Flashes of Panic

You really do have to be able to spell

We’ve been watching the classified ads for office space in the area. You seldom see a listing with all the useful information (e.g. it will mention the location and price but not square footage) and we wind up sending a lot of email to filter out stuff that isn’t useful to us.

The other day we heard from one potential landlord that the space advertised was part of a “three-office suit.” Since then I have decided that the spare bedroom I split with A as an office must be a “one-office suit.” And I wonder, is a three-office suit an office drone who has multiple workplaces?

Now Playing: Helpless by Electric Light Orchestra

Technorati Tags: office, real estate, spelling

Posted by pjm at 1:21 PM | Comments (0)

It depends on your definition of "ethical"

Adam Gaffin at Universal Hub draws our attention to a new “service” in which you pay for “relevant” comments to be left on “high-page-rank blogs”, which helps your site “rank better in the SERPs.” (SERP = Search Engine Result Page.)

The part I find most amusing is their attempts at self-justification:

YES, Buying Blog Comments is 100% ethical and NOT spam!

…and yet they’re spending the rest of the page explaining how their technique leaves comments which won’t be deleted by the site moderator. Now why would a site moderator ever want to delete 100% ethical, not-spam comments?

(If there’s any confusion in your mind, buying blog comments is 100% unethical and is spam.)

No extra points for counting the spelling and grammatical errors. Note that I have used rel="nofollow" on the link to the sleazy ones.

Now Playing: Workin’ For A Livin’ from Picture This by Huey Lewis & The News

Posted by pjm at 1:28 PM | Comments (0)

Rebate checks and our national priorities

Friday’s paper included an article about a school group in Northampton organizing a drive to ask residents to donate their “tax rebates” to the city’s schools, which are suffering severe budget shortfalls.

Like the last check we were sent by the federal government—$300 in 2001, which arrived in mid-September and which I proceeded to donate to the Red Cross—this particular handout of cash the government doesn’t really have to spend (aren’t we running a deficit?) makes me feel like someone is trying to buy my approval. It just smells bad to me. The pretense of “economic stimulus” feels pretty pathetic; if everyone who gets a rebate simply uses it to pay their existing credit card bill (not a bad idea, considering our national credit abuse is a major factor in our current economic malaise) it’s not going to do much to jump start the economic engine. To me, it feels like an attempt by our government to avoid responsibility; hush money to keep us from pointing the finger of responsibility their direction.

While many people are adopting the viewpoint that this is “their money” and they’ll use it for themselves, thank you, the idealist in me wants to believe that tax money paid to the Federal Government has always been “our money” and it still is, even if the feds give it back to us.

The National Priorities Project, another Northampton organization, examines how our government spending reflects our national priorities, and shows taxpayers how those priorities may differ from our own priorities. From that point of view, I think it’s possible to see this as an opportunity to spend this tiny fraction of the government’s money in ways that reflect our own priorities and not those imposed upon us.

Some Northampton residents think maintaining their schools is important, so they’re trying to redirect these federal funds there. We could give the money to research into issues touching people we know. We could spend it on photovoltaic panels or personal wind turbines to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. We could find a way to plant more trees in our communities, or subsidize trail maintenance or other open-space initiatives. We could support people at the economic margins.

Or we could simply pay down our personal debt, acknowledging and facing the actions that got us here in the first place.

Either way, I think it’s time to twist the idea of whose money this is. If you don’t like how the government spends “your money”, here’s a chance to show them how you’d prefer to see it spent.

Now Playing: Northwestern Girls by Say Hi

Technorati Tags: federal spending, government, northampton, priorities, schools, taxes

Posted by pjm at 2:44 PM | Comments (0)

General excellence

I’m two days late on this, but I’ve had limited time and inclination for being online for the last 36 hours or so. Not only did my old workplace (and I mean seven years ago), Runners World, win a National Magazine Award on Thursday night—a huge deal in the industry—but they won it for their website.

The site’s been down and up and down again and up again since my day, and the site in my time bears no comparison with the site now (this particular category didn’t even exist at the NMAs), but I still feel a little connection. I know a lot of the people working on the site. And I did write a weblog there last year.

I’ll be making things happen in their Olympic Track Trials coverage this summer, so we’ll see how much worse they do in 2008.

Technorati Tags: awards, runnersworld

Posted by pjm at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)