Who is this person trying to impersonate me 22 years ago?!

Oh, the days when I worked at GE as a schedule analyst on weekdays and a Christmas tree recycling expert on weekends?

No, that wasn't me, was it?  ;)

Huntsville Christmas Tree Recycling Project -- 1990

Thus Endeth This Blog

The cowboy rolls up his knapsack/pup tent combo, slings it over his shoulder and steps into his rocket boots to pursue a lifelong dream.

Where he rides, there are no sunsets.

The path he takes is a lonely one, as usual.

It's always been about you, me, us, as usual, too.

He issues a voice command and off he goes.

"Giddyup, boy, let's get this show on the road!"

Whoooooosh!!!!

There may be snow on this roof...

You gotta credit the Yella Fella for keepin' his product, YellaWood, what my builder called Osmose to construct muh house and front/back deck, out in the eyes and ears of customers while havin' fun talkin' about it, too.  He goes in muh book as a real person.

= = = = =

I've come to the conclusion that I don't exist and found verification through the fact that none of the characters in this parallel universe of a blog have ever talked with/to me.

Sure, I am the current leader and, by leading, I have sway over the billions of imaginary people who live on this imaginary planet with the imaginary me.

It's the writer's dilemma staring me in the face again, a mirror at the end of a deadend corner of the maze I've written myself into.

If I only have sway over the imaginary world, then what I am doing in real life?

Nothing, it seems.

I am not wholly part of virtuality or wholly part of reality.

The plot of my life is full of holes rather than wholes but don't call me holy.

I just happened to be here in this time with you - you found the wonders of life with or without me by virtue of being the states of energy we call the human condition.

When I was five, I realised I was part of the living dead.

It has been an interesting journey ever since.

All I can do is help the living find their way through this dark maze.

My time here was done a long time ago.

Back to sleep I go, back to the condition these states of energy call meditation.

It's all I know.

Why I wanted to be a hermit living in the woods.

The real nonexistent me.

Happy.

Free of the chains of modern technology.

I'm still trying to get free, aren't I, despite digging myself deeper?

What do you know about brothers who go click and clack near Gentle Store in Limrock, Alabama?

I was scraping the skunk junk off my junk sailing between Eris and Sedna on a junket to decide if Jimmy Dykes and Brad Nessler influenced the outcome of my bookie's income because of what happened to Walker in the fourth grade.

Knit 1, PEARL10.

Thanks to Josh at Hiley VW for cleaning his father's Ford Explorer Sport Trac.

Thanks to the Rite Aid pharmacist who recognised us at McCutcheon's Magnolia House Restaurant.  The owner of the restaurant told us she'd taught dance at UTK for 37 years and was sad to see the university end the dance program.  However, she was glad to be back in the house where she and her brother grew up after her grandmother died.  Honey, there ain't nothin' like good ol' fashioned Southern comfort comfort food!

The owner of Keepsakes Scrapbooking, Gifts & Antiques, who had opened the store as a "project" for her daughter, whose divorce led her to get a fulltime job and away from assisting her mother, has run the store for seven years and looks forward to the day when the economy picks up and she can sell the store for what it's really worth, having made no profit for the last two years.  Oy vey!

Meanwhile, last Saturday at UBC, a new sales record was set, with 300 more transactions than the busiest business day (not counting the ski sales).  A thanks to the ever-smiling, beautiful/handsome faces of Gail, Brittany, Pam W., Janet G., Aaron, Josh and Samantha.  Oh yes!

I don't know which made me happier today, the May 1962 copy of Boy's Life for $19.99 at Keepsakes, or the 64GB Apple iPad for $620.99 at UBC (the lesser bargain of the two correction: it was/is a better bargain).

I wonder out loud here.  If, in the past, some xx% of marriages were basically women being slaves to men and children, does that account for the fact that only 40% of people today see value in the partnership that marriage is supposed to be?

Like a friend of mine told her ex-husband and son, "I don't care where your clothes are or what you want for dinner because you don't care about the kind of day I had."

Labels are not excuses for the way we treat one another.  Rude or disrespectful behaviour is indicative of your character and not something that is allowed because of a title or role you pretend to carry around with you like a badge.

