Rubénerd Blog :)

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism?

~ Bill Maher

In other news, the photo above by Bbsrock on Wikipedia of Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins at the Atheist Alliance International conference in Burbank, California is the definition of awesomeness ^_^.

It’s that time of year again for people to cast their votes in the New Humanist magazine’s Bad Faith award. Last year’s winner was Sarah Palin, who’ll win this time around?

Ladies and gentleman, the time has come. For months now, nominations have been pouring in for those most deserving of our prestigious Bad Faith Award, presented each year to the person deemed to have made the most outstanding contribution to the cause of unreason.

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I love the term "memes", not least because the concept was invented by my philosophical and scientific hero and idol Sir Richard Dawkins! I’ve always wanted to start my own and Twitter has given me the vessel in which to test my ocean going meme vessel things. Well that was a lousy analogy.

My idea all started when I was playing around with an empty Toblerone box. My spell checker on this machine insists the word Toblerone is spelt Testosterone. We’re clearly on two different wavelengths.

Introducing #ProductNose; taking inanimate objects and pretending they form a part of your nasal protuberance, whatever the heck that’s supposed to be. Oh yeah, a nose.

In order from top, bottom left and bottom right we have Toblerone Nose, Farmers Union Iced Coffee Nose and IKEA Bin Nose. I think the latter is the most flattering. Well okay none of them are flattering, but that’s the least unflattering, or the most flattering depending on how you want to phrase it. I think.

I seem to be having trouble with Google Reader this afternoon, it won’t let me comment on stories (perhaps it’s frustrated I haven’t cooked a grilled cheese sandwich in a few days). So instead I’m posting the story summaries here and commenting on them with Clipmarky goodness!

RichardDawkins.net: Bloomington Rejects ‘You Can Be Good Without God’; Lawsuit Underway

Bloomington was first on the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign’s list of places it hoped to run bus ads. However, the city has rejected our campaign’s slogan, ‘You Can Be Good Without God.’ This is deeply disappointing to our campaign’s members; we all love Bloomington and were very much hoping to run ads in our hometown along with many other cities.

Go to original Clipmark >

I have a hard time believing that faith in Gods is a nesissary precondition to being good. In fact, I’d wager more than a few grilled sandwiches that people who don’t believe are often more moral because they’re not just doing things for a divine reward or because they’re afraid of the divine Hell punishment if they don’t, they’re moral because they they know it’s the right thing to do.

Conversely, I have a hard time believing my religious friends who are moral, honest and caring people would regress into immoral, nasty people if religion disappeared, or that they’re only friendly people because they’re religious. It’s an insult to their character.

What I find interesting is that Christianity uses the threat of everlasting Hell to scare people into believing, but Judaism doesn’t: at least not in the same sense. When I was really studying religion a few years ago I was told that the closest the Jewish faith has to a Hell is "Gehenna" which is more akin to purgatory or a waiting area where wicked people are sent for a definite period of time, measured in months. Judaism also has what I would consider an enlightened, almost Buddhist philosophy that hell is also a mental state where the feelings of shame you have is the punishment itself. I don’t believe in the Jewish faith as much as I don’t believe in any other for the reasons I’ve stated many times here, but it’s an interesting observation.

Now I really am going to Hell aren’t I? ^_^

I didn’t think ABP was necessary to make the web usable until I went to a machine that didn’t have it!

It’s another case of someone else saying exactly what I’ve been thinking for a very long time, but because they’re not Ruben Schade they’re able to articulate what they mean in a few words instead of a bloated paragraph such as the one you’re reading now. In fact this whole paragraph could have been condensed into one simple line: “look at what this person said on Twitter”.

“monetization” is an evil, ugly word that has infested the internet with hollow promises and broken dreams

~BrainDouche

The way I see it, when people start thinking they need to monitise their weblog, their podcast, their time-shifted programming (I agree Jim, it’s a silly name), their cat, the cold water tap on their kitchen sink and so on, except in a few select cases they inevitably cause more damage and in the long run hurt their chances of making money.

You know what most people appreciate online? Being treated line an adult, and being treated with respect. Huge flashy banner advertisements to me are a glowing sign that states they’re more interested in making a quick buck than respecting you.

Common sense, we hardly knew thee…

Obviously if a site isn’t interesting people won’t go to it, so the chances for them to make money is reduced. Therefore even if we’re just talking about the narrow view of making money, it’s in their interest (I love pointless puns) to make their sites engaging and… not irritating!

I’d be interested to see the before and stats on sites that have put up splash screen advertisements you need to click before going to the rest of the site (I hate those!) and sites that have replaced discreet Google AdWords or something similar with huge banner ads. I’d hedge (another horrible financial pun) my bet that they’ve done themselves a disservice.

The extent of the advertising on my own site

As a real world example, since last year my site has had a silly "Buy Ruben a Cup of Coffee" button on the side for those to contribute to if they like something they’ve read here or if they’ve found something useful. I’ve had more than a dozen cups bought for me, which is far more money than I made from having text advertisements on my pages for a couple of years. The former is far less intrusive, and I like to think it means I treats my visitors like adults rather than just drones to market stuff to.

I also display a couple of banners gratis at the bottom of my page here for RichardDawkins.net and for FreeBSD, but that’s because I appreciate their causes and want to help. Given the search queries people enter into Google to get here a large percentage of my readers would be interested in them anyway.

In a round about way, what I’m saying is: people like honesty. I guess despite my age group being one of the the "target demographics" I’m old fashioned in that regard.

If you’ve been displaying the Scarlet A with pride on your website, I noticed recently that there’s a new so called "fancy version" with a metallic gradient you can use now instead of the previous solid colour. Looking at it on my site with mostly dark colours I think the previous one suited it better, but for the sake of something different I’ve switched. Hard hitting stuff!

For those I’ve lost, check out The OUT Campaign.

As for the devil smiling? Let’s just say I’m being realistic about my future prospects!