http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0083IWDWE

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

“If you have ever felt compelled to do something which felt wrong, you will understand the basic premise of the first essay here. We are certainly led around by things going on below consciousness. But our conscious beliefs about things can mislead us just as much, as I point out with several true stories. If we believe that all laws should be respected, for example, and further believe in logic as the arbiter of truth, we will at some point be compelled to participate in atrocities merely because they are legislated. A mind puppet is a person who is led about by his or her mind, both consciously and unconsciously, especially in ways that do not result in good outcomes. We all fit that description at times.”

In other essays (there are ten total), I challenge the idea of retirement, argue that there is no corporate crime, and call the so-called “war on terror” a farce. I also look at the American Dream and ask at what point it becomes a nightmare (and whether living for a dream makes sense in any case).

The essay titled, “Sand Castles and Property Rights” explores the nature of property by starting with something we all can understand; a child’s right to have his sand castle left alone. I explain why we need to own things, why we need to respect other people’s ownership of their property, and why in practice we need to set limits on ownership. As with all my writing, I try to make my points very clear by using simple examples.

The sixth essay in the book has a title I will not repeat here, since doing so might get me on an FBI watch list. In it, I challenge the value of patriotism. Plenty of other writers have suggested that in it’s extreme forms it can be dangerous. I suspect that all forms of patriotism contribute to more evil than good. Naturally, then, I have no respect for the American flag or any other flag, and so the title of the essay is perfectly appropriate, if controversial.

“Anger in the Dream World” is about the many times we all feel angry at something we imagine. We do not see that we are creating the source of our anger in our imaginations, because like a dream that seems as real as our waking hours, our daily lives are largely lived in a mentally-created reality. To understand what I mean you’ll have to read the essay, which lays out simple examples and little experiments you can do on yourself to see if what I say makes sense.

How much value should a government assign to people’s lives? You may not like to hear it, but some of the agencies already have a number they work with. I look at how they arrive at that, and why it makes sense to think about the cost-per-life of regulations ranging from safety measures to medical procedures.

In the final essay of Mind Puppet I argue that altruistic ideas are far more dangerous than the advocacy of self-interest. Although I find that true self-interest has to include helping others, and cannot exclude love and compassion, even the extreme forms of shallow self-interest or selfishness cannot come close to doing the amount of harm that altruistic ideologies can and have done. Just how dangerous altruism can be is suggested by the title of this essay, but it is another one I don’t wish to include on my personal blog.

If you like to think and you like new ideas and perspectives, you should spend the $2.99 to get Mind Puppet. Here is the information page on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0083IWDWE

I do not hate this county. It is true that I refuse to stand up for the national anthem, and that I think patriotism is a sickness. But that does not mean I hate the country. I just don’t pledge allegiance to strangers (I don’t know most of the people in the United States) or flags or governments. In my book “Mind Puppet” (coming soon), I explain it like this:

“I love this country in some sense; just not for reasons of patriotism. It feels more like home than other countries, probably because I was born and raised here. The mountains in the west are beautiful, as are the lakes and forests of the northeast. Some parts of the culture here are wonderful, and there are elements of what is called the “American spirit” that I identify with. I love some of the ideas which led to the creation of this nation. I think that respect for individual rights is a great ideal. The concepts of property rights that are part of the law here really benefit people. I appreciate that I can say what I like in this essay, on a website, or on the street.”

I feel that people are brainwashed from a young age about patriotism. First, they are convinced that there actually is some entity called “America,” out there. What is this, by the way? Is it just a geographical area defined by lines drawn on maps, the people within those lines, just those with the right papers, a government, a flag, an ideal, or what? It is such a nebulous concept. Other nebulous concepts that are associated with this are:

patriotism
love
duty
citizenship

Now, since “America” (and the more general concept of “county”) is so poorly defined, when we add to the brainwashing the idea that every “citizen” owes a “duty” and “love” to this invented entity, we put a lot of control in the hands of government officials and leaders who are best at manipulating what all of these nebulous concepts mean in a given context. You can see this clearly when people say they believe in rights but easily acquiesce to their leaders claims that we must jail people indefinitely without charges “for the good of the country” or support “patriotic” laws meant to ban the burning of a flag, even though that latter action is a perfect example of the kind of political statement the First Ammendment to the Constitution was designed to protect. In the end, if the flag is waved enough, patriotic citizens can be convinced to stomp on every freedom for the good of “the land of the free.”

