Internet Annoy-vertising on Philly.com

I have been a long time reader of the Philadelphia Inquirer to keep in touch with Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey news. For a couple of years I read the hard copy of the paper, but gradually grew weary of using all of that paper day in and day out. So I have since become a daily peruser of thenewspaper's online portal, Philly.com, which is much more environmentally friendly, and free for anybody to read, which is also nice.

It's a widely known fact that newspapers are bleeding subscribers due to the ease and efficiency of the Internet and its virtually infinite number of news sources. And it's also widely known that newspapers are having a difficult time making a profit in this changing world of news production.

So I empathize with the fact that newspapers are looking for new, creative ways to make money. But two of the Inquirer's latest undertakings on Philly.com, are quite annoying.

First off, when you click on to Philly.com, you don't realize it, but a pop-under ad often sneaks behind your browser. This in and of itself is annoying, though a fairly common practice across the internet, unfortunately. I frequently get ads from Netflix, for example, in this manner, and promptly ignore them. But the more annoying fact about these pop-unders are that they consist of a list of low rate ads, the likes of which you might see on Facebook's platform. Here's an example of one recent ad (out of six) that popped up:

'See How a Mom Drops 53Lbs!'

See how a mom of 3 drops 53lbs by obeying this 1 old rule... Learn more [link]

[ad accompanied by a cropped photo of a thin woman's belly exposed between tight white shirt and tight jeans]

My suggestion: at least provide some ads of value if you're going to sneak them in there. Perhaps post ads for local houses for sale, sporting event tickets, or other specialized deals, rather than ads trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator of internet surfers.

The other flustering thing that Philly.com does revolves around their sports articles. Click on a link to an article about, say, the Philadelphia Eagles' next game, and a video automatically starts playing when the page opens up. Most of these videos start with a commercial and then contain generic clips or photos of recent games. The main business page also does something similar when clicking on that page. I think it's a sensible idea to have videos incorporated into the site, but I would prefer them to start only when I click on them, and also make the commercials less intrusive.

I do hope that the Inquirer and Philly.com are able to find a way to earn a profit off of their news production, I just hope that they can find a more user-friendly way of appealing to loyal readers by avoiding intrusive ads and videos. Just my 2 cents.

Husband and Wife Die... Let's Count Their Money?

I came across an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a couple who apparently killed themselves in a knife fight over the weekend. Pretty sad and gruesome news, and I feel terrible for the kids who have lost both their parents. Definitely not something you want to hear about.

Speaking of things you don't want to hear about, I was really baffled by some of the extraneous details that were included in the article about the deceased, Robert and Sophia DiAndrea. Please feel free to tell me if you think these are really necessary bits of information, and tell me if you've ever even heard a news report talk about these types of things before (these are actual statements from the article):

-Robert was a $44,860-a-year supervisor of water conveyance systems for the Water Department, hired on May 27, 1997, city records show.

-Hired by the school district on Oct. 23, 1993, Sophia was a fifth-grade teacher who made $81,617 a year, school records show. She had worked four years at Anne Frank Elementary School, at 2000 Bowler St., an eight-minute ride away.

-The DiAndreas bought their home for $138,000 on Jan. 31, 1997, city records show.

Do those details seem bizarrely out of context when talking about a husband and wife who died? I just don't get it. The rest of the article is well-reported, giving a snapshot into their lives, but the financial data seems to come out of left field. Would the journalist have reported how much they both made if it were not public information? Or what if they were a low-income couple? Maybe it's me, but I don't feel the need to count someone else's money after a vicious ending to their lives.

Extra, Extra... Time to Go Cold Turkey

For the past 5 years or so, I've been a devoted subscriber of the Philadelphia Inquirer. It's a good paper, I get a lot of info from it, and it's helpful to have on hand for using under my cat's litter box. My subscription has been set up to automatically renew using my credit card, and I have just let it keep on charging over the years... I'm not even quite sure what it costs to get it to be totally honest.

Recently, however, I got a new credit card mailed to me to replace my old credit card. And guess what-- the Inquirer can't automatically bill me anymore since the numbers changed. So my subscription will be running out in the next few weeks or so, and the Inquirer's sales team has been calling me relentlessly to remind me that my credit card account has changed. Being the *ahem* wild and crazy guy that I am, however, I'm going to go cold turkey and just let my subscription slide without renewing it. It will be a test for me to see what life is like without getting the newspaper after reading it religiously on a daily basis.