Like Steve Jobs said, one day you're going to wake up and realise that you really are going to die one day.

Today is the first day of the last days of your life together with the rest of us.

I'm exposing the emperor's new clothes from now on even if it's the nonpaid role I've assigned myself because all I'm going to do is die one day...

...because all our species is going to do is suffer another lost civilisation and if we're lucky we'll leave enough clues for the next civilisation to make better progress the next time.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

In my opinion, political boundaries don't exist anymore.  Mexican military forces are said to invade our land while Chinese/Russian satellites invade our space and we do nothing in return.  Canadian spies come and go and we say nothing, too.

If a person can run a pet cremation business and make a profit, then I'm sure Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again.

Janet, you repeated over and over the name of your son's agribusiness specialty of landscaping and lawn care.  Avast?  Avert?  Avant?  I can't remember.  May his Twickenham, Ledges and other neighbourhood work keep him busy, if not making a living wage - it's happening to all of us, as can been seen by empty shopping centres from here to California and back.

When your cities and towns are the gold rush that spiked and collapsed, what's next?

Stay tuned.

The Book of the Future actually has good things to say about our continuously-moving moment together.

I didn't say easy.  Good.

You'll see.

Just like Claire saw the old Chattanooga Choo-Choo train station for the very first time.  Wish I coulda been there, Claire.  Life is full of eye-opening experiences.

Could Jeff Gordon win tomorrow?

Did the guy at UBC buy the iPod Touch so he could add a Tom-Tom GPS unit and CoPilot Live?

Who has correctly predicted the cricket champ?

Will the forces of free enterprises win for the people or for the...

[Please recharge your battery at this time to continue enjoying the free Internet service we provided in exchange for promoting us]

Yes, Laurie Anderson, we are all going down together but it's going to be a glorious ride!  Buckle up!  The weather's calling your name!  Got your fishing poles and tackle box ready?

Index Finger

While I'm working through the issues that the computer programmers don't know will be presented to them in printed reports they haven't been assigned to generate, I'll give you the following.

To the folks in the Middle East and Africa.

To the folks in North Korea, Cuba, China, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

To those who are under the impression they are under persecutory regimes of any kind...

This is the future: franchising.

So, I suggest to you that you get with your friends and family, pool your resources, get microloans, if you have to.

And then work with your political friends to enact laws that protect intellectual property and freedoms of expression.

Finally, after all is set up, build yourself a brand image that you can sell to others.

Sell processed food or clothing lines.

If you cannot dream up your own brand, buy into the brands that already exist.

And, if you're smart, you'll negotiate deals where your brand(s) will feed the malnourished and starving in the world.

Instead of delivering bags of rice and flour to places that don't have cooking fuel or safe drinking water, airdrop in crates of Pringles and Coca-Cola.

Make the world's greatest falafel and open Falafel Bazaar eateries all around the world.

Span the globe with spanakopitas.

Serve lamburgers with children's toys.

Stop the slaughter of endangered animals by showing that bush meat is not the ultimate free range food - your product is.

Sure, petroleum jelly is the best ointment for superficial wounds but doesn't the name Vaseline or Neosporin sound more scientifically safe?

Do you speak a 16-bit language?

Do you believe we are an ignorant species?

Do you write blog entries that invite insight in order to increase readership because you know, and your audience knows, you have only one goal in mind - to save the species from itself, but in the long, drawnout process of doing so, killing us with obesity to get us to another place in time that's better for the total population as a whole?

Would a blog supplement, "as read by the author," a podcast (or perhaps an open source sound file) be a bestseller?  Could I pull a Paul Newman and put the profits to universal improvement?

My inventor friends are begging me not to give up, that we together are building a better world, despite repetition that gives me severe migraines which block my thought patterns.  "Don't confuse yourself over the normal issues of deteriorating tissue, blood and bones," they whisper in emails.

As I say, I am here with you and thank you for sharing your time with me.  I am not perfect and sometimes it shows more obviously on days when I can't stop being a normal person with everyday aches and pains.

One of my friends recommended I look into Autodesk's free animation program for kids.  I will, I promise.

