Category: Meta

OK, I’m Depressed

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Well, the New York Times interviewed Mickey Kaus* on the occasion of his run for Senate, which seems to be driven by his need to cock punch DFH’s, though his primary opponent Barbara Boxer is a woman, which kinds of screws up the metaphor.

In any case, he was asked the following:

NYT: How much do they pay you?

Kaus: I had been making in the mid-90s, and then I had to take a pay cut along with everyone else, and I was making in the 80s. I’m fortunate to make any money as a blogger. There are some who make more. Most of them work for The Atlantic.

Well, Brad Delong runs the numbers, and comes up with the following:

Mickey Kaus has written 54 posts in the past ten weeks–that’s an average of 5.4 posts for each week in which he makes $1,800, or $333 a weblog post. This seems to me to be way out of line–suggesting some major source of labor-market monopoly is preventing Slate from rationalizing its labor costs.

(emphasis original)

Well, remember when I commented that I had made 10,625 Posts over the past 2¾ Years, and the first time that anyone asked to run an ad specifically on my content, it was for that bung dropper video?†

The sum total of my creative value is two checks, each for a bit over $100, and a 3rd one should be coming shortly, probably this month as I am less than a dollar away from the check cutting threshold.

This here is post number 10,710 so let’s figure that I will have gotten $315 for about 10,900 posts, or about 2.9¢ a post.

If I figured it on a per word basis, I think that I’d retire to a monastery in Tibet, and I hate Yak butter.

Still, who reads Kaus? Seriously.

*Who has still not denied that he blows goats.
†I was turned down, because I could not demonstrate ownership, it ain’t mine, and because they were concerned that butchering a carcass was not “family safe”.

I’m Famous!

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I just got a letter to the editor published to the Financial Times.

Happy dance time.

Basically, it’s about something that I’ve written many times; that there should be a requirement for insurance like financial products to have insurnace like regulations, such as the 260+ year old requirement that you cannot take out insurance on somethting that it is not yours to lose.

Of course, I understand that this actually does not mean much in the greater scheme of things: People get LTE’s published all the time.

Of course, I don’t have what the conquoring Roman general had, a slave whispering in his ear that fame is fleeting, but I do have a cat with a piece of bacon that has been taped to it.

2¾ Years, 10,625 Posts,* and ………

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The sum total of my creative value

And the first time that anyone contacts me about their desire to advertise is for my film of a tool that removes the anus from a carcass.

Your video Jarvis Products Bung Dropper in Action has become popular on YouTube, and you’re eligible to apply for the YouTube Partnership Program, which allows you to make money from playbacks of your video.

Once you’re approved, making money from your video is easy. Here’s how it works: First sign into your YouTube account. Then, complete the steps outlined here: link omitted. Once you’re finished, we’ll start placing ads next to your video and pay you a share of the revenue as long as you meet the program requirements.

We look forward to adding your video to the YouTube Partnership Program. Thanks and good luck!

The You Tube Team

Well, now I understand my worth as a content creator.

Going through the process was pretty easy, since I already have a Google™ Adsense™ account.

Since I’m only a few bucks away from a payout, I figure that the vid should get me there a month sooner.

*Great googly moogly, I just ran the numbers, and it’s over 10,000 posts! So much tripe in so little time.

Not Much Posting Tonite Period

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I was trying to backup my February posts, and it kept breaking the archive page into little bits.

It looks like this is a feature because a few bloggers had huge front pages, with lots of blogger images, and they decided to have an algorithm break up the pages into digestible chunks.

They are all “It’s going to make everything so much faster.”

The problem is that for some blogs, it made them single posts on the first page.

Luckily that did not happen to me, because I use Imageshack®, which significantly reduces the load that “the Google” sees, and because compared to some of the photographers who blog there, it’s pretty much text based.

On the other hand, means that the monthly archives that I save to a MS Word® file are now broken up into 5-10 separate pages, and it means that it breaks Google’s searches that access archive pages, because it will serve a page that now has only a 15% or so chance of having the post in question.

So, yes, the good folks at Blogger, which is owned by Google, broke Google search, and yes, many of the folks who use blogger are pretty incensed, and the response of the PTB at blogger is that the users are blogging wrong somehow.

Apparently their motto, “Don’t be evil,” is orthogonal to, “Don’t be incompetent and arrogant assholes.”

[on edit] I am looking at moving to WordPress, but I will give it a month or so and fiddle.

Economics Update

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H/t the Big Picture

It’s jobless Thursday, and the new numbers suck wet farts from dead pigeons, specifically, they are up 12% over the past 2 weeks,to 496,000, up 22,000, and well over the consensus estimate 460,000.

