Your Own Ads: to click or not to click?

I remember reading about how Google once had to refund some $90 million to advertisers because of alleged "click fraud". I then read in the Terms and Conditions for the Google Adsense that messing around with the ads could get your service terminated.

But then I was listening to a BBC World interview with employees of Google. They were asking one of the managers there about the ads, about the moral question of whether some users of google weren't able to tell whether they were actually clicking on ads. The manager defended the utility of ads on Google. He said,

"I click on them all the time."

Whoa! The managers at google "click on them all the time?! Then in reading the fine print at the Google Adsense TOS, I see the phrase is "repeated." So maybe there's no harm in my own clicking on those ads for great vacation savings on a trip to Bali, as show up in my other blog.

Detriments to Google Reader.

The Google Reader service is touting their recent changes to the service. I think it got a lot worse.

It used to be that when you'd load up the page, you'd get immediately be immersed into the most recent posting you were subscribed to. Then you could just space bar your way through the whole set of postings. Now, it looks like all they have made the interface closer to that of bloglines. Now I see no way of space-bar-ring through the whole list, and I'm forced to do a lot more clicking to move between items. The Google Reader service says they've responded to feedback. I'm wondering who really wanted it this way?

Why are you running away?

Finally rigged my test character in blender, and playing around with the rotation of the armatures.

Conservative Lutherans affirm Bill Maher's agnosticism

I was listening to some podcast discussions from KFUO, the radio station of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod (LC-MS), the more politically conservative wing of American Lutheran Christianity. The host of this program and his pastor-guest were giving a pretty moving account of a bible passage about Jesus' passion.

Then the guest brought up a discussion he had seen on TV with Bill Maher. The pastor's quote went like this: [paraphrase from memory]

"Bill Maher is one of those liberals who hearts his heart on his sleeve. I saw him on a TV show and in reference to some perceived moral offense, he said, 'Jesus doesn't stand for things like that.' Now Bill and a lot of folks want Jesus the moral philosopher but they don't want Jesus the divine one crucified for our sins."

Overall, this pastor gave a pretty good defense of the orthodox position in Christianity, that Jesus is not just a philosopher but God incarnate and that his death is not an inspiring political act but a work that saves us from our sins. The problem is that I think that the pastor gave the strongest possible reason not to take Christianity seriously in that above quote.

He could have said, "Bill Maher was talking about a moral problem. It's not just a moral problem, but a sin that separates us from God, and that separation is only repaired by the work of Christ on the cross." Instead, the pastor primarily belittled the law written on Bill's heart by calling it a "perceived moral offense." Who wants a God who cannot see the grave sins that even the most resolute atheist can see? Who needs to be saved from nominal and childish, from abstract sins? It's almost as if he couldn't both witness to Christ crucified and affirm that Bill could have seen something as Very Wrong and it being an offense to God. I think that is where a political conservatism, an ingrained defense of the status quo, becomes an impediment to our witness.

Luther wrote, "By making our sins small, we make Christ small."

Wesnoth strategy tip for "The Scepter of Fire" level

I was playing this game and every strategy I tried was losing. First I had recalled all my best units from previous levels, going massively into debt. I tried having four Shamans to keep everyone healed. All paths led to defeat. I could never defeat all the enemy kings and always had a key character die at the hands of a mass of troll-grunts. Even though I kept "staring over," each new strategy I tried was played out on the same map. That's because I only went back to around turn 2, after I had already recruited a whole bunch of folks.

Then I read in some forum for developers of the game about "randomization" of the map.

All my "retries" of the level above however involved the same map. Every time you start over in the game, you start with a new map. Due to this randomization, it is possible for one to have the Scepter out in plain sight down the main pathway. Once I had restarted the level and had this new and easy map, the level was a cinch. I only got out about 10 characters, and we stumbled onto the Scepter before we'd fought our fifth troll-grunt.

In retrospect, this points to an unfortunate design of the level, in that the tension between "cinch" and "impossible" was tied to a randomization factor at the beginning of the game: the map and Scepter location.

Free market solutions to hunger

I heard a presentation from a man who was then serving as a missionary to Madagascar.

He said that during times of period famine, merchants would come into the village and buy up their property. Their house for a few week's food. This was the mutually voluntary agreed upon price. Was it the just one?

The missionary said that he had been involved in an effort where he would buy grain far away and have it transported to the starving village. He'd then sell it at his cost. I was in the crowd, and I commended what he was doing. He said it was a drop in the bucket.

He also said he was chastised for his grain sales by the Pakistani businessmen who were involved in the house-buying, that this was not something to be done.

Martin Luther wrote in his "Sermon on Trade and Usury" about the public service of Joseph, who rose high in the court of Pharoah:

"Besides, there can be no doubt that as a Christian and a righteous man he let no poor man die of hunger, but, as the text states [Gen. 41:36], after he had been placed in charge of the king's temporal law and government he gathered, sold, and distributed the grain for the benefit and profit of the land and its people. Therefore, the example of the faithful Joseph is as remote from the conduct of the unfaithful, self-seeking merchants as heaven is far from earth."

Two rational views on the controversies surrounding violent Islamic mobs

First, from a secular view. From Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. The Philosophical Question of the Day

If a man goes into the forest and pokes a bear with a sharp stick, and the bear kills the man, whose fault is it?
...
Now substitute an irrational human being for the bear.
...
And let’s say the irrational person is completely rational in every way that is not related to his religion. He might even be an engineer or a doctor. But his irrational side is well understood by all. Now the guy with the sharp stick pokes him and gets killed.

Whose fault is it?

And then a source from an evangelical Christian perspective. From an article forwarded to me by an evangelical missionary. John Piper writes How Christians Should Respond to Muslim Outrage at the Pope's Regensburg Message About Violence and Reason

"How should Christians respond to this situation? I will suggest ten responses that flow from the Bible.

1. Admit that the Christian church has often been too entangled with civil governments, with the result that violence has been endorsed by the church as a way of accomplishing religious, and not just civil, goals. ...

2. Make clear that the use of God-sanctioned violence between Israel and the nations in the Old Testament is no longer God’s will for his people. ...

3. Admit that there are many Muslims today who do not approve of violence in the spread of Islam. ...

8. Always be ready to die, but never to kill, for the sake of commending Jesus Christ as the Son of God who died for sinners and rose again as the Lord of the universe. ...

9. Pray for the salvation of all those who belittle Jesus Christ. ...

10. No matter the cost, continue to exalt and commend Jesus Christ as the great and only Savior that he is. ..."

I would encourage interested persons to visit both links and benefit from the writings of these two wise men. One offers straightforward secular wisdom, the other a witness to Christ crucified amidst all this madness. Too often we have Christians speaking forth in the public square in a manner that sets aside both. Too often Christians embrace a foolhardy apology for the brutalities of the Empire-- engaging in an idolatry of Western Civilization-- instead of the foolishness of a suffering Christ.

Improved Blender head

Now I'm ready to start rigging. But maybe I should make a female character, too.

Last fm is pretty cool.

Uber-ginger man

I've been playing around with the Blender Summer of Documentation tutorial on Character Animation. They are showing you how to make a very stylized simple character. I took the character I made with them and put it in front of a rotoscope of an Arnold-like character, then tweaked my mesh.

"I'll be back for more icing."