October 2007 - Posts
One of the new things about tracking blogs through Google Reader is that you notice when people have made a posting that they subsequently delete.
For example, there are two entries on Greg Mankiw's blog. And they have both since been deleted.
The first link is to an article entitled "Mission Accomplished."
The second link is to an article entitled "Making Milton Proud."
Google Reader preserved not only the headlines, but the content of those articles too.
First article:
Mission Accomplished
from Greg Mankiw's Blog by Greg Mankiw
A reader emails me:
After nearly two years as your reader, you've pretty much singlehandedly made me a fiscal libertarian out of a former democratic socialist.
Second article:
Making Milton Proud
from Greg Mankiw's Blog by Greg Mankiw
From an email this morning:
After nearly two years as your reader, you've pretty much singlehandedly made me a fiscal libertarian out of a former democratic socialist.
Wow, I did not just see that. It looks like the Harvard economist was - this is just my hypothesis:
- Bragging
- Revising the brag to look a little less like a proud boast
- Realizing how bad it looked even with the revision, nuking both versions.
The other alternative is that someone hacked his site to do that. Since he's not a security specialist, I presume he would've actually announced he had been hacked rather than hiding the hack out of embarrassment. Which means that he probably intentionally wrote those two short articles before thinking better of it.
Well, good for him for realizing his mistake, I suppose. But I still find the bragging a bit weird. It's almost like a conscious Freudian slip, if such a thing is possible:
If there is a "vast conspiracy", though, the most fertile ground for documenting such a thing online, Wikipedia, has precious little content on the topic. Compare the above link to the Chicago School with the article about the Chicago Boys, who Klein cites in the Shock Doctrine. Of course, Klein's book got savaged by some for "a simplification of image and
presentation, rather than stressing the complexity, the details, and
the inevitable trade-offs of a particular product."
I think that Klein's book is a challenge to established thinking. Not a solid conviction of guilt, but a good place to encourage more thinking.
Speaking of thinking, the situation on Wikipedia goes to show that leftist activists have their priorities mixed up. Someone put together enough energy to compile a "Criticisms" section for Pope John Paul II, while Milton is basically gently caressed by his admirers in his Wiki entry.
Despite Wikipedia's "neutral Point of View" policy, if you see someone getting off scot-free, it just screams at you that people aren't looking very closely or being fair. Come on, they even attacked Mother Teresa on Wikipedia too. This paragraph indicates, basically, how much I dislike not only the ultra-capitalist crowds, but the ultra-socialist groups too. And also why I stopped spending as much time on Wikipedia as an editor/contributor as I did in the early days. There's just a few too many crazies for my taste.
Going back to Mankiw's stillborn postings, I think that the desire to avoid looking bad and to have more 'control' over what you're posted may be another reason why some blogs choose not to syndicate the content of their entire postings in their RSS feeds (technical term for how blog posts get sent to these automated "reader" programs). Some just post article titles or short snippets instead of the full articles. While the traditional explanation is that they want people to hit their site to view their ads or to just linger, this theory believes that they may want to avoid postings that they're going to regret making it out into the internet.
It's a silly reason - once you've hit "send" or "post", it's out there. I mean, you've got people like me wasting their time pointing these things out. There's no "cancel" or "undo" command online. There once was such a tool, actually, but abuse of it killed it a good 15-20 years ago. So maybe that theory doesn't stand up to much of an evaluation. If Mankiw were to change his RSS settings, though, then perhaps I'll be proved right on this guess.
Post a video instead. Bonus points if it includes Canadian farmers turned to pirates.
This is just great. Anything you know about Saskatchewan makes it even funnier. Thanks videosift.
The photo posted above is the closest image I could think of in my little picture library that resembles the question, "What???"
I had to post a quick follow-up to the piece I wrote moments ago when I saw another gem of insanity on Mankiw's blog, again quoting the office of the POTUS:
We don't think you should raise taxes
to pay for more spending.
People have various colourful expressions for the moment when your brain stops working. Typing out that sentence would have to be one of them.
