“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home, That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan from ‘Pale Blue Dot’

Some other Sagan links:
http://www.coseti.org/klaescnt.htm - a lot of information about the movie ‘Contact’

http://www.sciencenter.org/SaganPW/ - A planet walk dedicated to Carl Sagan with numbers given for a scaled down version of the solar system.

http://paleblue.us/about.html - another blog inspired by ‘pale blue dot’

“Do we, holding that gods exist, deceive ourselves with insubstantial
dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control
the world?” — EURIPIDES, Hecuba

“Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?”– Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

The French author and philosopher Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
(1694-1778) once said that if God did not exist, we would have to invent
him.

“Now can anyone look upon and compare these systems (of Jupiter and
Saturn) together, without being amazed at the vast magnitude and noble
attendants of these two planets, in respect of this little pitiful Earth
of ours? Or can they force themselves to think that the wise Creator has
disposed of all his animals and plants here, has furnished and adorned
this spot only, and has left all those worlds bare and destitute of
inhabitants, who might adore and worship Him; or that all those
prodigious bodies were made only to twinkle to and be studied by some
few perhaps of us poor fellows?” –Christiaan Huygens

(I always wanted to learn more about Christiaan Huygens after I heard about him while watching Cosmos. Anyone know of any good sources of information?)

As I was trying to get motivated to write more content for one of my sites today I started thinking about what it is that I really want.

I realized that what I really want is to exist, be happy and to enjoy things.

But with life being as short and precarious as it is - with ageing, disease, weakness and death being what we inevitably have to look forward to with life - and so many people that die young and suddenly from sickness, accidents or natural disasters (some of which could potentially wipe out our entire species) - I can’t be satisfied with just living and being happy.

I want more.

Although I believe that science will eventually find ways to prevent ageing and most if not all disease, I don’t think this will happen in my lifetime.

So what is left? The only thing that makes sense for me to spend my life on this planet doing is to learn more about what we are and what the universe is - or in other words - find the answer to ‘life, the universe and everything’. Likely I won’t be able to find the answer in my lifetime either. But anything I do find out will contribute to the body of knowledge our species has. And will bring us one step closer to eliminating suffering and death - not for me but for someone, sometime at least.

So, back to writing and working on sites that mean something to me - those about some aspect of science or humanity that I can learn about and spread that information to others. And I’ll try to be happy and enjoy what I encounter along the way.

[This should have been put in the SEO/SEM category, but got put in Other by accident, since that is the default. ]

A big story started unfolding a couple of days ago about Adsense and how Smart Pricing works. It started at Webmaster World when one member got a phone call from Adsense and in the course of the conversation it was revealed that Smart Pricing is calculated not on a per site basis, but based on an entire account. It otherwords, if someone has more than one site with adsense on them all their sites can be affected because of just one of them.

The basic concept of Smart Pricing is not a bad idea. If an ad from ’someplace’ tends to not to convert into sales for the advertiser, then advertisers pay less for ads from ‘there’. The problems with it include how the conversions and being counted. From what I understand it depends for one thing upon whether or not an advertiser even using that feature of Adwords. Many do not. Many can’t really track conversions that well.

And now we find out that the ad from ’someplace’ may not refer to just a specific site, but any site in a person’s account. So if a person has one site that doensn’t convert well, this could lead to Smart Pricing having negative effect on how much they can make on their other sites too.

Jenstar, the moderator of the Adsense Forum at Webmaster World posted in her blog about this: One poorly converting site can “smart price” an entire AdSense accoun. Plus several other threads have popped up at WMW about this now too including this one:
Jenstar reveals data about Adsense Smart Pricing.

At the time of this writing we have not heard any official confirmation from Google about whether this is really true or not: smart pricing per site or per account.

In addition, since Adsense does not always have data to determine conversion rates accurately it has been speculated that CTR’s may sometimes be figured into the equation - leading many to suggest removing Adsense from pages with a low click through rate.

I would like for Adsense to deny or confirm this whole account thing and if its true I really think they should change that. Let it at least be figured on a per site basis - although ideally I’d like to see it handled on a per channel basis, but that may be too complicated.

Meanwhile, I will seriously consider removing Adsense from my pages with a low ctr - some months ago this was discussed WMW and I did remove Adsense from some pages. For other reasons it was hard to tell if it helped any, but at any rate it didn’t seem to hurt, and many posters at WMW seemed pretty convinced that it helped their sites.

I was reading the October issue of National Geographic last night. It has the saddest story about elephants in Thailand!

Jokia: was working in an illegal logging place, and forced to keep working while pregnant and then miscarried. She then refused to work and one of her handlers blinded her in one eye with a slingshot. As a response she ended up breaking the arm of her owner, who then shot her in her other eye, leaving her totally blind. Even then they forced her to work in chains - and then beat her when she ran into trees!

Luckily Jokia was rescued by a woman, Sangduen Chailert, who has rescued many animals and lets them live on a forest reserve in peace and freedom.

Apparently it is common for elephants to be trained and tamed by closing them up into a small cage and beating them and depriving them of food, water and sleep for days. Even sometimes stabbing their feet with nails!

In the article it also describes an elephant breaking a stick and using it with his trunk to scratch a hard to reach spot. At one time it was believed that only Homo sapiens could use tools - this has been disproved numerous times now with many species. Clearly these elephants and other tool users are intelligent beings! How can anyone justify treating them so badly? And then to be surprised when they do something violent to defend themselves?

Very sad - and what does it say about us - Homo sapiens? Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that some of us are so cruel to other intelligent animals considering how we treat each other much of the time. Clearly something is wrong.

Sometimes I wonder if we are flawed in some fundamental way. Maybe our extinction is inevitable - if we are not capable of living more cooperatively with our own and other species - maybe we are doomed to disappear. And maybe that is ok. Maybe this universe doesn’t need our kind.

[Somewhat off topic - recently an infant gorilla in a Congo sanctuary was observed using tools also! Not many people have seen gorillas using tools, so this was a big discovery. Unfortunately I don't have a link to the original story, it was sent to me in an email - I can mail it to anyone if they are interested.]

I think one of the biggest things keeping me from achieving my goals is that it takes me too long to write anything. I’m too perfectionistic for one thing and it seems like just getting each word out is a painful process sometimes.

If I could write faster, I’d have a lot more content on my sites and be able to make a lot more money. I need to work on this but I’m not sure how. It seems like it comes so easy to some people.

One thing I thought I would try is to really try to write in a more casual, first person style. My background in science really nearly took that ability away from me. Everything had to be written extremely precisely and perfectly. Now its hard for me to just write without scrutinizing every little word.

I’m really going to try to write in this blog more often too - for practice in just writing.

Just saw this from Mivox’s site: jesus was a sissy!

If you hear a different drummer - dreamer, take a chance …
The road you choose to travel means the difference in the dance.”
- D. Morgan

I have to get this off my chest: American Dad sucks! Tom Goes to the Mayor sucks too! What the hell are they thinking at Adult Swim? I want to see more Aqua Teen, Venture Brothers, Harvey Birdman, etc. Those are good shows. Venture Brothers is pure genius!

Nothing is more pliable than water but when amassed,
there is nothing that can withstand its force.
That the soft overcomes the hard,
and the yielding conquers the unyielding
is a fact known to all - yet utilized by none.

- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching