Comment Spam Mistakes? Stop Blaming Akismet was originally published on the blogs with wings site.

When something goes wrong it’s always easier to blame someone or something else. Such is the case with comment spam. As soon as somebody’s comments get mistakenly marked as spam the first reaction is to blame the software.

For most of us bloggers, that means we blame Akismet. But if you use the Akismet spam filtering service you are as much to blame as anybody. After all Akismet learns from you, and me and everyone who uses the service.

There is no such thing as infallible software. That’s because even the most sophisticated software is created by us, human beings and we are by nature flawed. So nothing is perfect and it’s not fair to expect Akismet to be perfect either.

You can’t just set it and forget it. It does not eliminate comment spam completely and it does upon occasion get it wrong. Completely legitimate comments can and do end up in your spam folder.

You Help Akismet Identify Comment Spam

If you read the Wikipedia defintion of what Akismet is, then you might begin to understand how it is that Akismet decides what is comment spam and what is not. Part of how that happens has to do with how you interact with the comments and comment spam on your own blog.

From Wikipedia On Akismet:

Akismet or Automattic Kismet is a spam filtering service. It attempts to filter link spam from blog comments and spam TrackBack pings. The filter works by combining information about spam captured on all participating blogs, and then using those spam rules to block future spam.

Akismet is a software service that is programmed to learn from all the bloggers who use the service on their own blogs. What you do or don’t do with the comment spam it finds on your blog, directly affects how spam is being handled on every blog that uses the service.

Akismet – Don’t Just Turn It On & Forget It!

Akismet needs your active participation to screen spam properly. It does not operate independent of the blogs that use it. Instead it needs your input.

Happily Akismet only requires a minute or two a day of your time to help it be really effective. If you just blithely ignore your spam folder Akismet will assume that everyone who ends up in there is a spammer. And that’s not always the case.

From the Akismet FAQs page:

“When the plugin catches something as spam it saves it in the database for 15 days in case you want to check it out manually and then automatically deletes it. In the unlikely event something gets incorrectly identified as spam you can correct it and it submits the “false positive” back to Akismet for analysis and improvement of our system. If a spam comment happens to get through and you mark it as spam within WordPress, it does the same thing. Akismet becomes more effective the more you use it.”

So there you have it, from time to time Akismet will mistakenly add a legitimate comment to your spam folder. When that happens you have 15 days in which to check your spam folder and mark it as not spam. And the reverse holds true as well, if it misses a spam comment you can mark it as spam and Akismet takes care of it. In both cases you are helping Akismet become an even more effective service.

You Lose If You Don’t Check Your Comment Spam Folder

If you don’t rescue comments mistakenly marked as spam, then Akismet will assume that it made the right decision and that person’s comments will always be seen as spam. Not only that, this mistake will contribute to how Akismet is evaluating spam across the entire network of blogs using it’s service.

You see the problem here don’t you? You could be losing readers, ones who have tried to leave a legitimate comment and not having their comments on show up on your blog, they just leave. And it’s quite likely they won’t bother commenting again, in fact they may just not bother coming back.

Check For Comment Spam Mistakes Every day

Bottom line? You should check your spam folder every day. It should be part of your daily ritual. I was checking it sporadically, but it wasn’t enough. And I got a good reality check when I was contacted by a reader who had become marked as spam by Akismet. I had missed their legitimate comment and it fell through the cracks of my spam folder never to be seen again.

Not only did their comment mistakenly end up in my spam folder, but their comments were being marked as spam on any blog they commented on. The same thing happen to me, not so long ago and it was a very upsetting experience. Happily Akismet has a contact form in place and it’s a simple process to contact them when you think you may have accidently been marked as a spammer by their service. The form even has an option for letting them know that you are having problems and Akismet may be catching your comments as spam:

Image of Akismet Contact Form.

According to Akismet 84% of all comments are spam. And Akismet has caught 1.8 billion spam comments and pings since it’s launch in October 2005. Think of how much garbage you’d have deal with directly every day if it wasn’t patrolling the blogsphere on your behalf. We can all help to make this already awesome service, even better. It’s simply a matter of taking an active role on how comment spam is handled on our blogs each and every day.