How else, exactly, will you pay for more spending? If they mean to say they don't want to spend more money, I understand, but according to US Government Spending, a handy little website, it looks like since Dubya was granted the presidency by the Supreme Court, spending has increased by roughly a trillion dollars federally, and 1.5 trillion dollars in total.
It's amazing how much a quick Google Search reveals - the previous link mentions the total numbers. The Financial Times reports that Dubya's own party is upset about how much he's spending, and the US National Debt Clock continues to spiral upwards.
The FT article has an Orwellian quote from Giulliani:
“You’re going to have a choice in November 2008,” Mr Giuliani told
activists. “You can vote for me, where you will increase choices for
people. Or you can vote for the Democrats, who will increase choices
for government."
What is up with Republicans - and Democratic activists, like the "pro-choice" movement, and their constant PDAs for "choice"? Yes, choice is good, but you make it sound like your God is "Choice, the Almighty."
The Americans desperately need to balance their budget. They're going to have to raise taxes, no matter how much they cut back on services, to really pull it off. Is it going to happen? Well, if not, am I not the only person who foresees Bad Times ahead?
Courtesy of economist Greg Mankiw's blog is this excerpt from the office of the President of the United States:
We believe this is a step toward a
government-run system for all Americans. The President has made clear
that he believes this is the wrong direction. He prefers a system in
which the patient (and consumer) is at the center of decisions about
his own health care. Moving toward more government financing, and more
people in health plans chosen by the government, means less control for
the patient, and more decisions made in Washington and in State
capitals. This is bad.
My jaw just dropped when I saw that. As would that of anyone who lives in a country like Canada where we're doing rather well for ourselves with a government-funded health care system.
Yes, it's not perfect, but I'm happy to know that should I, God forbid, fall ill and lose my job, at least I don't have to worry about finding cash to get treatment for my illness. This is Good, Mr. President. The ideological opposition to helping everyone in trouble is both baffling and sickening - I really feel sick to my stomach having just looked at those words above!
I know the American private system isn't going to go away anytime soon - and even with increased government support that isn't going to change. I think the fearmongers know that too, but they're being financed way too lavishly by lobbyists to prevent the current level of killer profits from being nibbled away by those wanting to help the less fortunate in society. And by "less fortuante" I don't mean that as a pat euphemism about the poor. I mean it in relation to simply everybody in trouble.
The more sinister-minded people out there will also see another theory behind why the system operates the way it does right now: it keeps the American people in a permanently fearful position, not wanting to risk losing any job because of the attendant risk of losing health coverage.
Although you may need to be more conspiracy-minded to subscribe to this theory, it does carry a lot of anecdotal weight as a side effect of the current system in the US, doesn't it?
September was all about quantity, not quantity in terms of my writings. Just a few articles, but most illustrated with photos - some of which were even loosely related to the topic being discussed. These few posts definitely took more time to write, but the real factor behind the decline in posting frequency is directly related to the fact that I've been busy as heck. I did some math and found that in the fiscal year to date I've racked up more than 10% of the overtime in my group.
Yes, we also deal with detailed statistics at work - are you surprised? It's a CA firm! Accountants love statistics.
My group is comprised of a dozen and a half people, so I'm definitely 'above target.' I'm not complaining though, because my first years I got lucky, and was working on jobs with relatively easy hours, so I can take a few hits in the short term. Besides, my overtime for the past three months is equal to the amount of overtime one of my banker friends pull in 3 or 4 weeks, so life isn't all that bad.
So - last month the number of spams also fell - just 2166, a healthy drop of almost 400 off last month's record.
This lazy little public documentation project continues, because I really wonder - is there any easy way to track these figures? The words September 2007 Spam Count in google do return hits, actually. As does August 2007 Spam Count.
While playing around with google, I found one person who does the same thing, tracking the number of blog comment spam posts trapped and this hint on how to unbold or hide the spam counter in gmail.
Lastly, someone else is running a contest to see the number of spams that would hit - the potential to cheat by spamming the guy arises. Amusing.
Also, three cheers for Firefox: for some strange reason, the program shut down. I may or may not have told it to close. Regardless, it cleverly had everything saved when I re-launched, including this entire draft post. What a relief.