Bloggasm

Hey Jonah,

You know that “MIT study” that you cite in your column titled “Why we need nukes and Gitmo“? You know, the one that says that homeless people supposedly have twice the global footprint than average? You do know that that wasn’t an MIT study at all but instead was a class project done by a bunch of MIT undergraduates? And that it included in its calculations the carbon footprint of the entire US infrastructure and just basically divided it by the number of US citizens, rather than actually determining the carbon footprint of homeless people?

If you ever need someone really good at Google searches to fact check your articles for you, you can always forward them to me.

Take care,
Simon

Kenneth,

I just read your article about Polar Bears, and came across this line:

“In October 2007, NASA announced the results of an in-depth study of Arctic sea-ice melting and found that what has caused the unusually large melting seen in the last eight years was not greenhouse gas-induced global warming.”

Wouldn’t you say this is fairly disingenuous, considering that “greenhouse gas-induced global warming” was never once mentioned in the NASA press release you cite? A person reading that paragraph in your piece would think that the NASA study addressed green-house gases and concluded that they had nothing to do with the ice melting. The press release does not really address what is causing the wind patterns, and whether they have been caused by green-house gases. In fact the release attributes the patterns to “Unusual atmospheric conditions.”

How familiar are you with the cause of wind patterns? How familiar are you with the effects of atmospheric temperature on wind?

What do you have a degree in?

Why do you cite mostly news reports in your study, rather than peer-reviewed literature?

–Simon

Updated below

In a recent post criticizing blogger Michelle Malkin, I said that she “will stop at nothing to drag her opponents through the mud, often at the expense of actual facts.” And then, once she’s been caught in an error, “she spins her way into oblivion by backtracking on just about every incorrect claim she had made.”

To illustrate this point, let’s take a look at Malkin’s “lead story” for today, a post titled “Question of the Day: Where did the DNC get its IED footage?”

It hit the web at 11:43 a.m., and highlights a recent advertisement made by the DNC that shows a very brief (less than half a second) clip of a bomb going off near American soldiers. Malkin takes the clip and asks where the footage came from. She then favorably block quotes a source that accuses the DNC of getting the footage from terrorist jihadis “who videotape IED explosions that kill American combat troops. The jihadists place the video on the internet to tout their ‘kill Americans’ campaign success.”

After the block quote, Malkin writes, “they’re certainly dumb enough and indifferent enough to our men and women in uniform to incorporate jihadi propaganda into their campaign ads.”

Next, she posts an “update” at 11:56 a.m. claiming that the DNC got the footage not from a terrorist website but from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. She then asks where Moore got the footage from (thereby passing the ball to him) while also accusing the DNC of plagiarizing Moore.

And then finally, she posts a second “update” at 12:12 p.m. pointing out that the footage actually came from a network news source from right after the invasion.

The post then ends with a long quote that accuses the DNC of exploiting the images of soldiers being blown up for political gain.

So just to recap for those playing along at home, here’s the narrative that takes place on a single post over a span of 29 minutes and 500 words:

1. The DNC is using terrorist propaganda videos in advertisements to attack John McCain. 2. Actually, Michael Moore is using terrorist propaganda videos in advertisements to attack John McCain. Also, the DNC is plagiarizing Michael Moore by using footage without permission. 3. Actually, neither Michael Moore nor the DNC is using terrorist propaganda videos to attack John McCain. They were both using footage from a US news network. But that’s not the REAL issue here. The REAL issue is that they’re using videos of soldiers being blown up for their own political gain.

According to Malkin’s sitemeter stats, around 16,000 unique visitors went to her site during the hour in which this was posted. The time lapsed between the initial posting and the final update was about a half hour. So that means about 8,000 people visited her site in between the posting and the update, not counting all the RSS feed readers. Depending on the number of people who checked back at the site to see the new update, that means that as many as 8,000 people went out into the world today thinking the DNC is using terrorist video footage for its advertisements. And who knows how many people they will repeat this lie to.