The placebo effect of a large tablet of aspirin is often the best elixir for an ol' skeptic like me (and cheaper than a six-pack which would inhibit my driving to the store to buy a box of premixed fudge brownie ingredients to surprise my wife with hot brownies for the surprises she made/bought for me).

In Case You Were Afraid To Ask

LinkedIn Knowledge

You-u-u Only Live Twi-i-i-ce Or So-o-o They Say

Clearing my thoughts here for a moment before I describe my view from twixt galaxies.

Forget the word "union," just like climatologists learned to forget the phrase "global warming," and concentrate on the inherent value of the exchange of goods and services between those who've provided you an in/tangible ROI and those who funded them, putting time aside.

It's not just the current ROI or exchange rate that matters.  Interest rates are there for a reason, to indicate future value of money, too.

Social science may seem anything but (and as a friend of science, I am a skeptic about anything scientific) what is, to pull an overused phrase out of the stuffy, recycled air, the trickle-down value of delayed gratification in the form of low salaries today that guarantee pensioned salaries at a future (but never guaranteed) point in your life?

I didn't vote for Bush, Jr., (although I did once vote for his daddy because I gotta admire a man who was in charge of the CIA, despite its bureaucratic flaws).

However, his post-presidential comment that he regrets not privatising the big SS (no, not that one...well, wait, maybe he did privatise that one...anyway, staying on this train of thought), Social Security, and while we're sitting here halfway through the next presidential term, I pause to consider the ups and downs of his potential thoughts on the matter.

How do you create a system that is inabusivable? [invent your own word, if you don't like that one]

How do you create a social monetary support system that provides incentives?

How do you guarantee people don't pad their expense reports?

How do you put into place a mode for people to care about others just like they care for themselves and their family/friends?

You can't legislate morality.  You can only set an example by living a morally forward-pointing life.

You can legislate ethics but how do you reward rather than punish? [on a side note, how can Google reward innovation rather than calling innovative SEO tricksters "system cheaters"?]

After all, didn't Abraham Lincoln himself pad his Congressional expense reports to fund his lifestyle?

Life finds a way.

Not everyone on welfare, Social Security, or pension is bad.  In fact, pensioners and welfare recipients probably use most of their money to fund many of the small businesses and franchises/chains that keep our global economy running ( in other words, how many pensioners are actually living below their means and saving, creating a savings rate in a CD or other monetary instrument that's generating future income in another path?  I don't know - it's an exercise I leave for those who've considered the matter).

On the flip side, because they have, on one hand, a fixed salary, and, on the other hand, an income based on someone else's pot of gold, not the one they themselves saved up, are they using their limited means in the most wise way, whatever that means?

Flip sides.  Palms. Backhands.  Back flips.  You pick the images and see for yourself.

There is no cut-and-dry, easy answer for the issue at hand.  Otherwise, I'd pretend to know the answer on this one, or provide the Committee's input and/or the direction provided to the Committee members by the ones who control the ones who control the Committee, and tell you.

Now, back to the dark matter's view of our galaxy and the superclusters we think we call home.

The Marriage of Union

I asked my mother, a retired teacher, what the teachers' union had done for her.

She laughed, her facial expression showing me all the years of no raises that the union was so helpful in negotiating on her behalf.

What, then, is a players' union for, if, say, a team like the Ravens lets its namesake (sort of), E. A. Poe, see his museum close due to lack of funds that the millionaire players could easily have funded if they really cared about the meaning behind their teamname's existence?

Prove to me the worth of a CEO or a union and I'll listen carefully.  Otherwise, business and labour are labels hardly worth putting on a tackling dummy for fun offseason practice.

At least Gaelic football players know the rules they live by on and off the field.

Like secret Chinese military bases disguised as entertainment centers under construction on Caribbean islands, we all gotta eat and play somewhere.

Maybe I'll buy an oud and play a sad love song, lamenting the loss of people in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula who've given their lives in the name of [are you listening, Barack?] d-e-m-o-c-r-a-c-y.

Yeehaw, raise hell and eat cornbread!

Knoxville's got two things goin' for it in one week - the premiere of the Condredge Holloway movie and the winner of the Daytona 500!

