Well, I've lost my advertising here. Looks like Google is insistent that I validate my address by entering a PIN that they supposedly sent me. I've requested that it be re-sent twice, and still have not received one. They won't send me another. So I'm trying to deal with their customer service people, who apparently don't exist in any real form.

My address is correct, I check the box a couple of times a week, and still nothing has arrived. They provide no other way for validating your existense.

All of which begs the question of why Google would feel the need to do this in the first place. Don't they realize that their users are -- probably more than anybody else -- unlikely to do much snail-mail at all? Personally I don't even check the box most days of the week. I've gotten to the point where everything is electronic. Except, apparently, Google's mechanism for validating my existence.

For a little guy like me whose ad revenues basically pay for the hosting and not much else, it's sort of a waste to have to deal with it. I may just remove ads altogether, or see if there's some other solution out there. In the meantime enjoy the Google PSAs.

-btc

No big developments today.

• Well, more and more evidence that nobody trusts government. We all know that the Fed's machinations are designed to bail out multimillionaire bankers while destroying our purchasing power, and we don't trust them. Now there's plenty of evidence that we don't trust politically motivated pandering like the Clinton/McCain "gas tax holiday" which would only make more money for gas companies while not benefitting consumers at all.

  This, I think, is a positive development. We need to be thoroughly disgusted with all these guys before we toss them out. Sadly, we'll all be hurt by waiting so long.

  As I've noted before, I think it'll be the next generation -- the generation raised on interactivity rather than passive TV watching -- that will finally take control from the people in the middle who forget who they work for.

• One story I haven't seen mentioned in may places is the upcoming leadership transition in Saudi Arabia. (Thanks to Stratfor for pointing this one out.) If Crown Prince Mishal, the most powerful member of the royal family who is currently in Geneva for "medical tests" were to die, a lot of uncertainty would enter the system even though the nominal king still lives. That situation could make oil at $150 a barrel a reality very quickly even if the new and untested Saudi succession planning actually works. I would not be short oil right here. Not long it either, but this is just another reason you can't short.
• So, Warner Music Group (NYSE:WMG) is losing money and has to cut its dividend? I guess that says a lot about the strategy of suing your customers while simultaneously screwing virtually all the artists that you sign. I continue to be amazed at how self-serving the managements of these companies are. They will destroy their businesses rather than concede that their personal ego-gratifying empires are no longer sustainable.
• Does anybody still believe government numbers? If so, could somebody please let me know why?
• And more government lies. But a note at the end that I ultimately believe is positive, for the reasons specified above. A time is coming rapidly when people will be less inclined to believe any number that they can't touch, manipulate, react to and comment on. Imagine when the goverment has to simply publish the raw data in a framework that allows you to easily pull it apart yourself. Today the government can lie with impunity because the overall attitude is of the TV viewer: passive. But passivity is dying. By the time today's four year-olds can vote, it'll be dead completely. And so will the government's ability to lie to us.

-btc

Clay Shirkyon's piece entitled "Gin, Television and Social Surplus" on his Here Comes Everybody blog intrigued me when quoted by Barry last week, and even more so when I finally got a chance to read it in its entirety yesterday.

The most revealing point he makes is a simple one about his four year old daughter, who interrupted her DVD-watching to look for the television's missing mouse:

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

I came back to this article later in the day, after reading another article about Hollywood whining. This time it's Jeffrey Katzenberg whining about the fact that theater's haven't rushed to adopt new 3D movie technology, and for that matter, even plain old digital projection technology.

I've been having fun with Facebook in recent months. A friend out in Utah finally got me started with this one and I must admit it's been a nice way to interact with far-away friends, reconnect with some others and even meet a few new ones.

I just added the "Wheel of Friends" application and found something pretty interesting.

While I have a lot of friends, I don't have a whole lot of connections between them. This seems quite a bit different from the wheels I've seen on many of my friends' pages.

I wonder what this says about me, as well as about the application itself?

• For starters, I suspect there would be a lot more connections if more of my friends were on the system. For better or worse, among my age group, use of Facebook is somewhat limited.
• I'd probably have even more linked people if I were in a more stable work situation. As an independent consultant I tend to have a lot more one-off business relationships than somebody in a regular workplace with lots of colleagues who know each other.
• That said, I've got to think that this is at least somewhat reflective of my reality. I have lots of friends and acquaintances, but I seems to accumulate them in the oddest of places. I don't have lots of "groups" of friends. In fact, I'm one of those people who finds hanging out in groups to be at least a bit uncomfortable. Sometimes, very uncomfortable. (This tendency has definitely cost me a relationship or two recently.)

I think this is part of the unstated power of social networks. They can help you notice and figure out things about yourself that you may not have been inclined to even consider had you not had it displayed for you in such a concise and well-presented manner.

-btc