Today’s post was suggest by Silki Garg from PC Security, who recently went through being labeled as a spam commentator. Silki slipped through the cracks but is making a comeback here on Blogs With Wings and the blogsphere at large.

If you would like to suggest a topic for a post request help with a blog related problem, please use my Suggest & request page to contact me.

Related articles online:

• Combat Spam with the Akismet Plugin for WordPress (spunkyjones.com)
• How to Stop Spam Comments Automatically (freesocialmediahelp.com)
• Find Out If Akismet Has YOU Flagged as a Spammer (growmap.com)

More Great Blogs With Wings Articles:

• Akismet Gives Me A Lesson In Customer Service
• How To Be A Dofollow Blog And Battle Comment Spam
• How Dofollow And Nofollow Links Impact Blog Success

Missing CommentLuv Backlinks? Feedburner May Be Hijacking Them was originally published on the blogs with wings site.

Many bloggers use commenting as way to build quality backlinks to their blogs. But if you are using Feedburner the credit for the quality backlinks you are leaving on CommentLuv enabled blogs may be going to Google. But it is a simple problem to fix.

I posted an article roundup on September 5, 2010 that referenced a post about this very topic. I was shocked to find out that many of my quality backlinks from CommentLuv enabled blogs were being hijacked by feedburner. It explained something that was a mystery to me. Why, after switching all my feeds to Feedburner, did my backlinks drop drastically? I didn’t associate Feedburner with the problem, but after reading the article on Synactable.com, I understood what was going on.

That particular post did not get a lot of reads. I was worried that many you may not be getting credit for the quality backlinks you are leaving on ComentLuv enabled blogs . So I checked a few of the comments being left here on BWW and sure enough some of you are getting ripped off by Feedburner too.

Stolen CommentLuv Backlinks – Who is at risk?

You will only experience this problem if you are using Feedburner for your blog’s RSS feeds, as many of us do. The problem lies in Feedburner’s default settings. If you haven’t changed them, the comments you are leaving on CommentLuv enabled blogs are not pointing directly back to your blog posts at all. How is that going to give you quality backlinks?

How to check your CommentLuv Backlinks

It’s not difficult to find out if Feedburner is stealing your CommentLuv backlinks. Leave a comment on this post or check a CommentLuv link you have left elsewhere, by hovering your mouse over the CommentLuv link to your most recent post. If you look in the lower left-hand corner of your browser, your should see a valid link back to your blog article. If instead you see a link that contains “feedproxy.google.com”, then you have a problem.

If this feature is not available in your browser, simply right click on the link you are checking and select “Copy link location”:

Image of context menu highlighting "copy link location" option.

Paste the copied link into a text editor or wordprocessing document to see if you are getting quality backlinks. Your links are being stolen if you see “feedproxy.google.com” in the link.

Stop Feedburner from stealing your quality backlinks.

It’s easy for you to fix the problem. First, log into your Feedburner account for your blog and go to “Configure Stats”:

Now, all you have to do is uncheck the box next to “Item link clicks”. When the evil little checkmark has been removed, make sure you click the “Save” button to save your changes:

It may take up to 24 hours for the Feedburner cache to update and change all your links. They may not change right away, but with the next update, all your CommentLuv backlinks will lead back to you.

I want to thank Brian Rogel, the CEO of Synactable for his original article FeedBurner is Stealing Your CommentLuv Backlinks without which I would still be wondering why my blog quality backlinks count was so low.

Related articles from around the web:

• How to amass backlinks (potpolitics.com)
• Do follow luv (bloggerluv.com)
• Why I Recommend BloggerLuv, CommentLuv, SBC (growmap.com)

More Great Blogs With Wings Articles:

• KeywordLuv Gives High Quality Backlinks On Comments
• CommentLuv | What It Is, What It Does And Where To Get It.
• How To Be A Dofollow Blog And Battle Comment Spam
• How Dofollow And Nofollow Links Impact Blog Success
• Blog Seo, Commenting On Do Follow Blogs. How do you rate?