Keep the streak goin', folks [that goes for Pat, Bruce and you ballplayers, too, if you don't mind] -  don't matter to me none if'n it's in law, business, medicine or any of them other fancy edumacashun jobs, neither.

'Bout time I find myself sumptin to do in the mountains.

My moonshine supply's run dry.

Been lookin' for a secret place to keep muh stash but them revenooers done got them rotocopter flappin' blade things with them magic eyes that keeps me from bein' able to run muh moonshine still out of the way of mischiefmaking, rabblerousin' teenagers in these here parts.

Just hafta keep lookin', is what I gotta do.

Until next time, DW (btw, my wife loves watchin' and hearin' you talk - makes her feel like she's back home, listenin' to her Pop do his ol' radio show on WRGS, back befo' the days of Charlie Chase, that is).

A nod to our Armenian friends - may you never run out of lamb meat for a meal.

Dang if I didn't find out that Trevor Bayne went to Knox Central like muh daddy and my bury-the-body friend, Elizabeth.  This ol' small world's gettin' tiny enough to fit in muh wallet on the gold chain I pulled off the dead guy who called muh dog a cur.

Are You A Non-Employee Company?

Some people want to create an idea, let distributors/independents generate sales leads and share the profits with those who close the deal.

In other words, a world of consultants - no employees, no payroll, and fewer complications.

And there are ways to do this.  Is this one?

In other words, make every person a profit center.

The future is yours - are you ready to promote yourself on a daily basis?

Appreciation

Thanks to Myron, John and Ophelia at Salsarita's; Pilot Food Mart; the server and sushi chef at Shogun; courteous over-the-road truck drivers; Hawkins County EMS; Grainger County construction crew; the candle lighter at CHPC; people who accept one another for who they are and not adopt an attitude based on what others tell them to think they are.

I Can See Commerce From My Backyard

Currency from my family's travels:

Where are you spending your time?

Another Close Call

Do you ever ask the people in your family, "What are you doing for me on a daily and weekly basis?"

A friend of mine did.

Now she's divorced and her son has moved out, leaving her with a house, a dog, computer and a phone.

She's the sole caretaker of her parents, after her sister died, who was 300+ pounds and her heart couldn't keep up - a great "kid" who literally died at 42 of a broken heart.

We're good friends who have no qualms about sharing our life stories with one another because we have no hangups or emotional baggage getting in the way, no reason to ask each other what we've done for the other on a daily or weekly basis.

I am secure in my marriage and secure in my emotion-based thought set so I can spend time here with you, rather than in paper journals, looking at what is and what might have been.

When I hung around in an office and dealt with business decisions on a minute-by-minute basis, I often asked myself what was the business doing for me on a daily, weekly or life basis?

Sure, it provided me an easy way to feed myself through the collection of labour credits to exchange for nourishment supplements at restaurants and grocer's markets.

It also allowed me to build my investment portfolio and enjoy "free" travel to foreign destinations while conducting business outside the office.

But what was it really doing for me?

I'm a middle-aged guy, looking at life from the comforts of a study piled high with old books and memorabilia.

It's a perspective that I held when I was six, looking out the window in first grade math class, surrounded by the nurturing world of academia which hopes more than passive learning's taking place.

So, in a sense, I have always heralded this position of sitting by the window and wondering in my wandering thoughts.

Socialising has always been a matter of reverifying my understanding of the human condition.

Humour has been my way of filtering out the dusty seriousness that floats out of people's mouths and actions, virtually turning down the volume of voices shouting, "But it really is an emergency this time," another cry of "Wolf!" that I can see doesn't exist.

Do we all tell ourselves, "This is what I do but not who I am?"

In recent conversations with my friend, picking up where we stopped talking 18 years ago, we joke about the difference between what we have done and who we think we are.

Life is a comedy, a grand illusion, where punchlines are punchlines for some joke we think we see but don't.

Meanwhile, we have to figure out how to raise our kids and get along while pretending we're serious most or part of the time.

The parents who can reveal the jokes while instilling a solid set of ethics and morals are the ones I praise.

We all die.

We all have to share resources while we're alive.

