Yesterday Wes Benedict sent out an email that answers questions that some of us have had regarding the 16 proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution that are supposed to appear on the ballot for this year’s general election on November 6, 2007. Our state LP has taken official positions on 10 of the possible amendments, while low enthusiasm and lack of consensus seems to have prevented them from taking positions on the remaining six.
There are four of these (7, 10, 11, 14) that I will definitely be voting in favor of; they will generally increase freedom for some people and reduce unnecessary government functions, albeit in a very small way. Number 11 would be especially beneficial because it will allow us to find out how our state representatives actually voted on all bills that reach the final floor vote in the legislature.
The remainder of the proposals seem less impressive. A few of them are clearly undesirable because they will increase government spending and potential debt, and will also likely lead to future tax increases, which of course reduces our economic freedom. Most of the others are difficult to determine positions on because it is unclear whether their net effects will be favorable for us or not. In many cases, the ballot language suggests that there will be some tax reductions or exemptions, but the overall effect would simply favor certain special interests and shift the tax burden from one group of people to another, which does not exactly fit with our ideas of fairness or liberty.
Therefore, following my usual procedure for elections such as this, I will probably default to “no” votes for all but the four most desirable proposals cited above. Alternatively, we could simply abstain from voting on the ones that we really don’t care about or in cases where the ballot language makes the true effects of a proposed amendment difficult to understand.
This article by Kat Yares lists seven important actions that we can take in order to become successful writers and bloggers. As these actions evolve into established habits, the tasks of consistent writing and posting will eventually seem easier and more natural.
1. Read
To write you must read. Anything and everything. If you’re a blogger, read other people’s blogs. You must pay attention to how others put words on paper or type them into their web pages. By reading, you discover what readers or editors are looking for and what has been successful.
2. Observe
Watch people. Look at their mannerisms and characteristics, eavesdrop on their conversations. See your surroundings. Feel the wind in your face. Hear the sounds of nature or the sounds of the city. Allow yourself to feel the warmth of the sun or the iciness of a winter rain. Describe it.
This article by Aaron Turpen from MilitantLibertarian.org discusses the various uses and benefits of the kubotan, a small but potentially very effective self-defense weapon that can be carried even in places where most other kinds of weapons have been legally banned.
The little five to six inch tube or cylinder made of wood, plastic, or metal seems harmless enough. After all, you can’t swing it like a club, cut or stab anyone with it, nor can you throw it at anyone with any effectiveness. Despite these apparent limitations, the kubotan is probably the most prolific self-defense weapon in America.
Developed by Shihan Tak Kubota as a more modern and practical yawara stick, the little kubotan most often serves as a keyring yet it retains the striking and joint-locking capabilities of its progenitor, the yawara.
Those who do not practice martial arts have still found the kubotan to be a highly effective self-defense tool which is legal in almost all jurisdictions nationwide. Used as a fist “equalizer” for punching, the kubotan can literally save your hands from breakage in an encounter. The ends, which protrude from the fist a few centimeters, can be used to give painful blows to soft tissue or hard bony areas and can literally kill an opponent if used with skill on vital areas.
This somewhat humorous piece by N. Matyas describes an awkward situation in which a father brings his two year old son to a football game and tries to explain that the diaper bag he is carrying is actually a backpack. Ironically, after arguing his case unsuccessfully with his friends, he has to turn his story around and argue in favor of the diaper bag when he is stopped by the stadium security guards for carrying a “backpack”.
Another rather comprehensive update was released by Royal Surf today, bringing news of an upcoming game feature, tweaks to surf ratios and bonuses, special awards for advertising and splash page design, and the winners of recent surfing contests.
This time, however, before displaying the text of the update, I will include a little video of some jousting tournament footage that was produced by the Full Tilt jousting troupe from Australia. I know that some of you are arriving at my Royal Surf update pages from searches on keywords like “jousting tournament”, “medieval jousting”, and other similar phrases. This means that you may be experiencing some disappointment upon discovering that the content of these pages is about some traffic exchange that you’ve probably never heard of instead of the real jousting-related information that you were presumably expecting.
If you happen to be one of these readers, then hopefully this video will satisfy some of your curiosity about what medieval jousting performances really looked like. This particular clip was one of the best quality productions available at YouTube on the subject, although there are many others that can be viewed by doing a video search on jousting-related keywords. This particular piece is approximately two minutes long and highlights the various feats that medieval knights performed during the jousting tournaments, including a dramatic double unhorsing scene near the end.
The-Owl-Post PTR has released a fairly comprehensive update today, covering topics such as recent payouts, mailer issues, and blog updates.