I do value freedom, but there is no monopoly on that here. There are many hundreds of restrictive laws and regulations that exist here but not in other countries, and probably hundreds in each other country that do not exist here. This fact suggests that how free we are is in part an individual matter which depends on what we want to do or what lifestyle we each prefer. As mentioned, I do like or love parts of what is nebulously called “America,” but there are also parts that make me not want to be identified as an American (just look at the history of atrocities perpetrated by the people and government here). So since there is really nothing I can point to that is America, and the elements that people often refer to by that name are not always good things in my mind, I cannot really feel right (logically or politically) in simply stating “I love America.”

As for why I can comfortably say I have no duty to my country, you can read the essay on that topic in Blue Snake to understand my reasoning. Here’s the Amazon page for the book:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00819F8FE

Blue Snake is even more likely to upset some people, but this is not my intent. I feel there are good reasons to get these ideas out there. I really do think patriotism is a sickness, for example, so why wouldn’t I speak out? In the sixth essay of Blue Snake, titled, “I Have No Duty to My Country” I have this to say:

“I am not an American politically. I honestly don’t know how anyone can worship flags—this is a root of war and of death and injustice. And why would I feel an automatic commonality of identity or purpose with another person simply because somewhere on a map in the mists of history a line was drawn which today encircles us both?”

Yes, that will offend some readers, but then I find it offensive when people claim that myself or others owe them something in order to be free and have our rights respected (an obligation to a “country” logically is just an obligation to some particular people, so when people say you have a duty to their country, they generally mean to them–whether they know it or not). Here is a list of the essays in the book:

1. The Blue Snake – My “serpentine mother” rules the world, and after reading my “proof” see if you can offer better evidence for your own gods.

2. The Monsters Among Us – Even the most loving people you know are capable of monstrous acts.

3. How to Quit Your Job – One of my few areas of expertise.

4. Why Do They Hate Us? – Here is a story and some history about the U.S. you need to read.

5. Punishing the Truth – The exclusionary rule should be scrapped.

6. I Have No Duty to My Country – Yes, I mean exactly that.

7. How to Get Rid of Poor People – Whether it is a conscious intention or not.

8. The Pleasure of Guilt – How it even becomes self-glorification.

9. Eliminate Social Security – Instead take care of anyone who needs help–and for much less money.

10. War and Words – Is the development of language one of the biggest causes of war? Consider that cavemen, without ideas of property rights and the associated language, could have no reason to fight for land far from where they were residing. I’m not attacking the value of language (or property rights, for that matter)–it would be too ironic to do that in a book. But if we do not see and use words as mere tools, we become tools used by them (or by whichever leaders manipulate them with the most skill).

Here’s that link to go get Blue Snake (or to read more about it) at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00819F8FE

For example, since there are tax consequences to marriage at the moment (potentially good or bad depending on your circumstances), the law would have to be changed to simply tax our income as individuals. Also, the Social Security system currently gives a benefit to a spouse when a contributor dies–a benefit single people don’t get even though they may pay just as much into the system. This injustice is resolved when marriage is gone, but we might want to allow each contributor to designate a beneficiary regardless of relationship. Divorce and child custody would not change as much as you might think. As I explained in the essay, unmarried people who mix assets and then separate often already need the help of the courts to resolve who gets what, and judges can just arrange custody for the benefit of the children. I looked at issues regarding insurance as well.

What I forgot to address was the issue of marriage and immigration, which is somewhat ironic, since my wife is from Ecuador and only became a citizen because we are married. Without marriage as a legally-defined institution what do we do when people want to join their lives together and one of them lives in another country? How could immigration law be changed?

One way would be to simply have a functional definition of marriage for purposes of immigration. After all, it is not the marriage license or other documentation that assures an immigrant he or she can stay in the country anyhow. If the immigration officer does not believe that a marriage is “real” they already can deport a person. So they might just use the same criteria as they do now, with the exception of the legal documentation that normally starts the process. In other words, they would still check to see if a couple truly lives together, shares assets, and so on.

But I have a better idea, one which takes away the obvious immigration-related advantage that people get from marrying (in case you haven’t noticed, I just don’t see marriage as something to be rewarded with special favors from governments). I propose that we allow every citizen the right to sponsor one immigrant (or perhaps two). If you want your good friend from Italy to be able to move here and become a citizen, you can do that.

I would also speed up the process, something which I could best address in another post. But the speed does matter here in one respect. If we each are allowed to invite one immigrant to live here in the United States, then if you invite a partner she will soon be able to invite her mother or father–or whomever she wants to come.

This proposal, if adopted, would not create a huge influx of immigrants, as you might think. After all, the process is still expensive (and you are initially on the hook for any medical bills or other debts incurred by a person you sponsor), so it isn’t likely that everyone would be inviting new residents from around the world (though I like that idea). Also, if you are allowed just one immigration invitation in your life (maybe we could make it one every thirty years?) you would consider the matter carefully. There would be some growth in immigration, but it is likely that most of these new residents would be young adults who would work, so they would bolster our Social Security system without having drawn on the incredibly expensive public education system when they were younger.

In any case, those are two ways to resolve the issue of marriage and immigration in a country without legally-defined marriages. For the rest of my arguments against the licensing of love and marriage, you can read the essay in Gay Jesus.

Gay Jesus is available on Amazon Kindle here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007ZCRY9Q
Or on Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gay-jesus-steve-gillman/1110601225

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Your-Risk-Series-ebook/dp/B007ZCRY9Q

If you don’t have one of these devices, you can download a free Kindle reader for your computer there as well.

Gay Jesus is a collection of ten essays on a variety of subjects. There is no paper version, but it will also be published on the Barnes and Noble Nook reader by this weekend. At the moment the price is just $2.99 (that’s less than 30 cents per essay!).

Now, I know some people will be upset by what I’ve written, but all I can really say to that is don’t buy the book if you are easily offended. I might even lose some friends over this, but so be it. I am not offending for the sake of offense. The things I write I believe, and if the people who think they know me are surprised or shocked, it is only because they have not asked my opinion on these subjects or they just haven’t listened very well.

No, I do not believe Jesus was gay, but in the first essay I do look at what it would mean if he was, and how asking “what if” questions like these can reveal our hidden prejudices.

In my second essay I relate how a plane I was on erupted in cheers for the soldiers on board. It truly sickened me to see such mindless worshiping of military service. The thought ran through my mind: Don’t encourage these young people to keep throwing away their lives (they were on their way to Iraq on this particular flight). You can read the essay to understand the rest of my reasoning, but here’s a question that gets at the heart of the matter: How were they “defending our freedom” (the pilot’s words–which the passengers seemed to agree with wholeheartedly) by fighting in a war that most of the people on the plane (according to polling at the time) agreed was unnecessary?

The third essay is an answer to my conservative friends who like to play word games in order to convince the electorate that the poor don’t pay taxes. I explain in detail just how heavily taxed some poor individuals are; they often pay higher rates than many billionaires. Readers will be surprised at some of the tricks which are used to push the cost of government down onto the poor and middle class.

Essay number four is called “The Licensing of Life.” It isn’t just a rant about how regulated our lives are becoming, but also a serious challenge to the idea that we have a right to jail people for doing honest business. Where is the immorality in operating honestly without a license? If a woman cuts my hair without having a license and I know she doesn’t have one, isn’t the immorality in the assault on and imprisonment of this poor honest businesswoman, which is necessary to uphold the law?

In the other essays I look at…

- How worshiping bibles and other holy books is just another form of idolatry.

- Why many poor countries should–as the moral option–stop paying their foreign debts.

- How you can, when chosen for jury duty, legally disrupt the process that puts people in jail for unjust laws.

- Why the legal institution of marriage should be eliminated.

- A theory that suggests consciousness may be a metaphorical invention of sorts.

- Why we should reject all reflexive respect for and obedience to authority.

I feel strongly about some of these matters, but I don’t claim to be an authority on any subject–not even anti-authoritarianism. In fact, I can confidently predict that I’ll change my mind on some of the points I make (the person whose beliefs and opinions do not change has stopped learning or caring about the truth). I hope to sell a few of these books to open-minded individuals not so they will agree with me, but so they might be encouraged to think in new ways.

Often our beliefs come from the culture around us, the happenstance of what family we are born into or what friends we make, and various unconscious influences, and then we simply look for arguments to defend what we have adopted as “our own” beliefs. In my experience, not many people actually do the mental work needed to form their own beliefs or opinions. That’s what I want to encourage, whether a reader agrees with anything I write or not.

In the next few weeks there will be at least two more books published in the “At Your Own Risk Series.” In addition to Gay Jesus, I have completed the books “Blue Snake” and “Mind Puppet.” The fourth (and possibly last) in the series, “Sky Child,” is almost complete. They might be out by the time you read this post, so check Amazon.com if you are interested. Here’s the link again for the Gay Jesus sales page on Amazon;

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Your-Risk-Series-ebook/dp/B007ZCRY9Q

But this is not just about our loss of website visibility and income. Once you understand what is happening, you will conclude like I have, that Google is giving up on their goal to provide the most relevant results for searchers. Instead they are offering up “good enough” results from among the sites which they favor for various reasons. Let me explain…

It used to be that incoming links could not hurt a website in the SERPs. This was always considered the only ethical way to have a search algorithm work, since as an owner of a site you cannot possibly stop spammy sites from linking to you, particularly if you do not have the budget to hire a team of lawyers. It wouldn’t be fair to set the system up in a way that enabled competitors (or enemies) to destroy your ranking in the search engines. For this reason (in part), Google used to have a policy (as far as we know) that if they identified spammy links, whether the owner of the site bought them or just got linked to for reasons beyond his control, they would take away any weight these links might have in their search algorithm, but they would not actively penalize a site for them.

