packer, 40, of Huntington, N.Y., arrives early to media events. His latest accomplishment: being 15th in line in Washington, D.C., to pay his respects to former President Ronald Reagan. "I'm the best person to come to -- anywhere," says Packer. "I always give time, and I always have an answer."
While Packer says "honesty is very important to me," he does admit that about 5% of the time, "I'm making stuff up to get in the paper." A Boston newspaper, for example, quoted him as saying he had a ticket for the 1999 baseball All-Star Game there when he really didn't.
Of course, if I were Jackie Harvey, I'd probably be thrilled that someone from Noodle Food is doing so well at getting an Objectivist perspective out to the popular media.
Your contribution has been matched by: Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan
Via IMAO, there is a link to some Democrat blogger who first gets wildly paranoid about whether the donation matching site for the Democratic Party has been hijacked. Then he and his pals suddenly talk tough about crime. Then he tells other potential pranksters exactly how to do the same thing!
Now if you click that link, you'll see that ANYONE is able to select an amount and leave a message for the donor that they will be matched with. This will allow two grassroots donors to come together and possibly build a lasting relationship via their donations. This is a GREAT idea, that's why I wanted to be a part of it. BUT what happens is that as the person making this pledge, I don't have to submit a credit card or be verified in ANY WAY. Let me say that again, the person making the pledge is not verified in ANY WAY! That person also doesn't have to put money in upfront, so they can submit cute messages like I got and suffer nothing. This is a gaping hole in the plan and allows other donors to get these stupid messages and defeat the purpose of the matching program.Yeah. No verification. Sort like the way you birds would have it at the polls on Election Day!
This was a surprise? Yeah. Yeah. I know.
-- CAV
6 comments:
Google-type keyword based ads always pull up ads with exactly the opposite viewpoint of the hosting page. I do not think anyone should assume any sanction of the advertisers.
Any concerns about people clicking would only be relevant if you're wrong and they're right, and if you wanted to keep it that way.
You ask why any of your readers would click on those links. I've clicked, thinking "who are these nutcases?" I don't care if those guys ended up paying Google 10 cents for my curiosity. If some fraction of those 10 cents flowed to you, I would lose less sleep still.
The situation (on appropriateness of ad content) is far better on individual posts that say nothing about the "Religion of Pissed".
It's more annoyance than loss of sleep. I'll see whether ad revenue keeps up the surprising pace it has for awhile and if it does, the "Moslem beer money" might offset my annoyance enough for me to keep the ads. At some point, I'll likely toss in a disclaimer just to be perfectly clear.
I have been surprised at the earnings and wondering whether they'd be higher with more appropriate ads. But then, perhaps your motivation for clicking explains everything and I should keep my trap shut!
Yo, Gus, you missed another sadly significant anniversary--today's the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Believe it or not, E.E. Cummings of all people wrote a somewhat appropriate poem in commemmoration of the actual uprising, "Thanksgiving (1956)."
a monstering horror swallows
this unworld me by you
as the god of our fathers' fathers bows
to a which that walks like a who
but the voice-with-a-smile of democracy
announces night & day
"all poor little peoples that want to be free
just trust in the u s a"
suddenly uprose hungary
and she gave a terrible cry
"no slave's unlife shall murder me
for i will freely die"
she cried so high thermopylae
heard her and marathon
and all prehuman history
and finally The UN
"be quiet little hungary
and do as you are bid
a good kind bear is angary
we fear for the quo pro quid"
uncle sam shrugs his pretty
pink shoulders you know how
and he twitches a liberal titty
and lisps "i'm busy right now"
so rah-rah-rah- democracy
let's all be thankful as hell
and bury the statue of liberty
(because it begins to smell)
Or, in the words of a summary I sent you many years ago of a fine speech at an anniversary dinner for the Revolution, "the Soviets set up a system in Eastern Europe devoted to crushing their independence and exploiting them, for Stalinism stood against everything that progress means--the free movement of goods and ideas, justice for all people, human rights, and freedom from the invasions of the state. He continued that the Hungarian revolutionaries refused to have any more of this and in the name of the universal principles of mankind, human freedom and dignity, they took up sticks and homemade bombs against tanks that had defeated the Wehrmacht. They started out without freedom or dignity; and while they ended up without freedom, by restoring the dignity of the Hungarian nation they showed the tyrannical monolith of the Soviet system for what it was."
Adrian,
I noticed the anniversary later today, but was unaware of that poem, so thanks for mentioning it here.
Gus
Gus,
I run firefox and had already blocked google ads with adblock long before you put them here. I don't see them and never would have known you were running them if you hadn't mentioned it.
Funny! I'll have to try that just to see whether the ads leave a huge white spot in the sidebar or simply leave it looking unchanged....
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