The pope came to New York City, The pope left New York City. And the city that never sleeps is exactly as it was 72 hours ago. However, there were several moments of magic. The pope pulled off several feats that I never thought possible.

He Reversed Traffic. Who knew that one human being could be important enough to shut down vehicular traffic on Fifth Avenue for over a mile?

He Drives a Glass Car. No one questioned how many miles per gallon the pope mobile gets. I always though that Segways were silly looking. I challenge you to find me a sillier-looking vehicle.

He Looks Like Liberace. Is it just me that sees a resemblance between His Pontiffness and a certain 70s/80s ivory tickler?

He Likes Lace. I’ve been to mass and have never seen so many men wearing intricate lace clothing. And fur. Heck, maybe he IS Liberace.

For 81 years of age, the man is a walking marvel. He’s fit, lucid and a true messenger of good will. Thankfully, he is also speaking out against the abhorrent actions of a handful of child-molesting priests.

What the media fails to realize, however, is that only 25% o the U.S. practices Roman Catholicism. In short, many people simply don’t care. The top stories have been dominated for days. All I want is the five-day forecast.

If we’re going to be honest, the pope is a mane that represents a religious contingency that won’t acknowledge homosexuals, is anti-abortion, and against divorce and the death penalty.

I have to wonder, out of that 25%, who’s left to care?

Little by little I noticed that the once so-popular and hyped Facebook platform has turned in to a perfect spam box, spam with friendly greetings of… your friends.

Day after day my mailbox is flooded with spam messages, clickthrough messages, every time requiring me to visit the FB website. Sometimes just to read a message or discover that someone has added a picture. Basically the same thing I would have discovered anyway, when trying to follow my friend. That is whenever I log in. Daily actually.

And when I log in… then I am greeted by another spam box, the requests.
A little more than 24 hours of facebox absence generated this nice list, as seen in the screenshot at the right. This list obliging me to go on and on with my rant, because the screenshot is more than 700 pixel high. 700+ Pixels of useless spam, cyberwaste waiting to be added to the list of 32 applications I already have installed. And don’t use except for 4 or 5.

A never-ending list of applications, because most of time someone has been flirting cybervirtually flirting, more than just poke, and I HAVE TO add the application to see what they gossiped about me or check if they gave me a slippery banana or a wet nipple growing in my garden to produce endless bread for the rest of my life as a pirate bitten by zombies who lost the battle against the ninjas.

Not to forget the many notifications landing in my so conventional mailbox, because XXX wants me to add a slideshow to my facebox profile… just because she is too damn lazy to click the link to my flickr account in my facebook profile. sigh

Luckily facebox can be rather satisfying, ego-galaxy-stroking even, too… because right now I am… see the second screenshot.
If only they would have spammed me to let me know that!

The Season is reaching his climax, that is when you are Christian. The world is trying to fight for political correctness and get everyone to wish Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas.
Do you wish your readers Happy Holidays? Or do you also think of the readers who celebrate no religious days in these weeks? Which is blogically most correct?
Do you take the risk to be considered rude by your readers because you have NO wishes this month?

Quimby’s tiger was released from his soul over Paid Text Links Ads and Google’s policy on them. Or my post about it…whatever. Ah well…paid or unpaid links, Matt Cutts slobbering and Google worshipping aside, surely we can find something more approriate to release our soul’s energy over?

I dunno…where shall we start? Global Warming...Starvation in Africa...War in the Middle East. You name it. There’s a whole host of issues, that we as responsible, reasonable and educated people (hopefully) need to discuss and search our souls over. Or not. Maybe you are on an internal journey, seeking enlightenment. But splitting hairs over Search Engine policies towards paid text links is a tangent of an abstract issue, at best, and while it’s definitely worth discussing, it’s about as unspiritual as you can get. It doesn’t matter what, if any, your God (or faith) of choice is, but none of them would encourage you to link your soul (pun intended!) to such a trivial matter.

Of course, my tongue is firmly in cheek here! It is great that those who write and contribute on JOAB can openly disagree. What a boring world it would be if we all did agree. And Quimby made some good points: one that sticks to mind is that most of us who work in developing websites are often way too obsessed with Google’s power and the pagerank it gives to a website.

And ironically, since my post last week wondering whether Google was updating, Matt Cutts (more slobbering here, Quimby....) has, for the first time ever, recently posted a clarification on Google’s policy towards pagerank. To quote a couple of segments relevant to our own questions at JOAB-:

If you don’t care about PageRank and your site is doing well, that’s fine by me.

I believe that I’ve said before that PageRank is computed continuously; there are machines that take inputs to the PageRank algorithm at Google and compute the resulting PageRanks. So at any given time, a url in Google’s system has up-to-date PageRank as a result of running the computation with the inputs to the algorithm.