Everything else is just pretending.

I'm sorry that the people in North Africa are resorting to deadly violence to sort out how to redistribute resources that have been hoarded by a few.  Unfortunately, it is the way of our species - we are young and unable to see the bigger picture.

Nor do we see where those with a large number of social connections can drop millions of pebbles all across the pond and hide their intentions in the cancelling wave patterns.

I will not be remembered.  This writing is not significant enough to survive the ravages of population shifts.

Thus, at the end of the day, I have my wife, our cats, our house, our investments, her friends, my friends and our friends and family.

Right before I asked my wife for her hand in marriage, I asked myself if she was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

I narrowed down the mental list of potential candidates, looking back at the women I'd dated or with whom I had established a strong, lasting relationship.

I knew who I was and what I wanted.

I also knew that I probably knew little about the women and what they wanted.

Why do people get married?  To raise children in a legal manner.  To honour their religious upbringing.  For tax savings.  To make themselves (or one of them) a legal resident of a political entity, perhaps.

Why did I get married?  Because it was time.  I held a postsecondary diploma and was ready to establish myself financially.  Having children was not a priority for me.  Sitting by the window thinking and writing was/is.

Thus, which woman would most tolerate my desire to sit and write?  Which woman would tell herself, "Rick is not the kind of person who will take the kids to school, play handyman, chair the parent-teacher association or do more than a cursory amount of housecleaning but hopefully will earn enough for us to have a comfortable, if not extravagant, life together"?

I narrowed my choices down to two people - my wife, of course, and the person with whom I have enjoyed conversations over the past few days.

My wife and I shared a romantic story that had/has a life of its own, one I've recounted here or elsewhere many times, starting when we were 12 at summer camp, acting as penpals for years and dating the first time our freshman year in college, with my "romantic, lovesick poet" phase generating many a poem we've all written in our heads in one way or another when first falling madly in love (and which I've spared tormenting you with here (at least so far (just wait until I get too bored to write a blog entry one day))).

The other person was/is a person many people enjoy being around.  We never had overly romantic notions about each other, although we can describe them and imagine them, such as enjoying a quiet walk in the woods or along the beach, holding hands like two companions.

We agree we have made the best choices.  She has her wonderful son and a life of her own, including an early retirement.  I have a wonderful wife and have taken a midlife retirement.  As a bonus, we remain great friends without a worry about one or the other having any ulteriour sexual intentions, so we can talk about anything without wondering about arousing the other's hormones.

All the while, large historic changes of our species go on around us, no matter how much we care or feel involved, emotionally or physically.

This is my life, sitting here, looking out the window at the rain, water dripping off the hanging gutter, no birds to be seen, creating an alternative universe while musing about the one that we say exists, because we can touch trees and watch one another's births and deaths and all the stuff in-between.

This is how I describe happiness.  I thank all of you, including my close friends and family, for making this happiness possible.  I hope every one of us can find this kind of simple happiness in our lives - it's priceless.

We Come In Peace. Ignore The Military Buildup Back Home.

The Committee announced today that it's time to rotate the team leader position to another person.

Everyone looked at me.

Time and again (and time and again, etc.), I have spoken to individual members of the Committee, expressing my reluctance to assume the leadership position because my only goal to reach as leader is to reveal that we all lie to each other.

Like my friend who edits a family publication and tries to reach out to young people to get news material from the youth point of view, my talks with the Committee members have fallen on deaf ears.

Now who in their right mind is going to let an ol' suburbanised country boy tell the people what it is they're supposed to want to do next?

I'm only supposed to observe and report.  That's the agreement I have authorised, notarised, framed and gilded, proudly displayed in a hidden hallway in the super-superattic of the Solar Museum of Rational History.

So, Committee of 7.5, if I do this, I don't do this, if you know what I mean.

In other words, I want to hear what the future leaders of countries in turmoil have, not only the words of promise to their people, but also the business and military connections to back them up with.

In other words, it's an ol' Texas Hold'em call - show us your cards.

Otherwise, all the demonstrations show me is a temporary release of a culture's pentup frustration.

Time to negotiate, not loot or fight or burn or any other brief respite from the toils of daily life.