Currently, I read (or skim) the paper during breakfast at home, during lunch at work, and during appropriate bathroom breaks. That's a lot of time spent staring at newsprint, probably well over an hour each day in total.

So I'm going to switch things up a little bit. I'm going to devote more time to reading books (something that's fallen by the wayside recently), catching up on magazines, and perhaps flipping thru Philly.com to get bits and pieces of articles as they catch my fancy.

On the bright side, by not reading the Inquirer, I will no longer be depressed after reading story after story depicting the waning intelligence and lack of decency in this world. Obviously news, by nature, centers around "what's happening", but I can only take so much of political corruption, violence on the streets, nations at war, environmental destruction, filthy rich celebrities getting into trouble, and so on. My enjoyment of the world definitely takes a hit after reading the news every day, and it doesn't help reading about a Philly team losing a game the night before. For once, it might help to be blissfully unaware of most of the problems with the world, and instead focus on how I can make the world better in my own ways.

On the down side, I will need to find an alternative for protecting the carpet under my cat's litter box...

Wild Wood in Ocean City, NJ

Sometimes it just makes sense to do the sensible thing. Pretty simple concept, really. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

Battered by protests from environmentalists around the globe, and realizing that the cost might be much higher than expected, officials in this seaside resort are having second thoughts about their decision to buy wood from tropical rainforests to repair the boardwalk.

With so many alternatives to buying wood harvested from the diminishing rainforests of the world, it seems silly to even consider building your boardwalk with such a precious resource. Yet it looks like Ocean City is going to go ahead and do it anyway.

A tip to Ocean City councilpeople: Look around you. The businesses, organizations, and people that are "making waves" in the world are the ones that are changing their old ways of thinking and acting in a way that causes less harm to or in some ways benefits the environment and human civilization as a whole. Does your solution fit into this bracket of civic responsibility? I humbly submit... no.

Time to walk on the wild side, OC.

Humans' Great Donation to Space: Garbage

I read this write-up about rubbish on Philly.com on July 24th. Take a look at it, but basically it refers to astronauts on the International Space Station tossing out trash into the atmosphere.

So...

Can we humans go anywhere without messing it up?

The article goes on to say how most of the trash should burn up in the air during its descent towards Earth, but "small chunks are likely to survive next year's fall through the atmosphere," according to NASA.

Lovely!

Go humans!

Response to "Society Fails Because Families Do"

In the Sunday, April 22, 2007 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer,
Michael Smerconish jumped on the a recent study showing that "homes
without both parents have a higher chance of being involved in
violence," in his article entitled "Society Fails Because Families Do.

While I agree with the concept that children raised in household without married parents are more likely to commit violent acts, there is a key missing ingredient that I think is even more vital to preventing violence and encouraging socially healthy living: love. Anecdotally, but quite
consistently, I find that households with loving parents produce
children that are much less likely to be violent and committing crimes. Love is an intangible yet powerful force in the lives of children and can make all the difference in the world.

Even from a media perspective, consider how many TV shows and movies portray families (based on fact or fiction), and then consider what those families are like. There are poor, urban families with only one parent who displays his or her love and raise great children. There are rich, cold suburban parents who are unloving and raise dangerous children. There are kids raised in households without any parents at all, perhaps an aunt or grandmother (Spider-Man, perhaps), but a loving figure no less, and the kids are equally as loving as their role model in life.

In short, I can certainly understand a connection between a two-parent household and the decreasing amount of violence in their children, as the study shows, but I think the more important factor here is love.

And I know it because my mom and dad taught me so.

Another Environmental Mess: Kauai

An article from the Philly Inquirer has been bugging me since I read it on Sunday. It talks about trash on the island of Kauai in Hawaii.

Here's the meat of the article:

One unpleasant detail (on the island of Kauai) compromised the (otherwise beautiful) scene. A baffling display of ugliness sprawled along the tide line: water bottles, milk crates, fishing buoys, netting, plastic bags, a barrel-sized clump of orange plastic rope, and, scattered everywhere, a fine confetti of broken-up plastic chips.

By any standard, Kauai is remote, thousands of miles from the nearest continent in any direction. Where did this stuff come from?

The answer stunned me. It came from Mexico, the continental United States, Alaska, Taiwan, Japan and China. Some was dumped from recreational and commercial ships, but most of it came from individuals who littered, by the side of the road or on the beach. Plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose, meaning that all the plastic ever made still exists somewhere. A lot of it is floating in the Pacific.