Ouch.

Meanwhile, both the The 4-week moving average and the continuing claims rose by 6K, to 473,750 and 4.617 million.

Note however, that he Snowpocalypse may have had something to do with this.

Note also that that the durable goods orders number sucked too, it was up only because of aircraft orders, and as the picture on the right shows, there really is no increase at all once you take out spending on military items going back a very long time.

Meanwhile, in Japan, their consumer prices fell by 1.3% year over year, which is triggering a shouting match between the Finance Ministry, who want QE, and the Bank of Japan, who are still inflation hawks.

Meanwhile in currency, the dollar rose, largely on concerns about Greece and Euro Zone.

And yes, I know, I need to post something about the Greek problem, but it’s sprawling, and I’m still trying to make a synthesis.

In energy, the crappy jobs numbers drove oil down.

Finished My Tour of American Dynamics Flight Systems

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I have notes, and photos, taken with my cheap digital camera, as opposed to my profoundly cruddy cell phone camera.

I talked with Wayne Morse, the President, and Paul Vasilescu, the Technology Development Director for the firm at their offices in a Jessup, Maryland office park, right next door to, if the stickers on the doors of the neighboring are any indicator, old offices from the Baltimore Examiner.

We went over their technology, what they have covered under IP, potential customers and applications, and their capabilities.

They will be sending me a copy of their presentation in PDF, which I will be embedding via ScribD.

A full write-up will be coming in the next couple of days.

I had fun……It’s kind of a kid in a candy store thing for me.

Sometimes, I Just Don’t Give a Sh%$

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I do this for shopping lists all the time!

And it aggravates me no end when the liberal blogosphere sends me marching orders* to talk about something that I really don’t give a sh%$ about.

Case in point, Sarah Palin’s use of notes scribbled on the palm of her hand for the softball Q&A following her speech at the Teabagger convention.

People make notes. People make notes in the palms of their hands, yours truly included.

Even if Sarah Palin were to memorize the Congressional Record, she would still be a moron with narcissistic personality disorder.

Yes, it reinforces the meme, but it really means very little.

*There are no actual marching orders, it’s satire. I am making fun over the entire tempest in a teapot aspect of this. There is so much wrong with Sarah Palin, it seems to me to be shooting fish in a barrel.

They Who Must Not Be Named

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Let us add Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas, as well as any other moron who decides that celebrity justifies their carrying a firearm in violation of the local laws:

Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas, who was suspended from professional basketball, pleaded guilty to a felony count of carrying a handgun without a license.

Arenas, 28, entered the plea today before District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Robert Morin in Washington. Under a plea agreement, Arenas admitted violating a District of Columbia law on carrying an unlicensed handgun.

Under the agreement, he likely will receive a sentence much lighter than the five years he might otherwise face. The agreement calls for prosecutors to recommend a sentence of six months when Arenas is sentenced on March 26.

When the prosecution asks for 6 months, can they please also ask for the sentence to be served at the same time as the NBA season?

Google Pulls AP Links from Google News

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A picture of falling page views

As you may, or may not be aware, I am not linking to Associated Press stories.

This applies to both stories at the Associated Press, as well as stories at other venues that carry an AP byline.

It’s not absolute: If I cannot find another source anywhere, and the story is IMNSHO important, I will link, with a preference for not linking directly to the AP servers.

I have spiked comment based on the the fact that I could not find another source on a number of occasions, but generally, Google News has managed to bail me out.

Well, Google and the Associated Press are coming up on the end of their current licensing agreement, and as a result, Google has not included any links to the AP site since December 23:

Through much of last year, the Associated Press threw public barbs and veiled threats at Google, while in private it was renegotiating its licensing agreement with Google News. That agreement is believed to be up for renewal at the end of this month, yet no new AP stories have appeared directly on Google News since December 23, 2009. (AP stories licensed by other news sites such as ABC News or the New York Times do continue to appear, however). So what’s going on here? Is that the end of AP stories on Google News?

I’ve been doing some sniffing around, and it is not the AP that is withholding its content. This conclusion is also supported by the fact that older AP content from before Christmas continues to be available on Google News. If the AP were no longer licensing its articles to Google, those older articles likely would also no longer be available. (The AP has talked about withholding news from certain licensees for a set period of time, but those were measured in minutes and hours, not weeks, and it would operate on a rolling basis. The AP stories on Google News just stop on December 23).

The pucker factor at the Associated Press offices right now must be extreme.