Got our tax bill in this week. Apparently we did quite well last year. Well enough to make us seriously consider not doing nearly so well this year, even if just for a fleeting moment. Our normal 'when all is said and done' tax bill has been somewhere in the vicinity of a few hundred bucks. This year - well, lets just say that our previous bill would be a generous tip you might leave for a dinner as costly as this year's bill. Ouch.

Of course, we really won't do so well this year - we'll be pulling up stakes and moving, with all the finanacial upset and chaos that entails. Which will make paying last year's bill even more painful.

But, on the other hand, paying taxes is concrete proof that A) we are making money (far more than we have in the past, which is a good thing) and B) we are pulling our weight to pay for all those citizen-supported policies and programs that most of us, myself included, rely on to keep the juggernaut of American life rolling - cheap food via subsidies, cheap health care at the county clinic, Medicare and disability (just in case), cops, judges, highways, bridges, small business resources, clean water, PBS, literacy programs and so on.

It pays to feed the hungry, provide clothes to the ill-equipped and teach the unlettered. It pays to send food to places where food no longer grows and to build houses for those whose belongings are under a mountain of rock, or washed out to sea. It pays to send free, yet vital, information to newly minted entrepreneurs and newly created mothers. It provides shots to children who would die without them and shots to ease the pain of those who are already dying.

Of course, some may point out that a lot of our taxes probably goes to things I wouldn't support out of choice. But some of the things I wouldn't support are things that other people fought hard to get. And some of the things I mentioned above as a plus are things that others don't support. I can live with that. That's what elections are for.

So yeah, it hurts to think of how I'm going to pay my taxes this year. But it hurts in the way that a post-op surgical wound hurts - painful, but tempered with the knowledge that the pain is a result of what is otherwise a good thing. I only have that pain because I am making enough money to live better than last year and to pull my weight as a citizen of this country (even if, from time to time, it seems like we're all pulling in different directions).

So, thank you sir! May I have another!

Ever wonder why Google searches are beginning to return so many look-alike results - and how you can tell the good from the bad? Read on.

One of the primary tenets of quantum physics is that observation changes that which is observed. On a quantum level, simply looking at something alters its behavior by virtue of introducing an outside energy source into the equation and therefore changing what the observer sees (for example, viewing atomic particles visually introduces light, the energy of which changes the particles observed by banging them about with photons and altering energy levels).

This sort of thing happens in macrospace as well. For example, observation of a news event changes the story by changing the actions of those involved as they react to being observed. The bigger the eyes of the observer (say, going from a small town press to CNN) the bigger the shift in behavior.

And currently, to paraphrase AC/DC, Google's got the biggest eyeballs of them all.

Not only is this observation changing the way content providers format their material to vie for page rank, it is changing the nature of the content itself, content that most of us rely on to provide us with important, and sometimes essential, information.

In a recent article, WS Journal writer Lee Gomes explains how the very presence of Google's observational powers is changing the nature of online "original content."

Gomes went online as a pen for hire to see what is really involved in creating this surge in keyword heavy online original content, and what he found was not pretty:

My job, it became clear, was to make enough small changes to the text [copied directly from existing online sources] for Whirlywinds to be able to pass it off to search engines as his own. Which is, in fact, what most of the "original content" on these sites turns out to be: cut-and-paste jobs with superficial modifications.

At $2 an article, tops, that's all anyone can afford to provide -- even in India and Eastern Europe, where most of this work gets done. My conscientiousness with the first piece was, in retrospect, comical.

This is bad enough, but during this process Gomes often received direct instructions to leave out any "negative comments" in content about potentially dangerous products and to insert alarming "facts" (such as information that bird flu is passing from human to human or that it hibernates for centuries) that were patently not true.

So what does this mean for most of us? Depends on who you are. For writers, it means more pricing pressure as crap-mills spew out cut-and-paste junk for pennies on the dollar-value of real, researched original content. For content providers, it will mean a harder slog to fight off the temptation to buy this crap and instead to hire real writers and pay real fees to produce real, informative original content.

Unfortunately, for Joe Q Public looking for information online, it means we are going to have to work a lot harder to find relevant, reliable information that shows all sides of the issue instead of what is essentially infomercial trash. The problem is that this crap will all sound eerily like the real thing, except for a few key (and possibley vital) points.

Have fun.

Went up to mom's last night to see if hubs could figure out what was making her plumbing fail to drain. It had always been sluggish since she bought the house last year, but now it wasn't working at all - not the kitchen sink, not the shower, not the washing machine and worst of all, not the toilet. Poor mom was stuck spongebathing and hiking out to the old outhouse in winter weather. Not good.

Well, after much exploratory surgery on hub's part (and a few glasses of blackberry wine next to the fire for mom and me) the two of us were called outside to witness what the dear boy described as a "39 inch hickory spider."

Turns out, a local hickory tree had insinuated a root into a pipe joint and had produced a prodigious net of root filiments which had subsequently collected and enrobed a solid, yard-long mass of...well...we'll just say it was solid and leave it at that. The pipe had been totally blocked by this impressive hunk of ugly, which had completely filled the pipe on both sides of the seam.

We gaped at it a bit, like looking at a car wreck where you want to look and know you shouldn't, and tried to imagine how long it had taken to get to that size (probably years). But it was too cold to linger and mom's dogs were starting to show an unhealthy interest in the object, so hubs went ahead and got rid of it while mom and I returned to our fire and wine, duly sobered. And seriously grossed out.

But all's well that ends well. Mom has free-flowing plumbing now. And a healthy respect for the hickory trees out back. Suddenly, we're all rather fearful of the thought of laying down at the base of them on a summer afternoon, within reach of their roots. I mean...you just never know, do you?

I've started to notice that when I'm talking to my grandmother, either on the phone or as I'm leaving the house, her normal farewell isn't of the "I love you" or "Have fun" or "Talk to you later" variety.

It's "Be careful!"

Just that, with apparently no further explaination required.

If I'm going for a walk in the park - "Be careful!"  If hubby and I are going out to dinner - "Be careful!" If I'm ending our phone conversation to resume my previously uneventful exercise of laying about on the couch watching Law and Order reruns - "Be careful!" (and I'm looking out for...what, exactly? The couch is going to swallow me whole? The cats might get peckish and start eyeing me as a food source? Aliens are going to take over my brain through basic cable?)

Granted, as my mom pointed out, this is more or less her way of saying "I love you." But to me, that seems kinda sad. I mean, from her point of view, darkness borders every one of life's activities, just waiting to decend on those foolish enough to go forth cavalierly and without due loin-girding against the vagaries of fate. Real life - the going-out-on-a-limb, charting-a-course-for-waters-unknown, head-out-on-the-highway sort of life - is a horrific, terrifying thing. Her perpetual fear and greatest conviction is that Something Awful (the dreaded, formless Something Awful) could happen to any of us at any moment. And her most immediate and comforting expression of love is a brief prayer that we'll all be able to foresee this darkness coming and with that foreknowledge, be able skate through life completely ensconced in a fluffy cotton-wool cocoon of blandness experiencing nothing unpleasant or unsettling. Be careful!

OTOH, to my mind the worst thing that could happen to me is that my grandmother's ideal would come true - that nothing bad would ever happen to me. Because, quite simply, it's impossible to open oneself up to the glories of life without also being vulnerable to harm. In order to live the sort of double-bubble-wrapped sort of existence that would make gran breathe easy, I would also have to completely insulate myself from anything good and fun and new and inspiring. Because the reality is that if you run around on the playground long enough, you're going to trip and fall and skin your knee. That's just life.

Of course, I no more relish the thought of stubbing my metaphorical toes than anyone else does. Like any human, I flinch from pain and flee toward reward. That's just human nature. But getting sick builds our immune system. Heartbreak teaches us about the ins and outs of love and helps us make better choices next time. Standing up means falling down. Over and over and over again. But the view from up here beats the view from down there by a long shot, so we keep on getting back up knowing that sooner or later we're going to end up on our bottoms again, dusting gravel off our behinds and cursing gravity like it was some implacable foe rather than a fried that helps us keep our feet on the ground and our heads pointed toward the stars.

I know that if I want to taste all of life in it's raw, unfiltered state I can't protect myself from the possibility of swallowing the occasional bitter bite. But what gran doesn't seem to understand is that that's okay. That's part of life. You just swallow hard, grab a drink of water to get the taste out of your mouth, take a deep breath and go right back to the table.