If you won't talk or negotiate, then let me feel free to expose the lies involved in what's really going on.

Layers of the onion, my friends, tossed into a cotton candy machine - do you really want me to make a sticky mess out of pulling apart and showing you what's slithering through the goo?

Time for a joke to tell in the next blog entry.

The Art and Science of Business

While listening to the Orgelbüchlein, performed by James Kibbie, and putting together a business plan for some associates, I look at The Wisdom of India by Lin Yutang and contemplate buying As One by Merhdad Baghai and James Quigley.

I think about Walt Disney and the extension of copyrights/trademarks that are granted to enduring brands.

The shiny surface of my laptop computer is dull where my palms rest.  The most commonly pressed keys look slick from many thousands of clicks (the Q, Z, X, J and P keys are the least rubbed smooth, with W, U and K not far behind).

Playing this parallel universe of a blog like a symphony, hearing the voices of people and cultures like the sweet tweets and deep bellows of musical instruments, repeating phrases for emphasis, looking for the perfectly new but hauntingly familiar melody to pull out of nothingness, wanting to get this right the first time because there's no going back but knowing I make a few typos through my rush to get it all down on e-paper before I forget what I hear in my head...

I wrote a two-part poem decades ago that compared the difference between a schizophrenic and a writer, saying that a writer puts the compartmentalisation of thoughts that have a particular "voice" (i.e., characters) to practical use, or something like that.  Composers are the same or similar.

But so, too, are any of us who design, build, lead or otherwise use the extension of a thought set to create something unique outside of ourselves.

Parents, what of your children?

Where do we concentrate our energy expenditure?

Does it matter if anyone is listening to you?

Is the analysis of the work of another a work in its own right?

If I design a business plan that I'll never use and submit it to another person as one of many proposals for creating something wonderful, am I participating in the art and science of business even if my work never sees the light of day?

How often do we have to practice to perfect our skills and sharpen our talents?

Every moment is practice for the next one.

One person recently asked why I never seem to mention the Bible (a frequent observation by readers).  I don't mention specifics about my wife, either, but they're both an integral part of my childhood so that I feel no need to promote or talk about the core/foundational part of myself.  Wisdom imparted to me by sages, scholars and committees through the ages (i.e., the Bible) is just as important as wisdom imparted to me by my wife in the moments we share together.  I don't understand much about the Bible and I don't understand much about my wife but I accept them both as they are as I practice learning more about them and the rest of the stimuli that serves as my life in every moment.

More great news for search engine purists

Every great tester knows that boundary conditions, though well-defined in specifications or work orders, rarely are what they seem until you test, test, test.  They still confound you at the most inconvenient times, preferably not in a life-threatening situation, but it has and does happen anyway.

You could say the same about letting speculators drive up the cost of commodities with no connection to the "reality" (or realty) of supply and demand.  As an easy example, the price of oil should be tied to current/future supplies, with brakes or limits that prevent false bubbles (which, on a side note, would prevent conglomerates with financial subsidiaries from padding quarterly statements to hide or diminish the poor performance of their hard/soft product divisions).

The same goes for search engines, as well-documented in the email copied below:

The Weekly Feed #55: Google Heavily Penalizes Websites, Great Nutrition for your Blog Visitors and Speak2Tweet for Egyptians

Tue, Feb 01, 2011 1:18 am

Welcome to Issue #55 of The Weekly Feed. If this email was forwarded to you by a friend, you can subscribe on this page. The Weekly Feed is published once a week when we have news, information and helpful tips to share. Unsubscribe instructions are at the end of this message. You can read previous editions of The Weekly Feed on our blog where we may also post additional content.

Our site of the week is the awesome Nutrition search engine SkipThePie.org that gives you your very own nutrition search widget for your blog's sidebar. Visitors can get detailed nutrition data without leaving your blog. I've already put it on my personal blog so that I can look up calories before I eat them - and hopefully it helps a few of my visitors stay in shape too.