And Michelle Malkin has the gall to criticize other news networks? Imagine if a mainstream news source had committed such an act targeting a conservative; she wouldn’t have stopped attacking them for weeks.

UPDATE: Surprise surprise. It turns out the footage came from Getty Images. Various reports show that it was licensed legally. So no copyright infringement and no terrorist propaganda video.

If I wanted to open a link in a new tab, I would right click on it and do so. Please don’t set the page so every time I click on a link it opens a new window.

Thanks,
Simon

Ps. Is there a way to override this? Also, I noticed that sometimes when I click on links at Digg it opens the page in a new window and other times it doesn’t. What am I missing here?

It wasn’t long after Google acquired the advertising company DoubleClick for over $3 billion that it announced that it would be laying off 300 DoubleClick employees.

Now we learn that shortly before laying them off, Google required all DoubleClick employees to sign non-compete contracts, meaning that after leaving the company they couldn’t work for a competitor for a full year.

I really despise non-compete contracts for lower-level employees. If you’re the owner of a company and you get bought out and accept an offer, then I completely agree that the company buying out should have you sign such a contract. But forcing an employee who had no say whatsoever in the buyout process, an employee who has no financial stake in the company (other than the fact that it supplies his pay checks) and didn’t benefit from the buyout at all, to sign one of these contracts? I understand why it’s done but I also think it should be tough shit on the buyer’s part.

With the decline of the newspaper industry I think this is going to become a real problem. Just as those laid off DoubleClick employees won’t be able to take a job within the industry for at least a year, these newspaper reporters are getting screwed out of making legitimate career moves just because their publishers jumped ship.

Google is all about doling out authority.

Measuring the number of links coming into your website, it gives you authority on any number of subjects and keywords. So when your website suddenly gets downgraded within its index, it’s effectively taking your authority away. It’s coldly telling you that you’re not the expert that you previously were, that you’ve been toppled from the castle from which you had previously ruled.

As I wrote here previously, I noticed about a week ago that I had been harshly and inexplicably downgraded in Google’s index for several keywords, a move that effectively cut my traffic from the search engine by half. This, of course, upset me, because I had worked very diligently to write quality content –content that has been linked to by thousands of blogs and websites — only to have my authority whisked away in such a short span of time.

Over the next few days, I began exchanging emails with SEO expert and friend Stephen Ward. He determined that Google bots were able to still crawl my website and therefore theorized that I was experiencing something called “Google Dance,” which means that as Google updates its algorithm websites tend to get thrown through a loop. He advised me to sit still and eventually the dust would settle and my posts would rank well once again.

Well, Stephen emailed me today with confirmation that Google has completed a major algorithm change, and that I shouldn’t be surprised if this trend continues for a long time. For whatever reason, Google has likely thrown me into a hole that I will have to somehow slowly crawl out of.

So how harsh was this downgrading that I experienced? As I wrote to Stephen in an email:

For instance, let’s return to my name “Simon Owens.” There is no doubt in my mind that based off the thousands of links that bloggasm has gotten, many with the anchor text of my name, I am the most prominent Simon Owens on the internet, and of my different websites (my livejournal, an old livejournal account, and bloggasm), Bloggasm has seen by far the most links with that anchor text. Why then is it ranked third, when obviously anyone searching my name would most likely be looking for Bloggasm? Why is it ranked behind a livejournal account I haven’t updated regularly since 2005, one that probably hasn’t seen any fresh links in that amount of time? It’s absolutely silly.

Since Bloggasm was first created, I have had my posts linked to by over a dozen of Technorati’s 100 most popular blogs on the internet. I’ve made it onto the front page of both Digg and Reddit. I’ve been interviewed and featured in articles in The Washington Post, ABC News, and several other major news outlets. I’m currently ranked within the top 10,000 on Technorati.

And on top of all this, I produce a good bit of original content. I actually conduct original research and publish feature-length articles — all in my spare time.