125×125 Ad Banner Layout With CSS And HTML was originally published on the blogs with wings site.

125×125 ad banners can be an effective way  to monetize your blog. But if your ad banners are not displayed attractively, they are not likely attract the attention of the reader.  Optimizing your blog for advertising includes making your ad layout as appealing as possible. Ad banners are most effective at generating income streams when they are displayed in a centered grid in your blog sidebar.

This tutorial will show you, in 3 simple steps, how to arrange 125×125 ad banners using simple CSS & HTML. You have two options to choose from: a grid that is 2 ads across for narrower sidebars or  a grid layout 3 ads across.

Sidebar Widths For The Two Display Options

For the 2 across grid your sidebar must be able to hold elements that are 262 pixels wide. The 3 across option requires that your sidebar be able to display elements that are 393 pixels or wider.

Here are some images that illustrate how the banners will be displayed in the two options. Please note that no borders will be added to the actual display code. They were added on the diagrams below for aesthetic reasons.

I’m not going to have you scour your CSS files to find out if your sidebar is wide enough. The easiest way to know is to a try out this method. If your sidebar is wide enough, your 125×125 ad banner grid will display as expected.

If your sidebar is not wide enough then your ads will either be hanging out beyond the confines of your sidebar or will be visually cut off, depending on your blog layout and design. So just eyeball it and if you think it will fit, give it a shot and find out for sure. Removing the code is easy if it doesn’t work for your sidebars. Simple as deleting a widget in your blog editor.

Why CSS And Not Tables For Ad Banner Layout?

Some people advocate the use of tables for laying out 125×125 ad banners. This is not good web design practice. Several years ago, there was a move away from using tables for HTML layout purposes. Instead, today we use CSS to control how elements are styled and laid out on a web or blog page.

HTML is a markup language used on the web to define what role an element will take on a web page, not how it should be layout. It defines things such as paragraphs, headings, lists, etc. Tables are intended as a way to display data on a web page. They should not be used for the layout your 125×125 ad banners or any other elements on a web page.

The preferred method is to use CSS to control the way elements are styled and laid out on a web page. CSS is easy to use and implement on your blog. This is the method we will be using.

I’m not going to go into great gory detail about HTML and CSS. I am going to give you a brief explanation of what you are doing. Then I will give you some code and show you where to copy and paste it in your blog template or theme. Three steps, simple and straightforward.

1. The CSS That Will Control Your Ad Banner Layout

The CSS will instruct the browser how to display your 125×125 ad banners in your blog template or theme. Simply copy the appropriate code snippet below into your clipboard. The code for a grid layout 2 ads wide is in the first box, the code for a display grid 3 ads wide is shown in the second box. Make sure you copy the right one for the width of your sidebar.

Copy the code, from the first box below,for 2 ads across (narrow sidebar). Then scroll down for the instructions on how to add it to the Blogger or WordPress CSS files.

.two-across-125 {
width:262px;
margin:0 auto;
overflow:hidden;
}
.two-across-125 a img, .two-across-125 img a {
padding:3px;
margin:0;
border:none;
float: left;
}

OR
Copy this code , shown in the box below, for 3 ads across (narrow sidebar). Then scroll down for the instructions on how to add it to your Blogger or WordPress CSS files.

.three-across-125 {
width:393px;
margin:0 auto;
overflow:hidden;
}

.three-across-125 a img, .three-across-125 img a {
padding:3px;
margin:0;
border:none;
float:left;
}

Click To View Instructions For Adding CSS To Blogger Templates

Login into your Blogger dashboard and click on the Design option:

Now click on the Edit tab option. You are now in the Blogger Template editing area.

Use your browsers search function to find the end skin tag: </b:skin>

Use the return key to insert a couple of spaces just above the </b:skin> tag, just to keep everything neat. Then paste your copied CSS code snippet above the tag in the space you created right above the </b:skin> tag. Click the image below for clarification:

Click Image For Full Sized View.

You can now proceed to Step 2. (Close this window.)

