The Times has a long article about the extremely high level of literacy in Finland. But deep in the body the reason becomes totally obvious:
“… Lastly, children grow up watching television shows and movies (many in English) with subtitles. So they read while they watch TV.”
I guess that would have made for a very short article. I wonder if we could arrange to make watching TV require solving math problems? Maybe I should hack the TV so it only shows the Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese channels!
Join the fun! Cascade the meme! Google bomb the ad engine!
Brad DeLong plays telephone.
Virginia Postrel muses about the online ads business:
Dynamist Blog: GOOGLE AD SECRETS: One little mention of a site selling a term paper on my NYC talk and now my Google ads are mostly for fraudulent term papers. I trust that no readers of this fine site are in the market–though if you click on the ads and don’t buy a term paper, perhaps that will teach these people not to advertise, at least on honest websites.
I’m told by a high-level Google exec that the way to get more action from Google ads is to write a lot about term life insurance. That’s because people shopping online for term life insurance really are interested in the subject–they want to shop right now, and they tend to buy insurance when they do. It’s what Steve calls the mattress store principle. Most of the time a mattress store has no customers, but nearly every customer who comes in buys a mattress. The same is generally true of term life insurance and probably of fraudulent term papers.
Now that I’m not going to Saudi Arabia and therefore can actually get term life insurance (insurers don’t like those Saudi risk factors), I do indeed need to buy some term life insurance. Does anyone have a good recommendation for a source of term life insurance? How about you folks at Google ads? Will this post get action? BTW, readers will no doubt notice that I’m now carrying Blogads, which pay much better than Google.
Oh, I should mention. If you live in Massachusetts you just want to go buy “Savings Bank Life Insurance,” end of story.
My wife attempts to invoke the Lazy Web. I wonder just how powerful is the hivemind?
From today’s Tidbits.
Canned Spam Can Can Spam with CAN-SPAM — Hormel is expected to announce today their campaign to can spam using their canned Spam with the aid of the CAN-SPAM legislation. Starting today, Hormel will print the phone number, email addresses, and other information about unsolicited email senders on cans of Spam along the lines of the “Have you seen me?” photographs published on milk cartons. Canned Spam buyers who help to can spam by canning spammers can receive cans of Spam as a reward.”
Tidbits may well have been one of the very first blogs. Of course that was a long time ago. Now we know you can’t really call your self a blog if you have any readers. As soon as you have readers your a media outlet. Tidbits has a long tradition of particularly fine April fools editions.
Speaking of which I discover via Technorati that a) there are now two million blogs in their database, and b) I’m in the top .5% of all blogs. OMG – I’m a member of the oligarcy! Now that’s a joke!
I recall reading many years ago about the history of books on manners and etiquette. These may have been among the first “X for Idiot” books, the first of the torrent of self-help books that now have an entire section in the books store.
It appears that the early etiquette books came in two flavors. One flavor explained how good behavior was a matter of not behaving like the animals. These books sound like fun with a chapter for each kind of animal and how somepeople behave like a fox, pig, cow, dog, etc.
The second kind of etiquette book would explain how to act like the lords and ladies. I guess these survive to this day in celeb. magizines. I gather that the rising middle class would buy these and then mimic the current fashions of the court. That in turn would force the court to change their behavior so they didn’t appear to be so middleclass.
So now I’m torn. Should I strive to avoid behaving like all the little insect blogs or should I reach upward and mimic the behavior of the alpha bloggers. There must be a book I can read to guide my behavior.
I wonder if my status can be converted into wealth or power? Maybe I should get some peasants? Raise an army. Build a moat. Support stronger property rights. Sound science – support the meritocracy!
My wife just told me I’d have to read about it in her blog.
Reminds me of one of those 60s sitcoms where the two people argue thru a third person, all in the same room. “You tell him that I …” “Well when you see her you just tell her that…”
This business of living in a world with 20 different communication channels is exausting. “Did you read my email?” “Wern’t you on IRC when we discusssed that?” “Oh, yeah you weren’t at that lunch.” “Did you get my phone message?” “Did you see that thing on my blog?” One of the projects near me has a 24 hour teleconfrence standing by at all times.
Gotta run, I need to pull together the power-point presentation the cats requested for after dinner tonight.
via Link – Ultimate Fark headline, still no cure for cancer though.
“The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will
turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and
corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and children will
laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.”– Reverend Billy Sunday on the Prohibition
Notice that m4, icon, ada, are all here at that point in history, but while awk has arrived Perl is still in the future.
Quickly – gather the children and bundle them up! They must come and see. There’s been a sighting of a Seattle Internet IPO. No one has seen one of those since the last century.
Long ago they shot across the horizon in flocks so great that they would darken the noon sky. Their great jowly beaks were stuffed with what seemed like an endless supply of capital. …more…
Put these on some flash cards. Practice. There will be a quiz.