The only alternative is to get all upset and go sit in the corner, preferring to starve yourself of life rather than risk hitting another bitter spot. I don't know, but I suspect that's what happened to gran somewhere down the line.

Not me. I love life too much to let "Be careful!" become my mantra, as it has become my grandmother's. Growing up in this environment of fear, I had to work hard to rid myself of it. And now that I have, I refuse to let fear motivate my actions and direct my decisions - I won't step away from the banquet simply because some of the dishes aren't to my liking or are even potentially dangerous. Neither should you.

So, ta for now. I've got a whole plate full of life going cold on me while I type. And, uh, do me a favor? Try not to be too careful out there, will you?

Mmmmmm...Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies. What more is there to say?

(For those of you who managed to miss the 'napoli' Googlebomb, here's your vocabulary lesson for the day: Bill Napoli)

Over on Seth's blog, he asks if there is a qualitative difference between doing something for love and doing it equally well for money.

How much do you care about authenticity?

[snip]

When David Chase built the Sopranos, he wanted to tell a great story first, and get rich second. It was authentic in its first goal, and he accomplished his second. But when you eat at the fifth or sixth restaurant opened by a celebrity mega-chef, it's pretty clear that the goals are reversed. Does that make the meal worse?

My view is that anything done with a clear view as to intent, regardless of what that intent is - to make money, get famous or scratch a passionate itch - is to be considered authentic. Is the goal of dying rich by creating great works of art any less valid than the goal of creating great works of art regardless of money made? Is either effort any less authentic than the other if they both unambiguously succeed? Is a commercially successful genre novel written with the intention of being a commercially successful genre novel, then, any less authentic than a novel written for any other reason? Of course not.

What is authenticity anyway? Etymologically speaking, the word authenticity comes from the same root as author, and means 'genuine, real or original.'

Genuine is as genuine does. Dolly Parton is the queen of kitsch and there isn't a molecule on her that isn't pumped, plumped, painted, bedazzled or bleached. And yet is there one person out there, upon seeing and hearing her perform, who would dare label her as "inauthentic?" I think not. Because Dolly is absofrakkinglutely true to who she is and what she wants to do. And that is to dress like a Barbie, sing like an angel and have a ball doing it. That being so, to tone herself down into looking and acting like a "real" or "natural" person rather than the fun-loving and joy-bringing caricature she is would be the true fakery.

Authenticity is about the intent and follow-through of the act, not about the focus of the act. Authentic forgeries, done well and labeled as such, are as real as authentic originals. Authentic crap, created with that end in mind, is as authentic as lovingly handcrafted art and more so than haphazardly done work fobbed of as the real thing.

Authenticity is intent. Everything else is just description.

In the wake of all the SmartFilter furor - most notably the blocking of BoingBoing as a "nudity" site by many oppressive countries and corporate servers, when over 95% of their stuff demonstrably isn't nudity - comes proof of what a creative, loving community who isn't afraid to act on their own nifty ideas will do for you:

Introducing: Distributed BoingBoing. This is a bit of fan-written code that anyone can run on their server that effectively mirrors BoingBoing, rerouting it links-n-all through proxy servers, thus handily clearing the SmartFilter net o' totalitarianism.

With so many vastly trafficked commercial sites (CNN, Microsoft, iTunes, etc) this sort of thing could never happen because the helpful coder who dared such a thing would be shunted off to some shadowy corporate Guantanamo for copyright infringement or some other nonsense.

The fact that BoingBoing loudly stands for community sharing, creative commons and user-generated growth has resulted in a live demonstration of the lengths that the company doesn't have to go to to get stuff done. Show your community enough love and they will literally move heaven and earth for you without asking (in this case, creating ways to allow literally whole continents of oppressed people once again access a wrongly-blocked site), often in creative, cool and cheap ways you never would have thought of or had the time/money/energy/priority to develop yourself.

Okay, I'm convinced. Creative Commons mentality r000ls. Where do I go to surrender to our new open-source overlords?

Heh. Check out the victory post over on Smart Bitches blog. The number one Google result for Bill Napoli is now the SB napoli definition page.

Wow. The birth of a new word - and uh, aborting that birth just might be a problem for dear old Bill Napoli. Especially if he has to get permission from all the parents. Bummer, dude.