More than being a matter of fairness, though, if you stop to think about it for only a moment, you realize that if a website is actively penalized for anything off-site, the search results must suffer. Consider, for example, if you have the best website online for golf tips. Now imagine a golfer searching “golf tips” in Google, and he sees other less-relevant websites covering the first two pages of results (few people look further than that), because Google has penalized your site for incoming links it doesn’t like. They would have consciously delivered non-ideal results (that’s their term) because they wanted to punish you for what they think you did wrong. After all, the ideal result would be the best site, and links which happened to point to it could not in any way affect the searchers experience negatively. When was the last time you were visiting a site and you thought “I hate all the links out there that point to this site!” In case you missed the point, you can’t see links that come TO a site, but only ones that are ON a site!

Well, guess what? The policy of forgoing the best results in order to control the internet is exactly what Google has right now. They are actively penalizing sites for the links that point to them. And it didn’t take long for the bad guys to start taking advantage of the power Google has given them. You can now pay a “negative SEO” company to destroy your competitors’ website ranking in Google. I hesitate to even mention an example, since it makes it too clear how to do it, but this needs to be exposed, so here is a link to a forum where one of these criminals posted his secrets: http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2372-successful-negative-seo-case-study/

There are even software programs that are used to wreck people’s online businesses. One example is the “XRumer” program. You can look it up on Wikipedia to read more about it. It was originally used for search engine optimization. It automatically creates thousands of forum accounts with a link in the “signature file” of each, even though the user has no plans to participate in these forums. A spammy technique? You bet. But there are two important points here. First, even the owner of one of the best websites on a given topic might resort to tricks to get better placement in SERPs, but this does not directly affect the content on his website, so it makes no sense to deny it to searchers in favor of less useful content. Second, if you understand what this software does, and that Google now penalizes for links like these, you can very quickly understand how criminals out there are destroying website-based businesses by manipulating their placement in SERPs. Google gave them this power to do evil, and they are certainly using it.

Now, before I go any further we need to look at the evidence for my claim that Google is, in fact, penalizing for incoming links. There had been hints of it for quite a while now, and some web marketers who are more technically advanced than myself had done some research which indicated penalties. But now Google has effectively announced that they are penalizing. I’ll explain how we know this.

If you read any internet forum posts on the subject of “reinclusion requests” or “reconsideration requests” you’ll note that Google has been contacting website owners about “unnatural links” and telling them they need to get them removed. They are not polite enough to mention which links they consider “unnatural,” or how you might get owners of other sites to remove links to your site if you do not have a team of lawyers on staff. But they do offer you a chance for “reinclusion” or “reconsideration” in the results once you have done whatever you can to fix the problems that they will not identify for you.

Here is the exact message I recently received about my site on Ultralight Backpacking:

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.the-ultralight-site.com/,

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team

Here is my only response to them:

I just received this message: “Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.the-ultralight-site.com/”

Since I have no idea what you mean so there is little I can do about it. I don’t buy links, and whatever else might be a problem I can hardly correct it if I have no idea what it is. Furthermore, if there is a SERPs ranking penalty for whatever links you don’t like, it seems unethical at best for Google to pretend to deliver the best results and then, when a searcher enters “ultralight backpacking” to exclude or downgrade a relevant, quality site with hundreds of pages of original and unique content, just because of something off-site that Google doesn’t like (which, whatever it is, has no affect at all on the visitor’s experience). Please give the searchers what they are looking for and return my site to its proper position in the results.

I wish we could just put quality content up for searchers without the necessity to jump through Google’s hoops to be found. Feel free to tell me where there are links you don’t like, but keep in mind that us smaller operators do not have the budget to hire lawyers to get links removed, so there probably isn’t much more that I can do.

I imagine that my response did not help my case, but what could I have done? By the way, Google also says (in an automated response) that they cannot personally respond to any reconsideration request, so I will never know if they adjust my ranking as a result, or if any changes for the better or worse are simply due to more algorithm juggling.

But the important point here is that to even have a “reconsideration request” means they are penalizing for incoming links. What else could it mean? Actually it could be an attempt to bully people into making changes even though there is no penalty for the links, but given the time and expense some webmasters are going to, in order to get links to their sites removed, lying in this way would be a pretty awful way to do business for a company that claims to want to “do no evil.” Furthermore the case studies of negative SEO operations and the existence of that evil industry provide enough other evidence that Google is indeed penalizing for off-site factors.