Three days ago Google launched and update that may radically affect the amount of search engine traffic your blog or website gets. They're calling it a minor update to their algorithm, but it has already had a major effect on some sites. 8 Days ago I mentioned on Hacker News that a site that was scraping the popular StackOverflow was ranking higher than them - by republishing their content. Well Google has updated their algorithm and the scraper site's traffic immediately plummeted by about 90%. The day-over-day drop is 40%. I'm not a fan of sites that steal content, but ouch!!

Here is Matt Cutts, head of Google's anti-spam team making the announcement a few days ago.

From industry buzz it seems that Google is going after two kinds of sites this year. The first is sites that scrape content from others and republish that content unmodified (scraper sites). The second is sites who have low quality content farms, where large numbers of low wage humans generate low quality content purely to try and attract search engine traffic. We've now seen hard evidence of the new anti-scraper policy but not much evidence of Google going after content farms. 

If you run a blog or content site that relies on SEO traffic, here is how you need to react to this:

1. Make sure you limit the amount of republished content.
2. If you do republish content, make sure there is at least the same amount of original content on the same page to balance it out.
3. Beware publishing large amounts of low quality content. We haven't seen any evidence of penalties in this area yet, but trust me they're coming. 

I'm also modifying my back-link strategy slightly:

Google has always had a duplicate content penalty but over the last few years scrapers have gotten good at getting around that by mixing and matching content and adding just enough of their own to have it appear unique to a machine. Now Google have made a few additional changes to their search algorithm to penalize scraper sites. The question is, what changes did they make?  

My guess is that one of the things they are looking at is the number of "deep links" you have from other websites linking to content deep in your own site. Sites that scrape content tend to have many links from high ranking sites to their home page but few links to content deep in the site because people just don't find the content valuable enough.

So one of the ways I'm reacting to this algorithm change is to make sure that it's not just our home page that is linked to, but pages deep within the site too.

Expect to see a few more changes from Google like this as the year progresses. Remember, the most important thing is to have unique and useful content and to let the right websites know about it. 

Lastly, Google just launched a service that you'll hear about in the news tomorrow to help Egyptians stay in touch with the rest of the world as the government there removes Internet and Cellphone access. It's called Speak2Tweet and it's a collaboration between Twitter and Google. Here's the quote from Google's Blog in case you don't have web access and are in Egypt:

"It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet."

There are already some incredible messages being posted by Egyptians including this one referring to the million person march planned for tomorrow.

On a personal note, having lived through the transition of South Africa to a democracy, I'd like to wish any Egyptians who are Weekly Feed subscribers or Feedjit members a safe and influential week! 

Best regards,

Mark Maunder

Feedjit Founder & CEO

Whose Kool-Aid Am I Drinking?

The benefits of deforestation.

All in an economy's rapid fall/rise.

There's a riddle there, if you know what not to look for/at.

When there's no Internet, there's always citizen band (CB) / amateur radio, personal satellites and drone networks no one can see you're flying over their state of deNile.

Who owns America?

Let's see...they take money from the U.S. Treasury and then they won't let Americans have their portion of facebook?  Hmm...

Makes me wonder what I'm going to do next with my network of associates and colleagues to implement some international corrective action of our own.

Patience, Rick, patience, I try to tell myself, this will work out to our favour in the long run!

Valid on bus and streetcar lines

Another island, another spontaneous outburst of solidarity.

The two Irish governments proclaimed today to be President Robert Bentley Day, in honour of their decision to unite as one Christian nation where brothers and sisters in Christ can work and play together.

As President For Life, Dr. Bentley will preside over a democracy where abortions are banned, divorces are not allowed and child/spouse abusers will be flogged in the public square of their local townships and locked in stockades for all passersby to jeer.

Vegetable venders will be allowed to sell ten percent of their produce as waste, to be used as projectiles thrown at prisoners put on public daily display on a rotating basis. Those prisoners not on display in the public square will be seen working in roadside cleanup chain gangs.

Prisoners convicted of white collar crimes will be assigned one of the following duties: cleaning public toilets, working for the national diaper changing brigade, or psychobiological weapons testing.

The single government of Ireland officially operates under the guidance of the SSSF Party.