But despite all this, despite the fact that I don’t engage in any questionable website practices (selling links, link exchanges, spamming other websites with links), Google has for some reason determined that many of my posts aren’t worthy of a decent ranking.

It’s absolutely maddening when you really think about it. All false modesty aside (and obviously I’m biased on this), Google’s new algorithm change has actually weakened its search results in regard to this website. There is absolutely no excuse for why Bloggasm should come up in third place, behind a livejournal that hasn’t been updated or linked to in years, when you Google my name.

So in an effort to spread whatever Google love this front page may still have, here are some links to original articles I wrote for this site — articles that gathered tons of links and should have plenty of authority but sadly don’t:

1. Youeditor: Anthology Builder and the self-selected table of contents

2. Tor Books to offer social networking, original short fiction and nonfiction online — this was one of the posts that were harshly downgraded, despite the fact that it was linked to on BoingBoing and dozens of other websites.

3. The rise of the genre ezine: Will it ever find a profitable model?

4. Is journalist burnout on the rise? — this article got harshly downgraded despite the fact that it was linked to by Romenesko and dozens of other websites.

5. Readership of major liberal blogs declined in 2007 while conservative blog readership increased — this post was harshly downgraded despite the fact that it was linked to by some of the most popular blogs on the internet, including Andrew Sullivan, Think Progress, Little Green Footballs, Crooks and Liars, Newsbustors, Salon.com. Are you getting the point yet how fucking stupid this algorithm shift has been?

6. The Dawkins Effect: How The God Delusion mainstreamed atheism — this one was harshly downgraded even though it was linked to by at least two A-list blogs and dozens of smaller ones.

7. Harriet Klausner: the publishing industry’s secret weapon?

8. The Sideways offensive: Will Merlot sales ever recover?

9. The Million Writers Award: raising the profile of online literary journals — this one doesn’t even come up first if you google the words “Bloggasm” and “million writers award” in the search field. Pathetic.

10. When “webscabs” unite: Celebrating International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

11. The Creative Commons Confound: Whether releasing your book for free will help boost your sales — this one, like all the others, was harshly downgraded despite the fact that it got linked to by dozens of sites and at least two A list blogs.

Well there you have it. Thanks a lot Google for rewarding my hours of hard work and thousands of links with the ranking I deserve.

It is not uncommon for pundits to try and develop scientific ways of measuring bias in the media. These methods, of course, are usually rife with logical leaps and aren’t really scientific at all.

But today I stumbled upon an article published in a mainstream news source that used a particularly stupid methodology of detecting a media slant. John R. Lott, Jr, writing at FOXNews.com, offered this as proof that the media only reported on bad economic news when there was a Republican president in office:

A Google search on news stories during the three-month period from July 2000 through September 2000 using the keywords “economy recession US” produces 1,610. By contrast, the same search over just the last month finds 50,763. Or, even more telling, take the three months from July through September last year, when the GDP was growing at a phenomenal 4.9 percent. The same type of Google search shows 7,310 news stories.

Now Lott gives us very little information on how these Google searches were conducted (the few links he provides to the supposed searches are complete gibberish), but anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the internet can immediately spot the inanity of such figures.

I mean, c’mon. He counted the number of news sources in 2000 and compared them to 2007? Do you have any idea how many blogs and websites are currently indexed in Google News?? Of course there are 50 times the number of “news stories” that use those keywords today; it’s because there are thousands more websites that exist today (it’s not very difficult to get a blog listed in Google News) that were non-existent in 2000.

Unless there is some way that he conducted his Google search that only examined the exact same news sources, FOXNews.com should publish a correction with that story, since it is using incredibly bogus numbers to prove a point.

UPDATE: I figured out exactly how his bogus Google searches were done because I was able to reproduce the figures above perfectly. Basically he ran those search terms through Google News and clicked on “past month” for one of the searches and then on the second search clicked on “other dates” and typed in 7/2000 and 9/2000. This means that the numbers he used are complete and utter BS. Fox News needs to run a correction.