semantics

By some of the links I have put up today, you can tell I have been catching up on my blogospheric meanderings. I just finished reading a post by Bob Geiger and I laughed out so loud I had just had to write about it.

In Here's How Fringe I Am, Fred Thompson, Bob describes his fringieness. Here's a sample :

• Attended my son's middle-school orientation. He's "graduating" from elementary school this Thursday -- though, oddly enough, exhibiting few signs of being a "fringe element" despite having me for a father -- and on that day, our lunatic activities will center around taking many pictures of him and his friends and going for ice cream afterwards. I personally plan on ordering the Cookies and Communist Crunch.




• Volunteered at a local community clean-up effort to rid our town of the trash spawned by a predominantly-Democratic community that clearly hates America. Went to weenie roast afterwards… Put catsup on my hotdog to show how much I despise American values.

My favorite :

• Took my son to the driving range with me. While we whacked golf balls, we discussed our lack of family values and my little boy stunned me with this question: "Dad, why haven't you been divorced a bunch of times like Fred Thompson and the other Republican presidential candidates?" "Now son," I said. "Senator Thompson's only been divorced once. You're thinking of Rudy Giuliani or Newt Gingrich."

Of course, I can not not quote the punchline : So that's about it. I only regret that we didn’t have time to burn an American flag this week.

Harrumph!

About 21 years ago I was in what I would like to dramatically believe was a tempestuous relationship. Unfortunately, it wasn't that glamorous. I was obsessed with a guy who by the age of 19 was an alcoholic coke and then crackhead. The toxicity of my desire trumped my better judgement and I allowed myself to enter in one of the most unsafe relationships I have ever been. It was also the most formative. This was the same relationship that ended with the abortion I have never regretted.

In one of our alcohol fueled outings, I said "NO", he said "Yes" and what happened next, I believe, is a matter of semantics : I would have probably described it as "me abusó" --he abused me. Sexual assault sounds a degree or two more violent than what happened. And I would never name it rape. I can't.

This was Puerto Rico after all and it was the 1980s, a time when we had an influx of South American dissidents fleeing Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and bringing with them stories of los desaparecidos, "the dissapeared". Some of these people had survived their own disappearances and talked about the systematic rape and torture they endured at the hand of the military during their imprisonment. The others who didn't suffer that fate, fled their countries fearing they would be next.

To make matters more complicated, at least for me, I come from an extended family of alcoholics, drug addicts and gamblers. Some of them were wife or child beaters. Some of them were cops. Some of them were all of the above.

In John McCain, Google and the politics of advertising, Part 1, I explained how web crawlers work, why they like sites created with Drupal and how Google, the world's largest search engine, has not just successfully married web crawling with contextual advertising, but has become the de facto operating system for all online propaganda campaigns, including politics.

In this second part, I'll try to explain why McCain's ad keeps popping on our site.

So back to the McCain ad.

GoogleAdwords is a contextual advertising network. What this means is that Google uses their search technology to find through all it's publishers the best ad real estate for their clients. This is what Google has to say about the program (emphasis mine):

AdWords lets you create simple, effective ads and display them to people already searching online for information related to your business. So how is it possible to show your ads only to the most relevant audiences? The answer is keyword-based advertising.

When a searcher visits Google and enters a query — say, 'good beginner guitars' — Google will display a variety of relevant search results, such as links to articles containing guitar purchasing advice, or websites dedicated to novice musicians. It will also display AdWords ads that link to online businesses selling guitars, music lessons, or other products and services related to the query.

Given we have an easily searchable, keyword rich site, this means the McCain people must have bought a lot of keywords that have to do with elections, politics and the man himself. Now, the big question is : why would it appear on my personal page as well as the politics sites?

Rubyji is not the only one to have noticed the John McCain ads that have been popping on the site lately.

Last week I got pinged by Azi Paybarah, a fellow political journo-blogger for New York Observer's The Politicker. I guess Azi needed to check out how babelicious I am and was perusing my (soon to be updated) bio at lizasabater.com.

To his horror, he found this :

Yes, that's a John McCain ad right next my mug.

Now, there's the "sensible" explanation for this freakish political mashup and then there's the conspiracy theory. The explanation, though, will shed light into some of my web development skills and the techniques I have used to develop my sites.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee, pull up a chair and get yourself comfortable. Some major geekatude is coming your way.

Sometimes, as my dad always says, "you don't know whether to shit or go blind." (It's an English idiom.)

When I see what the members of the Right have done to the language in an effort to try to change reality, I know exactly what my father is talking about.

This week, in one of those grandstanding fuckwadded-up pieces of bullshit that they specialize in, right-wing Republicans will introduce House Resolution 6099, The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act. Because, according to the bill's sponsor, fetuses of 20-weeks gestation are capable of feeling pain. The answer? Is not to assume that it's a medical fact and require doctors to administer pain to these fetuses. No. The bill requires that doctors INFORM women about to undergo post-20 week abortions that their fetuses will feel pain.
See? That's the "awareness" part.
It's all part of the wicked baby-killer thou art woman bullshit.
According to Yahoo news,

The bill, by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., defines a 20-week-old fetus as a "pain-capable unborn child" — a highly controversial threshold among scientists. It also directs the Health and Human Service Department to develop a brochure stating "that there is substantial evidence that the process of being killed in an abortion will cause the unborn child pain."