November and December AdBrite Summary

I didn't make a December version of this, because I was busy with my new wage slave job.

According to Google Analytics, I had 5504 Absolute Unique Visitors in November and 5077 in December. That's slightly less than 5763 in October, but people go on vacation for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I made $6.68 in November and $7.69 in December. My eCPM rates were $0.22 in November and $0.25 in December.

According to Google Reader, I have 117 RSS subscribers. When I used FeedBurner, that number was about 50% of the total. AdBrite doesn't have an "ads in RSS feed" option.

I'm going to need a *LOT* more pageviews in order to seriously consider blogging as a full-time job. I'd need about 1000x more regular readers with those earning rates.

I should expand from blogging to other things. Right now, most of my time is going towards my wage slave job. Vlogging and "promote agorism via standup comedy" seem like the two most promising ideas.

Cadillac Plans

This joke is interesting. The latest healthcare "reform" proposal includes a tax on "Cadillac Plans". This tax was in earlier proposals, but "Cadillac Plans" is a new fnord phrase. That makes it sound like "This tax will only affect super-wealthy people."

Plans with annual premiums more than $8500 will be subject to a tax of 40%. The proceeds of the tax will buy health insurance for poor people.

Do you see the scam?

First, $8500 isn't that much. When my COBRA expired, I bought the cheapest available individual policy. The premium was approximately $8500 per year.

Second, and more importantly, the $8500 figure is not adjusted for inflation. Either there's no adjustment, or it's linked to the CPI, which is much less than true inflation.

This is a common State parasite trick. They introduce a new tax. They say "only wealthy people will pay this new tax". Then, a few years later, everyone is paying it. This occurs via a tax hike or indirectly via inflation.

Healthcare "reform" is not true reform. It is corporate welfare adverised as reform.

The "Cadillac Plan" tax is a huge tax hike on all health insurance. Initially, it will affect only expensive plans, but shortly thereafter it will affect all plans.

"Healthcare is too expensive! Let's put a huge tax on it!" is the sort of pro-State troll logic that State parasites use all the time.

The "Cadillac Plan" tax is a huge tax hike. The legal requirement to buy health insurance is a huge tax hike. It's corporate welfare for insurance executives, drug company executives, and doctors.

The whole healthcare "reform" debate is one big evil fnord, both by Republicans and Democrats. The real reason healthcare is expensive is the AMA licensing cartel. This is not mentioned in the mainstream media.

It's wrong to say "The USA free market healthcare systen is failing!" The USA does not have a free market healthcare system, due to the AMA/State licensing cartel and other State regulations.

It's the usual "Problem! Reaction! Solution!" The State causes a problem. The mainstream media overreacts and demands reform. The solution is more State power, which makes things even worse.

The problem with the USA healthcare system is not "Too much free market!" The problem is "Too little free market!"

This story was somewhat pro-State trolling, but it had an interesting point. Doctors complain that patients aren't qualified to evaluate and compare doctors. Therefore, a State monopoly and licensing cartel is needed. The problem is that doctors have no incentive to publish information, precisely because they have a State-backed monopoly. If you call 911, you're taken to the closest hospital based on where you live. There's no market; it's a bunch of gangs parceling out their turf. Also, via tort "reform", incompetent doctors are shielded from liability when they make a mistake. For example, the psychiatrists that mistreated me have no personal liability for their negligence.

Is it a coordinated conspiracy, or is it gross incompetence? Either way it's immoral. I'm not usually fooled anymore, but it's a serious problem that almost everyone else is.

The Jay Leno Show Sucked

The original title of this post was "The Jay Leno Show Sucks". Now that it's been officially canned from the 10pm timeslot, I have to use the past tense.

This story is interesting. The Jay Leno Show was getting lousy ratings. There were rumors circulating of its cancellation, which are finally official.

I noticed that "X Sucks" posts tend to do pretty well, especially when the criticism is justified, like with Ruby on Rails or StackOverflow.

That link had an interesting point. Affiliates were forced to go along with the Jay Leno experiment. That illustrates the fallacy of owning a franchise. Technically, affiliates are their own independent business, but they have to do what NBC parent executives demand.

During the Olympic, which are on NBC, The "Jay Leno Show" will be shortened to a half hour and will be after the Olympics. The Tonight Sow with Conan O'Brien will be moved back an extra half hour. Allegedly this change will be permanent.