I’m not sure if I’ve given the official word on a PageRank export before. It’s not a big event here at Google. Frankly, I didn’t even know we’d done our 3-4 month-ish push of this data. When I saw people talking about it online, I went to check and see whether it was a real push or not.

So while you may be happy to see that the Google Toolbar shows a little more PageRank for a given page, it’s not as if that causes a change in search results at that point. So you won’t see any search engine result page (SERP) changes as a result of this PageRank export–those changes have been gradually baking in since the last PageRank export.

If you are like me- then you spend way too much time in front of your comp. You have probably let some other part of your life slip- maybe your health or your relationships. A lack of balance usually comes hand in hand with a lack of perspective. Personally I justify it as “temporary” and that I’m doing it “because I have to“, i.e: for the money.

Hmmm. Maybe that’s a load of codswallop. Maybe I can earn less money and have more fun. Maybe I could be happier as a person with a more rounded life if I stopped worrying so much about money. I hate letting anyone down, but just sometimes the darned emails can wait….

Good old Benjamin Franklin reputedly changed the word “profit” to “happiness“, as in “the pursuit of….” while drawing up The Constitution. Point being- money does not bring happiness.

It’s not just a cliché told by the rich to the poor, it’s the truth. For those of you who have not had the chance to witness the irony of seeing rich people you know personally- utterly miserable, or the smiley, innocent disposition of people in the Third World who are dirt poor, there is an excellent illustration of this concept by an old school chum of mine, Alain De Botton, in his book “The Consolations Of Philosophy“. Below, is part of his reflection on the teachings of Epicurus.

1. Identify a project for happiness.

In order to be happy on holiday, I must live in a villa

2. Imagine that the project may be false. Look for exceptions to the supposed link between the desired object and happiness. Could one possess the desired object but not be happy? Could one be happy but not have the desired object?

Could I spend money on a villa and still not be happy?

Could I be happy on holiday and not spend as much money as on a villa?

3. If an exception is found, the desired object cannot be a necessary and sufficient cause of happiness.

It is possible to have a miserable time in a villa if, for example, I feel friendless and isolated?

It is possible for me to be happy in a tent if, for example, I am with someone I love and feel appreciated by?

4. In order to be accurate about producing happiness, the initial

project must be nuanced to take the exception into account.

In so far as I can be happy in an expensive villa, this depends on being with someone I love and feel appreciated by.

I can be happy without spending money on a villa, as long as I am with someone I love and feel appreciated by.

5. True needs may now seem very different from the confused initial desire.

Happiness depends more on the possession of a congenial companion than a well-decorated villa.

Epicurus himself sums it up best:

The possession of the greatest riches does not resolve the agitation of the soul nor give birth to remarkable joy

I have a confession to make- I’m a closet Deepak Chopra fan. I’m pretty cynical over a lot of the New Age stuff, but his logic cuts to the quick with me and I end up remembering his pearls of wisdom, quite unintended.

One phrase of his that sticks to my mind is Divine Dissatisfaction. And it’s a good one when thinking of how to build a successful blog. In the past, I have often gone quite potty in not understanding why, despite being somebody who would like to think of himself as “aware“, I can’t seem to ever sit back and just relax with a particular project. I can never say “job well done- that’s perfect.” Because it never is perfect. Resting on laurels just doesn’t ever feel right. So when Deepak articulated this in one of his books, it made me suddenly feel like I wasn’t some neurotic freak on his way to the asylum. Aaaah! It’s okay never to be quite satisfied….in fact….it’s recommended.

As Deepak recently wrote on the Intent Blog-:

Just as growing from infancy to adulthood radically shifts what you want from life, so does growing spiritually. Desire is always involved. The twists and turns of the detachment argument have worried generations of seekers, and still do. Nobody can adhere to all of these dicta, and since they often contradict each other, the result is conflict and confusion.

Desire....to make your blog as good as it possibly can be. Unlike static websites- blogs will not forgive neglect. Busy for a month and no time to post? Won’t do. Blogs need constant, tender care. Insomnia aside, what would be the driving force to make you go the extra mile? Greed? I doubt it- we’ve covered that one (I hope). Egocentrism? Maybe. What better motivating force could there possibly be than a thirst, ay a need, for perfection? And that this thirst is doomed to be forever unquenched, the need unfulfilled, the accomplished perfection to be elusive. But what great feats you will have accomplished on this frustrating path! In all aspects of your blog- content (break it down: grammar, spelling, interest…), design, technical and marketing- you are to be obsessively improving and improving and improving. Never satisfied.

How poetic is that!?

It does seem fitting to end with a quote from one of the greats, Robert Browning-:

“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp….”