That the notices like the one above come from the “Google Search Quality Team” is ironic, because they are essentially stating outright that the quality of websites is going to be ignored if there are “other factors” that they don’t like. Now, we might hope that their motives are good, that by ignoring quality in favor of controlling webmaster practices they plan to eventually clean up the internet, but searchers probably want the best results right now (I certainly do). Any way you cut it, Google has given up on just aiming for the most relevant highest quality results.

Many people are reporting worse SERPs for many search terms. Go read the hundreds of comments following Matt Cutts update announcement . Internet marketer Chris Rempel, who has been saying for a while now that it is just too risky to trust Google and use only “white hat” SEO strategies, says in a post about the update on thelazymarketer.com;

Strangely, basically all of my grayhat properties saw a great big jump in traffic recently. Which sites of mine have lost? Well, only the ones with a nearly-poster-perfect whitehat backlink profile, and where the sites themselves contain top-shelf, totally unique content. Yep.

I consider all of my dozens of sites to be “white hat,” since I’ve never had the budget for buying many links. I’ve used directory submission services and paid for a few blog links to some, which is in line with this direct Google quality suggestion; “Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?” Yes, I would. I would have to do something to get exposure. And wherever some of the links ended up, they in no way changed anything about the websites themselves, where I aim to have the highest quality content I can produce.

Google provided a form to complain about how a site was affected by the update. It reads: “If your site was affected by the “Penguin” webspam algorithm update on April 24th, 2012, and you don’t think it should have been affected, please give us more details below:” This is something they haven’t done before as far as I know, and it indicates that they know they messed up. Among other reports, I sent them this one about my site http://www.999ideas.com:

My site is all original unique content produced by myself, and was severely impacted by the Penguin update on 4/25/12. Many of the results now showing for the search term “new ideas” are questionable. To begin with it seems that single articles on ideas should be of less relevance than entire sites devoted to ideas, but I understand the desire to have recent news. Here are some of the most obvious examples of “non-ideal” results when searching “new ideas”:

#3 http://bignewideas.com/ – This is a business consulting firm; not what a searcher for “new ideas” is probably looking for.

#4 http://newideas.net/ – This is an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Information Library; certainly not what a searcher of “new ideas” is looking for.

#7 http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/new-idea/ – This is an online magazine called “New Idea” which is not really about new ideas, but has news and lifestyle articles.

#8 http://www.alumnaetheatre.com/ideas.html – This is an announcement for a festival that already happened (with no update for the next, if there is one).

#11 – http://www.newideas.co.ke/ – There is nothing here; it is under construction.

#16 http://www.newideas.org.uk/ – This is an advocacy organization for people with learning disabilities in a town in England.

#17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Idea – This is a Wikipedia entry for an Australian magazine called “New Idea;” again, not what a searcher is probably looking for.

Not that my site deserves the #1 spot (Ted.com deserves that, and they are #18), but certainly there are many less relevant and lower-quality sites which are higher than my #20 placement in the SERPs.

Apart from the penalizing of high-quality websites, there are other problems with the new algorithm. Myself and others have found that it’s giving too much weight to direct matches of names in sites and in URLs. Notice that most of the examples above of completely irrelevant results happen to have “new ideas” in their domain names. I found the same problem when searching “brainpower” to see where my site http://www.increasebrainpower.com ranked. Apparently despite having the keyword in the name I was penalized for something (no idea what), but look at some of the examples I pointed out to Google:

I Lost half of my traffic overnight (4/24 to 4/25). One example of why is the search term “brainpower,” for which I was usually on the first page in the past. Now it is result number 35. Here are my comments on the results of a search for “brainpower:”

- Result #1 is a Wikipedia entry about a bi-lingual rapper known as Brainpower, which some people might be looking for (never heard of him myself), but it seems likely that most people searching that term want a site about brainpower enhancement or brain-related topics.

- #4 was a video that is not actually available, which apparently had “brainpower” in the name.

- #5 is a music video some searchers may want because it is named “Freezepop-Brainpower,” although they could always add “video” to their search to find that.

- #7 is a British chemical supply company that happens to be called “Brainpower Incorporated”–not likely what searchers of “brainpower” are looking for.

- #8 is another company (a consulting firm) that has nothing to do with the brain other than having the name “Brainpower.”

- #9 is an online dictionary entry for “brainpower”–relevant perhaps, but why clog up searches with these when the small minority of searchers who actually want a definition can always add “definition” to any words searched?