Conan O'Brien's contract specifies that he is the host of the Tonight Show and that he gets the 11:30 PM timeslot. However, Conan O'Brien's contract allows the Tonight show to be pushed back to 12:05pm. Jay Leno also has a huge multiyear guaranteed contract.

It seems that NBC will have to dump either Conan O'Brien or Jay Leno. It's a waste to pay a huge salary to both of them.

NBC really should move Conan O'Brien to 10pm! I bet he'd get better ratings than Jay Leno did!

In all my wage slave job, I was an "at will employee". It seems that guaranteed employment contracts are abused by parasites who want to coast instead of doing a good job.

I only watched a few minutes of the Jay Leno Show twice. It was lousy enough to make me realize that it's a waste of time. The first episode was heavily hyped and got great ratings. The ratings rapidly tanked because the show sucks.

The problem is not "A 10PM talk show was a mistake." or "A primetime comedy/variety show is a mistake." The problem is that the actual show was lousy.

I could tell by the attitude of Jay Leno during promos that the show would be a complete failure. Jay Leno had the air of someone coasting off his past success, rather than someone really motivated to make a great show.

When Jay Leno was first promoted to Tonight Show host, he had to prove "I'm better than David Letterman!" Now, his attitude is "I'm Jay Leno! Of course my show is awesome!" It doesn't work that way. You have to actually make a good product. Jay Leno is coasting off his past success, rather than making a good show in the present.

When I see garbage like The Jay Leno Show, my attitude is "I could do better than that!" I really should attempt "promote agorism via standup comedy".

I read an article by Ira Glass that said "The key is having good taste. If you can tell the difference between good content and bad content, then you'll eventually succeed. If you're persistent, your performance will match your taste. However, it takes 10 years to become an expert." If you count my time spent blogging, plus analysis of economics I did before that, I'm probably one of the top experts on really free markets.

I shouldn't be concerned about hecklers while performing standup, especially when you see what people post Anonymously on a blog. Being in-person, plus the ability of the audience to read body language, should limit hecklers. I won't know for sure until I try. I doubt a heckler would make a stupid pro-State troll point that I haven't heard before.

Following Ira Glass' example, I try to write a blog that I'd like to have read myself, as I was cracking my pro-State brainwashing. I figured out a lot of things the hard way. It's much easier to have someone else explain something to you than to figure it out yourself.

That's the whole point of science and writing. You benefit from the work of others. That's the value of the Internet. The Internet enables people to communicate directly and bypass State censorship.

State censorship isn't just the mainstream media. It's also schools. The choice to not present Lysander Spooner or Bastiat as required reading in school introduces a huge bias. Nobody notices this bias, because they never heard of Lysander Spooner or Bastiat. Nobody heard of them, because they're never read in State schools/brainwashing centers!

It's a vicious circle that the Internet helps break. "Taxation is theft! Government is a scam!" is not a new idea. The difference is that the Internet allows intelligent people to share information directly. Without the Internet, an intelligent person is dominated by the pro-State troll parasites around them. With the Internet, intelligent people can compare notes. I wouldn't have been able to figure out as much, if I wasn't able to read bits of the truth that other people have discovered. I'm good at filtering the hidden truths from the nonsense.

Censorship occurs in what professors at universities choose to write about. A professor's salary is paid directly or indirectly via the State. Censorship occurs in what politicians choose to discuss.

For example, when politicians discuss healthcare "reform", none of them discuss the damaging effect of the AMA licensing cartel. They're so pro-State brainwashed that they never considered the issue.

Whenever I see garbage like "The Jay Leno Show", my attitude is "I could do much better than that!" Vlogging and standup comedy are on my list of things to try, but it might take 1-3 years. If I vlog or perform under my real name, my wage slave employer might choose to fire me.

The risk is not so much "State thugs will jail me for telling the truth." If that was a real risk, they would have done it when I first started blogging. Besides, it'd be awkward when I started explaining "taxation is theft" to my jailers during my interrogation. The parasitic/bad cop wouldn't listen. It would be a problem if I convinced the productive/good cop! (That's the reason policemen and cultists always travel in pairs. The parasite needs to keep the productive person focused in an evil mental state. The parasite needs the productive person to do his thinking for him.

When I see garbage like "The Jay Leno Show", my attitude is "I could do better than that!" Live performances and the Internet are a way to bypass mainstream media censorship. Vlogging and standup comedy are on my list of things to do, but I can wait a year or two. I'm still making progress on cracking my pro-State brainwashing.

