Ad Block Is Not A Panacea To Keep Garbage From Popping Up On Your Screen

 I don't really believe that most online advertisers are stupid. They just trying to push a product that consumers don't really want.

According to reports, more people feel that online advertising became far too invasive. In fact, many people don't have the patience of a holy man sitting in a cave and murmuring mantras all day. Mainly for this reason ad block use grew 82 % in the U.K. alone.

Naturally, there are established companies doggedly working on ways to circumvent ad blocking software.

Greed is a  powerful incentive to push often unwanted products. Video ads, flash ads and giving more importance to ads rather than contents. They are annoying as anything and make web pages load slow. If you are on a metered system, you are paying for garbage you must filter out.

On top of all this, most ad block software by default won't block text ads or "non-intrusive" ads. If they want to advertise, they do that. No more flashy "You're a winner" banners. Adios. They still get to you.-
But you don't have to buy, and probably won't.

We can complain all we want, but online advertising of often dubious products will not stop. --- That is, unless one adopts a simple rule I follow: Where I see something is pushed on my screen, it makes me determined NOT buy the product as I don't appreciate people shoving things in my face and telling me to buy them.

Profile My Ass! He's Got Long Hairy Ears And Eats Grass

The never ending hubbub against the practice of so-called "Profiling" originates from people who drive highly souped-up vehicles, like the ones often participate in illegal road races on our streets, endangering themselves and anyone else whose misfortune is to be in the unofficial Grand Prix area of these people.

Drivers possessed by acute inferiority complex which call for the roaring of engines and speeding down residential streets.  As if this would make up for their shortcomings in other areas of their life.

Guess what? Now we hear loud complaints from the owners of these usually doped up muscle cars that they are unfairly singled out by law enforcement agencies and by the ultimate evil, the insurance companies. They feel that without a cause they are treated as unwilling but potentially large sum paying donors to the insurance establishment's coffers.

 Many of us ordinary folks believe in the Easter Bunny, in the Toronto Maple Leafs and some even in the peaceful intentions of some Johnny - come-late egomaniac dictator pursuing the benign task of developing WMD's for the interest of..whatever he says.

But it is very hard to swallow the pap that people who spend large amounts of money to turn their standard vehicles into road racers able to exceed speeds of two hundred kilometers per hour, are just law abiding drivers. People who just suped-up their vehicles in order to impress their aunt Millie when driving her to the Bingo Hall twice a week.

If it is true, as they claim that only a small number of owners of muscle cars engage in dangerous and illegal road races, then it is up to the responsible majority of these owners to speak up and assist  law enforcement agencies to stamp out these sometime fatal and illegal road-races.

Fed Up With Air Rage

Headlines with increasing frequency telling us about unruly passengers on airplanes.

There have  been intoxicated passengers singing and indulging in horse play in the aisles  and many manifestations of actions due to "air rage". As a result of these incidents planes are being diverted, passengers maybe endangered and the cost of flying
just going up and up.

Reasons for this type of behaviour are plenty and varied according to "experts" and talking heads on media outlets.

Some of the alleged reasons behind air rage include, delays, lack of information, overbooking, passenger handling at airports and of course the restrictions of smoking during the flight.

However, a theory that will not win general approval is that nowadays flying has become an almost every day possibility for the great masses of people, including myself.

 As a result, unlike as in years gone by, more irresponsible people, who in the past could not afford to fly are now on the planes. While these are mostly a tiny percentage of the masses of people flying, they create enough problems for their fellow passengers and the airlines.

Fortunately, Airlines are starting to ban passengers who have been identified as being disruptive and unruly. There is talk of displaying signs in airports which warn passengers of a zero tolerance policy for unruly behaviour. And so be it. The sooner the better.


 

Article in the Toronto Sun about extreme cruelty toward kittens

                                                            
According to an AP report, school children in India taught 'living' lesson through the suffocation of kittens.

Apparently a school-book instructs young children to suffocate a kitten to learn that living beings need air. Wow! Now that sure is learning through experimentation.

No need to for me to describe in detail the horror of this alleged
case of animal cruelty. Read the article and form your impression.

http://www.torontosun.com/2017/02/10/school-children-in-india-taught-living-lesson-through-the-suffocation-of-kittens

Yet, knowing that in India, in many parts of that country of  a billion plus people, animals are protected to what seem to be extreme to the western eye.

In many places you see cows and monkeys roaming through the cities. In some cities you see windows protected with bars of iron so destructive monkeys will not get inside and destroy the content of the apartment or house. They go to great lengths to avoid hurting animals, for cultural and religious reasons.

This is one of the reasons why one is shocked on reading about instructing some fourth-graders in India to suffocate a kitten to learn that living beings need air.-- We are living in a strange and complex world.

That Cougar Can Be A Pussy Cat - With Treats

There is a virile movement on the visible horizon, called The Cougar revolution! In this setting, a Cougar is an "older woman" who is out to explore the hidden pleasures of age gap relationships with younger men, according to the literature on this phenomenon.

Evidently, forty something cougars would be attracted to men in their 20s, and fifty something cougars would quest after men in their 30s and so on.

Some cougars are less interested in a relationship than a sexual conquest, perhaps enjoying the fact that they are physically attractive to men who are considered to be in the prime of their virility.

In reality, women live longer than men. Chances are, that women who marry older men likely to remain alone in their Golden Years. Ergo, the case is building for the purr of the Cougar. And so be it.

The only question that has not been resolved up to now,( assuming this is true), at what age do some women stop calling young males "boy toys" and start calling them " dirty old men, loaded predators" for loaded predators" for preying on younger women?  😨

Are Merging Companies Good For Your Pocket?

A buoyant aspect of the capitalist system is the free market. By it’s nature, the free market promotes competition that generate conditions for resourcefulness and for rendering reasonably priced services.

However, a severe flaw of this system of economics is that many businesses and organizations getting larger by mergers and in due course they will be able to dominate the market because for all intent and purpose there is no real competition left.

This is not the time or place for lessons in economics, it’s sufficient to say that without government intercession the market will be manipulated by a handful of so - called competitors who don’t have to contend and are able to control the market for the goods and services they provide.

We experience this everyday when driving through intersections, each corner adorned with a “competing” gas station, selling the gas exactly for the same price, right down to the tenth of a cent.

Same situation with the banks, after the many merges, a few left who control the market. This way the service disappears in areas where is “not profitable” and they don’t have to worry that a competitor might open a branch in that rural village or small town.

Hardly worthwhile to mention where this competition ended up in the cases of the onetime department stores. -- Now we have cheap merchandise, manufactured mostly in Asia, often sub-standard products with questionable warranties, where the product may be sent across the pacific for repairs, that is if one fails to purchase a so called “extended service contract” for the item.

The time to be really concerned when our food supplies will be controlled by a only a few companies.

That’s the time to implement some creative diets and keeping fit by walking to the next village to a bank for paying a bill.

Oh yes, we can pay our bills by electronic means that are lend themselves to identity thefts and other scams according to news reports and a large volume of anecdotal evidence from people we interact with on a daily basis.

It could get worse: All the blogs may start merging and we have to pay for every line we scribble-electronically.