- #10 is one short article on tips for brainpower, which does not seem nearly as relevant as an entire website (mine) devoted to the subject, with hundreds of pages.

I could go on and on. Many results are single short articles–again, not as relevant as a whole site. Quality of my writing can’t be the issue, since at least one of the results which is far ahead of my own site is my own article someone borrowed.

Taking my own site out of the equation, it seems that results are getting worse for this and many of the searches I have done.

I am probably not making friends at Google. I suspect like any humans the people there are a bit defensive and do not want to admit they made a mistake. But they did.

Furthermore, there is one more area where Google has truly fallen down on the job, and it is affecting the quality of results. They have had the opportunity to create a registry for new pages for all the years they’ve been operating, and many people have suggested that they do so. The reason for this is that without it your content is not safe. Negative SEO operators laugh about how easy it is to steal content as soon as it is posted online, and so get credited as the originator by Google because it is first found by the search bots on their site. Then, your own articles on your websites are seen as “duplicate content” by the Google algorithm, as though you stole or borrowed or bought the content. Google penalizes for having too much duplicate content (this they have acknowledged more openly for a long time), so this little trick is a primary tool used by negative SEO criminals for destroying website rankings.

Now, you might argue that the same quality content is out there, even if the original owners get screwed, but this isn’t quite true. The places which steal content are usually spammy sites that do not rank well, and the site where the content originates is downgraded for duplicate content, so searchers are unlikely to find what was published, even if it happens to be the most relevant and highest-quality thing written on a subject.

It is not even reasonable to assume that Google has no way to prevent this. When I post on one of my blogs, my feed on my Yahoo page is usually updated within seconds. I don’t know what the technology involved is, but if Yahoo can quickly acknowledge new content, Google can. At the very least they could allow a submission of new pages (they ask that you submit only the homepage to their index, and will probably penalize you if you try submitting others), so you could establish yourself as the originator of content. This would not be too much of a challenge for them to administer if they want to actually deliver the best results for searchers.

To return to the most recent update though, Google said this in their announcement: “Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.”

Okay, what does that mean? In other places they say you should try to put the words on your page that searchers are looking for, calling this “white hat SEO.” I guess that’s not a “trick,” but what is? If you buy Facebook announcements to boost traffic to your website (traffic count is thought to be one of Google’s algorithm measures), is that a trick or just routine marketing?

Google also said: “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.” Really? Is it a “link scheme” to trade links with relevant websites? This used to be a common practice before people even thought about SEO, but is it okay still? No answer from Google.

It seems that if quality was the issue, and they have some idea that certain practices diminish quality for visitors to sites (although I cannot imagine how off-site factors could do that), they would want to clarify these things, so webmasters could clean up their practices. Even when they directly notify us that we “may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines,” they do not specify. Why not? They mention “unnatural links,” which means they actually identified some links they don’t like, so why not tell us which ones so we can try to remove them?

There is no way for a search engine algorithm to perfectly deliver the highest-quality most-relevant results. No program can think like a human. Consider the following, which is the first paragraph of a site that was a hundred results higher than my website http://www.everywaytomakemoney.com for “ways to make money:”

Ideal way to earn a living is much like whatever else that may be greatest Everthing depends on… (you add the clean) What could be employed by an individual won’t be employed by another individual. There isn’t a cookie cutter best for every person.

Algorithms apparently still can’t tell that this is a horribly spammy site, with what is called “spun” content, which a human can recognize in less than five seconds by looking over the homepage. These kinds of mistakes will always happen, but my site, with over 400 pages of original content (half written by myself) is below at least 50 sites that are of low-quality like this or are just not relevant. Way to go Google.

One more story: Google is trying to target those who have incoming links they don’t like, but their results are inconsistent to say the least, seeming to hit us small-time sites more than the big ones. As Chris Rempel pointed out, the post announcing the new update had a big embarrassment in it. There is a screenshot of a spammy site as an example, and Matt Cutts says;

Notice that if you try to read the text aloud you’ll discover that the outgoing links are completely unrelated to the actual content, and in fact the page text has been “spun” beyond recognition:

The image is in fact readable, so it is possible to pluck out a sentence fragment and do an exact-phrase search to locate the actual site he took it from (I used: “If you agree you are too active to get time and energy”). When you get there and scroll down to find the post he used, follow the irrelevant link (as far as we can tell from the mangled English the post is about exercising) to “pay day loans” and click on it. It will take you to checkintocash.com. Almost certainly the site has bought many such links from these spammy sites. Now search “pay day loans” and you’ll see that checkintocash.com is the second result (as of 4/30/12). Apparently, buying those links works, and playing by the rules doesn’t.