Just because I'm not an overwhelming success yet, as a blogger or agorist, doesn't mean my ideas are stupid! As Ira Glass pointed out, it will take persistence over years to succeed. In the meantime, I have to support myself with a wage slave job, which limits my options. I'm not so much concerned that a State thug will arrest/kidnap/assault/murder me based on my blog. It'd be a problem if my wage slave employer fired me for my free market beliefs.

Moving Jay Leno to 11:30pm and Conan O'Brien to 10pm probably is a decent idea, but executives at NBC probably will be too risk-averse to try it. They're in full CYA mode now for their dumbass move. To hedge, they could give Conan O'Brien the 10pm timeslot only 2-3 days a week. The problem was not "A primetime talk show is stupid!" The problem is that Jay Leno was coasting off his past success rather than focused on making a good show in the present.

Verizon LG enV Touch, Bitpim, and Open Source

Due to my new wage slave job, I have less time available for blogging. My parents are demanding I waste a lot of time entertaining them. I decided to get a PDA-enabled phone, so I could blog on the subway.

I decided against Android, an iPhone, or a Blackberry, because they have an expensive data plan required. The phone is cheap, but you pay for it with the data plan. I decided to get an LG enV Touch from Verizon. It only has a $10/month data plan required, so it's less expensive than the others. I just wanted a PDA I could type on and transfer data to my PC. The others seemed like overkill.

The LG Touch has a keyboard. You can type and save it to a text file. This enables me to work on my blog on the subway. I'm storing it on the phone, so I don't need a wireless signal. I'm not using the wireless data package when typing, but I did get the $10/month plan required to buy the phone. (Since it's a separate computer, I can also blog during slow times at work, without anyone noticing. I haven't done that yet.)

I bought a 2GB memory card. That's required for the PC USB link feature.

However, the notepad feature has a 300 character limit per note. I have 2GB of memory, but a 300 character limit! That's probably due to a lazy programmer using fixed buffer sizes.

It'd be nice if the notepad character limit were increased. Plus, there should be better navigation, like "beginning of line", "end of line", "pageup", and "pagedown" keys.

I found a workaround to the character limit. I put one paragraph per note. I number them, like in an old BASIC program!

There's a PC USB link feature. However, the software provided does *NOT* allow you to transfer the notepad text!

I found a program called bitpim that allows you to transfer the notepad text. Version 1.06 didn't work with my phone (VX11000), but fortunately 1.07 beta worked.

That is amusing. Verizon's software is lousy. Instead, there's an open source program that works. People like their phones, even if Verizon offers lousy support! Obviously, whoever wrote the phone intended for the notepad data to be copy-able. Verizon's software doesn't support that, but it's on the phone in a user-readable directory.

It turns out that Verizon sells separate software for $50 that lets you fully synch your phone. Bitpim probably is still better.

Bitpim seems to give you full filesystem access to your phone. I thought that the OS would be in a protected directory, but it seems you can overwrite that also. I didn't try and I'm not going to try; I just want the notepad/blogging feature. You can also "pirate" apps with bitpim, but I'm not interested in that. I'm only blogging and transferring text files to my PC. I'm using bitpim in "read-only" mode.

This is my first subway-written post. I'm still going to transfer it to my PC and edit/assemble it.

This system seems to be working for me. Line number my posts. Export to bitpim. Bitpim sorts by time. I really should sort by line number (1st line). Export from bitpim to HTML/XML. I should write a program that collates the bitpim output. Now, I'm just using notepad to edit the html and copy/paste to Blogger. Then, assemble the post in Blogger and do some final editing.

I wrote a PHP script to optimize the "assemble by line number" step. Now, my workflow is:

1. Start bitpim.
2. Load memos.
3. "Print as" html.
4. Save file in appropriate directory.
5. Run PHP script.
   

I can 100% optimize this. Bitpim has a "command line" mode where you can directly copy a file from the phone. Then, I can also call the PHP script in command line mode. I can do the whole thing in one step! Plug in phone, run .bat file, then open notepad file with sorted notes! I used bitpim command line mode to transfer the file and then wrote a PHP script to parse out the notes file. My script filters and sorts by line number and removes the line numbers! As a bonus, my PHP script converts from UNIX-style carriage returns ("\n") that the phone uses to Windows-style carriage returns ("\r\n").