On an interesting side note, I recently discovered during a Google search on her name that Admin Michele Ballard was mentioned in a rather lengthy Business Week article from October of last year. The topic of the article is “Click Fraud” and the piece on Michele is buried pretty far down on the page. To find it, scroll down until you see the boldface subheading “Korean Clones” and look for the 13th paragraph below this. The next four paragraphs are about our intrepid webmistress. Business Week’s coverage of her was not entirely favorable because of the implication that her program may be enabling click fraud, but they did give her a chance to defend herself and the PTR industry.
Meanwhile, she has finally started to post some “ramblings” on her blog at http://theowlsblog.blogspot.com/ after a long dry spell. During this period, some questionable entries were made in which a few words, apparently from the Spanish language, were displayed as a title, but the posts were otherwise completely devoid of content. More recently, placed in between the entries for October 12th and 15th, a third mysterious Spanish language entry was made, this one containing about a paragraph of actual text for the body of the post. Amazingly, neither Michele nor any of the other contributors to the Owl Post blog have done anything about these illogical entries or have offered any sort of explanation for them. In my opinion, it is probably just some Spam that is being made to look like it is coming from one of the blog’s authors.
At any rate, you can read the program update below, complete with the usual complement of smiley faces and occasional English usage errors:
Although this article by L.T. Wright was composed from the standpoint of a traditional freelance writer, most of the same motivations and experiences that the author mentions also apply to modern bloggers. The technology of writing and publishing has certainly changed; instead of dealing with brown envelopes and mailboxes, we can simply press that handy-dandy little “Publish” button. However, this article is still one that I can readily relate to because the fundamental experiences involved with creating new content and attempting to make a living from it have not substantially changed with the passage of time.
What exactly is it that motivates wannabe writers to take the plunge into the competitive, minefield spawn world of writing?
It is a scary experience finally posting off with shaking hands and apprehension, that big brown envelope full of all your hopes and dreams of becoming an established writer. Now the waiting begins and you start to count rejection letters jumping over the fence in place of sheep in your sleep.
In one of the few free offerings at Constant Content that has not been duplicated on other sites, this article by Christina McAllister reminds us that we should strive to maintain a sense of professionalism in our marketing endeavors and avoid the trap of becoming too personal with our potential customers.
Many marketing books and gurus repeat a similar message: Get personal! Build relationships with your customers! Get to know your customers and let them get to know you!
Great advice. But there’s a fine line between relationship building and getting a little too personal.
In the past several weeks, our household received many pieces of direct mail regarding political candidates, their platforms and reminders to vote in the primary election. Many of these pieces were informative. But a few pieces were a little too intimate to be tasteful and productive forms of marketing.
Currently rated as one of the best performing manual traffic exchanges, EasyHits4U.com has just released their latest newsletter. They are announcing a new surfing contest for October along with some significant expansions of the site’s features that will now be made available to free members. Specifically, it will now be possible for free members to surf without having to have an active site in the rotation, making it possible for us to save up credits and use them later at our discretion.
In another welcome move for credit savers, they have also lifted the forced 50% auto assign requirement, which means that we can now receive one full credit for each site that we view while also saving up to 100% of our advertising potential. The details of both the contest and the feature expansions are explained in the newsletter below.
Originally intended as an example of a speech that would be given by the CEO of the tollfreenumber.org site, this article by Adsophilos was apparently never used or sold. However, it does make a pretty good point about the need for clear communication between businesses and their customers.
Thirty seconds before the dot of the hour, Chief Executive Officer John Jones strode to the podium. He strung his prop over the top edge of its canted table. He swept his eyes over the crowd as he justified his notes against the lip at the table’s lower end, He tucked a couple of loose items from inside the podium into his jacket pocket. On the dot of the hour, he drew the mike from its stand, moved into the open and began to speak.
In addition to article syndication, using hosted content is another excellent way to build backlinks to your site for SEO purposes. Hosted content sometimes goes by different names such as “advertorials” or “content swapping”, but they all essentially work in the same manner. You write an article, include backlinks to your site, and pay another site owner a small fee to display your content on his/her site.
As an author, this may not seem like a very attractive option because you are actually having to pay to get your article published, but with this method, you have the advantage of being able to embed your backlinks into the body of the article’s text instead of being confined to a standard resource box. This is supposed to help in optimizing backlinks for the search engines because it looks more “natural”. Also, at least according to the “money talks” theory, this can be a way of building favorable relations with other site owners since most people like the idea of getting paid for very little work.
Yesterday Wes Benedict sent out an email that answers questions that some of us have had regarding the 16 proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution that are supposed to appear on the ballot for this year’s general election on November 6, 2007. Our state LP has taken official positions on 10 of the possible amendments, while low enthusiasm and lack of consensus seems to have prevented them from taking positions on the remaining six.
This article by Aaron Turpen from MilitantLibertarian.org discusses the various uses and benefits of the kubotan, a small but potentially very effective self-defense weapon that can be carried even in places where most other kinds of weapons have been legally banned.