I should mention that when I tried doing that exact-phrase search in Google, it didn’t work–no results. Bing, on the other hand, had no problem finding the site. Is Google trying to hide something, is their index less-complete than we think, or did they exclude the site from their index altogether because it is such garbage? If it is the latter that presents its own problems. After all, what if someone wanted to find that site for whatever purpose, as I did for the purpose of making this example? I couldn’t get the most relevant result for my search, so I had to go to Bing.

It seems that Google is more concerned about controlling the internet than about quality. They may think this is the route to better SERPs in the future, but at the moment it means worse SERPs. Google has given up on providing the highest quality and most relevant results for now.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WN3C30

Here’s a look at some of what’s in the book (over 300 ages and 96,000 words, by the way; this is not a pamphlet)…

Subliminal Persuasion Techniques – These are covered in the first chapter, and although you might feel a bit uncomfortable using some of the methods explained here (I wouldn’t use a few of these), you will want to read this to protect yourself from having them used on you. The same can be said for the chapter on hypnotic sales writing techniques (I did use a few of these to quadruple the subscription rate for my Brainpower newsletter).

Brainpower Enhancement – Chapter Three covers 70 ways to boost your brainpower, and there are also chapters on how to be more creative, develop your intuition, use memory tricks and have more focused concentration. Chapter Eight, on NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) will also help you use that big brain more effectively.

Information Gathering – One of the chapters covers how to find people and/or gather information on them. You would be surprised at how hard it is for someone to really disappear. Another chapter looks at the secrets of spies, including the technology and the techniques they use. There is also a chapter on how to get the news that isn’t being reported on television.

Medical and Health Secrets – That’s the title of Chapter Five, and you’ll find some good ones here. This chapter will not only open your eyes and show you things many doctors don;t know, but it can also save you a lot of money.

Treasure Hunting – There are many different kinds of “treasure” out there, and Chapter Eleven will clue you into some interesting ways to find it. This is a fun chapter, but these techniques have really worked too.

Real Estate Secrets – There is a chapter on what real estate agents won’t tell you. Read that one before you start working with an agent as a buyer or a seller. There is also a chapter on nothing-down investing strategies.

Other Secrets – There is a chapter on how to read minds (and how to influence the opposite sex), a chapter about the techniques politician and others use to manipulate public opinion, one on how to make money online with no money or website, another on how to motivate yourself, and a few on topics related to getting rid of debt and dealing with credit issues.

Following the 28 chapters in the book, there is a fun section simply titled “More Secrets.” These are one-to-three paragraph entries on all sorts of little things you probably don’t know. There are over 200 of these. For example here is a random slice from the table of contents:

6. Rent Rooms – Make Thousands
7. Keyword Research Secret
8. Towns With Houses Under $50,000
9. How to Get Government Documents
10. Breath Holding Secret
11. How to Do Better on a Physical Exam
12. Free Photos for Web Sites
13. High Altitude Secrets
14. The 25-Cent Potato Trick
15. Job Search Secret
16. Nickel-Dime Bar Trick
17. Coupon Secrets

You can read more about the book and order it for your Kindle here: You Aren’t Supposed to Know – A Book of Secrets

The Survival Guide for Interesting Times

If you don’t have a Kindle reader, you can download a desktop version for free here:

Kindle for PC

It looks at survival from a broad perspective, to say the least. I start with basic financial matters like how to get out of debt fast, live on less, develop streams of income, and prepare for unexpected events. I move on to what to do when “interesting times” arrive, including how to raise cash fast, find survival jobs and start low-investment businesses.

As the book moves along it gets into more and more extreme scenarios, and the preparation you can make for them. Epidemics, wars, and “Mad Max” futures are considered. I cover what to put in your “bug out bag” (BOB) and how to choose a BOV and BOL (bug out vehicle and bug out location). How to hide money is covered in Chapter Eight, with a look at the advantages and disadvantages of various “money alternatives.”

Chapter Nine is where some of the really fun stuff is found, with a collection of survival skills covered, ranging from how to survive a car chase to how to escape flexi-cuffs or kidnappers. Other topics include dealing with dog attacks, starting a fire using a car, how to disguise yourself and disappear, how to survive a gunfight, and even how to survive a nuclear bomb. The basics of wilderness survival and how to think like a survivor are the subjects of the last two chapters.

Interesting times will come, whether for all of us in society or just in our personal lives. If you want to be prepared, reading this book is a good start.