"We're at a juncture of convergence zones that create this massive gyre that collects trash," said Paul Tannenbaum. "Some of it ends up on our beaches."

Marine scientists refer to that gyre Tannenbaum mentioned as the "Great Eastern Garbage Patch" - an oceanic trash pile that's twice the size of Texas, and by one account contains 3 million tons of debris. Slowly circulating currents gradually draw trash dumped off the coasts toward its center.

The main Hawaiian islands and the chain of small islands to their west act like a giant comb at the fringes of the gyre, collecting bits of floating plastic from all over the world, Tannenbaum said.

A garbage patch that's twice the size of Texas? 3 million tons of debris? Those facts just boggle my mind. How sad is it that an otherwise beautiful island in the middle of nowhere serves as a landing spot for the rest of the world's refuse? It's really a sad reflection of what this world's come to.

For more information, check out:

Hawaii’s offshore goldmine? Pacific trash vortex

Giant patch of ocean debris carries ghost nets, trash onto Island shores

Now we just need to figure out how to fix this problem and prevent it from worsening...

Global Warming: A Hot Issue that's Burning Me Up

Talk of global warming has escalated in the past couple of years, as we all know. From scientists proclaiming that this biproduct effect of burning fossil fuels will doom the Earth, to other scientists who say this issue is complete rubbish, everybody's got an opinion. It's for this reason that I firmly believe we need to change the subject.

To me, the concept of global warming has become a political issue that has lost all of its meaning. I say this because, if, indeed, we humans are destroying the Earth by burning fossil fuels and creating global warming, then quite frankly there's not a whole lot we can do about it now. If scientists who predict a rapid increase in worldwide temperatures, resulting in harsher storms, higher water levels, and a general imbalance in all that is good in nature, then it's too late for us to change anything in the foreseeable future because we're in way too deep.

Instead of arguing about global warming, let's focus on the other major issues that are directly related to burning fossil fuels:

• Health: Can anybody in their right mind honestly say that pumping smoke, exhaust, and other fumes into the air is good for us? Sure, some yokels out there couldn't give a plugged nickel about this issue, but on the whole we're threatening our lungs with carcinogens and other garbage. Asthma, cancer, emphysema, etc. are all exacerbated by having polluted air. Just look at this tiny little gem from the Philadelphia Inquirer today, and see if you feel a bit less content with the pollution we're creating....

Group blames Sunoco for carcinogenic pollution An environmental group said nine oil refineries - including Sunoco Inc.'s operation in South Philadelphia - that have 15 percent of the nation's refining capacity accounted for one-third of total carcinogenic pollution emissions reported by the oil industry. The Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit group in Washington, said Sunoco's Philadelphia refinery released 87,009 pounds of carcinogens into the air in 2004, ranking the plant eighth on the list. A company spokesman said Sunoco was proud of its record on health, environment and safety issues.- Harold Brubaker

• Economics: Imagine you could drive a car that would cost you nothing, nil, nada to drive as a result of not having to fill up on gas, ever. I personally, and unfortunately, spend about 50 bucks per week filling up my car, and that's using a fairly efficient car (Ford Focus) by today's standards. If everybody could pocket that money instead of literally burning it into thin air, imagine how much better off people would be the world over. Obviously this is an extreme example, but the big shots at big oil don't seem to be in any rush to change this setup because they're rolling deep in dough due to our thirst for gasoline. I'm not even going to get started on the notion of funding the terrorists and Middle Eastern nations....
  
• Aesthetics: Close your eyes for a moment and think back to the last time you heard somebody say, "Boy, I wish there were more smog in our sky." Or, "This city would look so much better with more black grime from smoke on the buildings." Sadly, people from old cities are pretty much accustomed to buildings looking grimy, but go to a cleaner environment and the difference is immediately noticeable. The polluted air affects the way things look, and subsequently gives people a less favorable outlook on the world.
  

Undoubtedly, the ability to burn fossil fuels has made our lives better in many ways, such as giving us hot and cold air to make weather extremes more tolerable; enabling us to cook foods more easily; providing a way for us to get place to place; etc. But now's the time to break out of the fossil-fuel-burning mode that we're stuck in. And if we are able to cut back on fossil fuel burning because of the aforementioned reasons, perhaps we'll lessen the global warming effect to boot. Then maybe we'll all breathe a bit easier.