Overall, I do recommend the Verizon LG enV Touch (VX11000). It's cheaper than a Blackberry, iPhone, or Android phone. The 300 character limit is *ANNOYING* but I can work around that. First, I wrote a PHP program that collates bitpim's line-numbered XML export into one big text file. Then, optimized it to directly parse the sch\memo.dat file on the phone, downloaded via bitpim. The phone is good enough for my mobile blogging needs, but I needed bitpim to do what I want with my phone. When I next upgrade in 2 years, hopefully I'll have better choices and I'll be sure that I can (1) transfer data to PC easily and (2) write files bigger than 300 characters.

TARP Fnord

It's amusing how evil State programs are always given noble-sounding names. They call it the "Troubled Asset Relief Program". This makes people think "A tarp is used to protect a baseball field when it's raining. It's something that's helping us. There's nothing wrong with that."

How come the parasites never pick more accurate names? Why didn't they call it the "Financial Underwriting Contingency Kitty"?

"Give an innocent name to an evil program" is an evil fnord that's repeated over and over again. Who would vote against "The Patriot Act"? Who would vote for "The Spy on Everyone and Restrict Individual Freedom Act"?

Negative Knowledge Experts

I noticed a weird trend on mises.org and other discussion forums. It's a very common pattern. Someone says "Paul Krugman wrote an article on X. Why is he wrong?" Sometimes, it's another State-licensed "expert".

The answer invariably is "Paul Krugman is a shill for the State. He is reciting pro-State propaganda and not saying anything useful or intelligent." People waste a lot of time explaining why the State-backed expert is wrong.

Just because Paul Krugman won a Nobel ****sucking Prize, doesn't mean he has any useful skills or knowledge. All that proves is that he's skilled at reciting pro-State propaganda, and coming up with more convincing lies that justify State power.

The truth is not determined by a majority vote. Just because a group of brainwashed pro-State trolls selected someone as their leader, doesn't mean he actually knows anything useful.

The State presents certain people as experts. These people have less than zero knowledge. If you're skilled at reciting pro-State propaganda, then you know less than nothing.

There are many careers that suffer from the "Negative Knowledge Experts" problem.

1. State-licensed thinkers, like economists and political science professors, know less than nothing. They don't understand basic ideas like "Taxation is theft!" and "The USA has an unfair monetary system!" Instead, they make up complicated-sounding excuses that justify State power.
2. State-licensed psychiatrists are murderers.
3. Drug researchers at pharmaceutical corporations and universities are harmful. They think they're performing innovative medical research. Instead, they're developing drugs that mask symptoms without treating the underlying illness.
4. State-licensed lawyers and judges are experts on insane statutory State law. They know less than nothing about natural law. Most of them think that insane State law *IS* natural law.
5. Politicians think that they're experts on telling everyone else how to live. Most new laws are written by lobbyists.
6. Federal Reserve insiders are supposed to be experts in "managing monetary policy". In reality, they're giving free money to insiders via negative real interest rates and the Federal Reserve's cartel power to control interest rates and the money supply.
   

Most people accept the advice/propaganda of State-licensed experts, without questioning them. Most State-licensed experts are employed directly or indirectly by the State. They will always give the advice that increases State power.

Negative knowledge experts are a serious problem. Their body language is that of a true leader, because nobody around them questions their wisdom. Once you learn to think for yourself and look at the logic of what they say and write, it's obvious nonsense.

Why Don't Superheroes Kill Super-Criminals?

Sometimes, comic book superheroes behave really stupidly. Batman catches the Joker. The Joker goes to jail. The Joker escapes from jail or gets paroled. The Joker resumes his life of crime. This doesn't just apply to the Joker, but to *ALL* of the criminals that Batman pursues.

After a few iterations, wouldn't Batman say "**** this! I'm killing the Joker myself!"

In the eyes of the brainwashed masses, Batman is a proxy for the State. If State enforcers decide that you are breaking their rules, they don't normally try to kill you. Instead, they try to kidnap you.

Of course, if you arm yourself and attempt to defend yourself, then the State police *WILL* murder you.

Escaping from a State prison isn't as easy as the Joker makes it seem. It's practically impossible.

Sending someone to jail for 20 years is almost the same as murdering them. The criminal could be freed later, but a huge chunk of his life was still stolen.

By having "Kidnap criminals!" be a higher goal than "Kill criminals!", the authority of the State is legitimized. By trying to kidnap instead of kill, the police seem like the good guys in their own mind. This also leads to the belief "If someone is wrongly jailed, they can always be released later!" Sending someone to jail for 10-20 years and then releasing them still is stealing a huge chunk of their life.

This illogical behavior by superheroes occurs because the superhero is a proxy for the State.