Consider for a moment what it means to stop deciding what is true using your own mind. There will still be things you hold as true, but for what reason? Most likely for this reason: some important authority on Earth, present or past, has claimed certain things to be true, and you accept that authority as your guide. Now, since it is clear to all who pay attention that there are “authorities” of all types who will say all kinds of things, isn’t it also clear that it is YOU who decide which one to follow? You decide that this or that political party is right. You decide which kind of doctor to go to. You decide which “holy books” to follow; there are many to choose from after all.

In other words, there is no complete escape from the responsibility of thinking for yourself, since you must do so at least as far as choosing who to do your thinking for you prior to your relinquishing this responsibility. Add to this the obvious reality of your fallibility (not one of us is perfect), and it becomes very clear that it is extreme arrogance to ever think that you can rely on your mind to decide that this or that person or system or set of words is infallible for now and for all time. What’s the difference between saying you are perfect in your knowledge and saying you know how to choose the perfect purveyor of truthful knowledge with certainty? There is no difference. Either way you are claiming some kind of perfection.

To claim your own responsibility to think is not arrogance. It does not imply that you believe you’re always right (which would be arrogant). It is simply the recognition that nobody else is always right either, and to the extent that you follow any guidance outside of our own experience and mind, you do so by taking responsibility for choosing that guidance. If that choice is your responsibility, then all of your thoughts and beliefs are as well, right? To say otherwise is like saying that a drunk man has no responsibility at all for his actions because he is under the influence of alcohol–while ignoring his choice to be under that influence.

Intellectually there is no difference between a concentration camp killer saying he was just following orders and you saying you are just following the words of this or that holy book, guru, or savior. And morally, at the point where you sacrifice your mind to the claimed infallibility of any authority, it often becomes random coincidence and circumstance whether you happen to give up your mind to a good idea or a bad one. After all, you have openly declared that you will no longer judge such matters for yourself.

You may call me arrogant for saying that I think for myself, but I readily acknowledge that I can make mistakes. It is arrogant to think you are infallible, even if that infallibility you imagine is limited to choosing who or what system will think for you. Is there truly no chance that you are mistaken in your choice? Is there really no further thought required of you? And does that approach suggest humility, or just another insidious form of arrogance?

It is assumed there there is little discrimination against non-believers in western democracies, but is that true? Consider this recent quote from presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (during a televised debate in Las Vegas): “How can you have judgment if you have no faith? How can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?” Gingrich is essentially proposing a religious test for public office, something expressly forbidden by the Constitution (at least if done on more than an individual level).

According to a Wikipedia entry on the subject of discrimination against atheists, there are seven state constitutions which officially include religious tests that can prevent atheists from holding public office. In some cases the laws in these states also preclude a non-believer from being a juror or even a witness in a criminal case. These laws are from more than a century ago, largely unenforced for the moment, but that does not mean they couldn’t be, and to be honest, even repealing them is probably too politically dangerous for most lawmakers to consider.

The Boy Scouts of America does not allow atheists to be members, and though this is a private organization, this is certainly still discrimination. The pentagon, in response to legal challenges against this discrimination, had to stop sponsoring Boy Scout Troops. Whether or not the discrimination is by private organizations or even individuals, it is real. It is clear, for example, that a declared atheist cannot be elected to national public office even if he or she is the most qualified candidate.

A recent study showed just how much the believing public dislikes atheists. Reporting on this, Daisy Grewal of Scientific American starts with; http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-atheists-we-distrust

“Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to. Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia recently published a set of studies looking at why atheists are so disliked. His conclusion: It comes down to trust.

Gervais and his colleagues presented participants with a story about a person who accidentally hits a parked car and then fails to leave behind valid insurance information for the other driver. Participants were asked to choose the probability that the person in question was a Christian, a Muslim, a rapist, or an atheist. They thought it equally probable the culprit was an atheist or a rapist, and unlikely the person was a Muslim or Christian. In a different study, Gervais looked at how atheism influences people’s hiring decisions. People were asked to choose between an atheist or a religious candidate for a job requiring either a high or low degree of trust. For the high-trust job of daycare worker, people were more likely to prefer the religious candidate. For the job of waitress, which requires less trust, the atheists fared much better.”

Yes, we are ranked right down there with rapists. Perhaps even sadder is the fact that even those who claimed to have no religious affiliation said they distrusted atheists when surveyed. Self-hating atheists? Or is it the psychology; do even atheists feel that people are more trustworthy when they feel that a god is watching? There might be some truth to that. Studies–and experience–certainly show that when people are watching we behave better, so it makes sense that belief in a supreme surveiller could affect our behavior in positive ways. But the history of crime, war, racism and genocide show far more perpetrators who are believers rather than atheists, so maybe this argument is weak.

Yes, there is discrimination against atheists, and most Americans are guilty of it.