The SSSF Party declares solidarity with its nonChristian brothers and sisters fighting corruption in Tunisia and Algeria. The Party wishes an Irish blessing on the two Korean governments seeking resolution of the conflicts between their brothers and sisters, no matter what religion(s) they choose to worship the Almighty Creator.

Rumours are spreading that Israel and Palestine are considering forming a joint task force to develop a plan for peaceful negotiations for the opening of a civil conversation to politely detail the discussions that might lead to a possible reconciliation of a few thousands of years of misunderstanding an argument between a nomadic shepherd and a rug merchant over the value of a peace they established concerning the value of a piece of unfarmable/ungrazable land that they both agree was built by God/Allah and is for Allah's/God's use only; thus, they are temporary caretakers, neither can own the land outright and must share equally.

India and Pakistan are taking a wait-and-see approach to these acts of unselfish love for one another.

Meanwhile, "Baby" Papa Doc Duvalier says he always had his people's best interests in mind and that's why he seemed so cruel - he was just playing the part of a stern and assertive father of children who needed a lot of discipline to stay on the straight and narrow path to membership in the international brotherhood and sisterhood of mature nations - look what happened to them after he left - they need him now more than ever.

Amazonian Indian tribes are not fooled by any of these proclamations/acts. They remember the deforestation that round after round of collapsed civilisations told the tribes were for their best interests.

The U.S. government released a statement clarifying the intention of the Extended Family Act, which eliminated public and private pension plans and replaced them with a directive that encourages all extended family members to move in together under one roof to save overhead costs in order to allow the family members to live off a few salaries or the salary of the primary breadwinner. Tax incentives will take effect in 2040 that compensate the children who suffered under the early years of the EFA.

Producers of "The King's Speech" made their final payment to Ricky Gervais for his backhanded comedic adverts of the movie, disguised as insulting jokes he told at the Golden Globes. Celebrate subliminal subtlety!

Consult an advisor if continuing study in the discipline

After much debate with eggheads floating in thinktanks, the president declared that she is running as the lead candidate for all parties in the next election.

The Ups, the Downs, the Lefts, the Rights, the Centrists, the Single Platformers, the Dive Platformers, the All-Arounders, and the Unofficial Undecideds.

Now that the president has stepped forth and stood beside the opposition, warmly reaching out to political commentators of all shapes and sizes, the world is both shocked and unsurprised.

The truth will find a way.

We are one species.

Imagine all the possibilities if we admitted such.

For starters, politicians could focus on tough issues, not worried that they won't get reelected because they've all declared themselves head of every party fronting viable and unlikely candidates.

Business and government fully merge into one entity, doing away with old confusing labels.

Standing armies and private armies - what's the difference anymore?

The Geneva Convention gives way to a universal business code of ethics.

All is all.

The business-as-usual approach to changing market conditions.

Holly/Bolly/Hongwood media industries become the official voice of the people, no longer required to produce quasishocking storylines to gain market share, although they will continue to produce antiestablishment films and music to identify which citizens are attracted to topics of an antisocial nature and need reeducation or one-way trips to Mauritius, Afghanistan or Aruba.

Children who complain that the house is too cold or the food variety is unacceptable will be required to chop and haul wood to stoves used for heating their rooms and work on the farm to raise and slaughter animals and plants which they'll cook for the whole neighbourhood every evening.

City parks will be converted into working farms to show urban dwellers that life doesn't happen by magic.

Addicted gamers will be required to work in virtual factories that the gamers don't know are connected to real automated ones (and you thought a simulated play environment let you escape your chores - wait until you see what we do with unproductive working gamers!).

The president is smiling - she is in a happy place. All is right with the world of people who aren't going anyplace else anytime soon.

Of course, the Committee has me working on how to convert their entities into the material that'll let them move in and out of the twines, strings and bubbles woven into whatever it is we're not supposed to talk about because it can't be fully described in this universe.

No time to proofread - there's a species to observe quietly and satirically. Every voice, no matter what it's saying, is the voice of my people - celebrate them all equally and the life-affirming will outshine the life-negating everytime, especially when satire contains the hidden and obvious seeds for growing the next generation's glorious achievements.

Thanks to all the wonderful, beautiful, smiling faces at Thai Garden last night, where commerce meets the family dinner table.