OR
Click To View Instructions For Adding CSS To WordPress

Login into your WordPress Admin area and click on the Appearance dropdown menu. Click on the Editor option, to open the WordPress Themes Editor.

Check to see if the css.styles file has opened in the editor by default. If not look through the list to the right of the editor. The styles.css file is usually near the bottom of the list. Click on it to open it in the themes Editor. Click the image below for a larger view to help you understand these instructions:

Click image for a larger view.

Scroll all the way to the bottom of the style.css file. Hit return a couple of times to add some space at the end of the file, just to keep things neat. Then paste your CSS code snippet at the very bottom of the file. Click on Update File to save the style.css file.

You are now ready to proceed to Step 2. (Close this window.)

2. Creating a Container For Your 125×125 Ad Banners

You are going to be creating a container, using HTML DIV tags, that will hold your banner codes. This DIV container will also have a “class”.  This class will reference the CSS styles that will control the layout of your banners. These are the styles you pasted into your blog’s template files in step one.

Open your blog editor, then copy and paste the appropriate code from below into a TEXT/HTML widget for your sidebar. Copy and paste the code from the first box for a narrow sidebar and a layout that will be 2 ads wide. Use the code from the second box if you have a wide sidebar and want your ads to display in a grid that will be 3 ads wide.

<div class="two-across-125">

</div>

OR

<div class="three-across-125">

</div>

3. Adding Your Banner Ad Codes

Now copy and paste all the codes for your ad banners between the two DIV tags as indicated in the diagram below. Please note that this shows the two across option. You will be pasting your code in the exact same place in the three across layout option, between the div tags. The only difference will be that the class will reference CSS styles for displaying the ads in a 3 across grid.

Here is an image of the div tags with a number of ad banner codes pasted between them:

When you are done pasting all your codes between the DIV tags, save and close the widget editing window. Open or refresh your blog page in your browser. Your ads should now appear in your sidebar.

I know this was a long tutorial, but I wanted to be thorough and hopefully as clear as possible. If you have any problems with this this or any questions related to blogging,  please don’t hesitate to use the contact form on my Suggest &  Request page. If I can’t help you directly, I will point you to some person or information that can.

More Great Blogs With Wings Articles:

• Minimal Blog Designs – The Sexy Power Of The Little Black Dress
• KeywordLuv And CommentLuv Tutorial Makes Them More User Friendly
• Pay Per Post, How To Not Make Money On Your Blog
• 13 Free Ways To Manage And Rotate Ads In WordPress
• Keep Future Blog Post Ideas Organized In WordPress

Social Networking Simplified With Seesmic Desktop2 was originally published on the blogs with wings site.

Social Networking is a complete pain in the butt. No, really. I hate it. It’s time consuming and it’s difficult. My social networking services are scattered all across the web. And bouncing around to access them gets really old really fast.But maybe that will all change with the release of Loic Le Meur’s most recent software release: Seesmic Desktop 2.

I’ve tried a lot of different Social Networking software, both web based and desktop varieties. But I’ve never found one that really had the kind of access I wanted. I’ve always dreamed of being able to choose from a wide selection of different social networking services that I could optionally have displayed in my social networking software. And now it looks like that dream is coming true with the release of the Seesmic Desktop 2 social networking software.

Check out this short teaser video:

Social Networking Software With Optional Plugins

The best thing about this latest release of Seesmic Desktop 2, is that you can choose the social networking services you want to use. Not only that you can choose from a list of 40 different options currently that are currently available to users of Seesmic Desktop 2. What’s really exciting about this, is that it’s an open architecture, which means even more options will be made available as developers start creating new plugins for the software.

Plugins for Seesmic Desktop 2 currently are grouped into several categories. they are:

• Social Networking
• Entertainment
• Utilities
• News
• Shopping

There are presently 14 plugins available under the social networking services category alone:

• Cadmus
• Empire Avenue
• Facebook
• Formspring
• FourSquare
• Google Buzz
• Klout
• Linked In
• MySpace
• Ning
• Ping.fm
• SocialCast
• SocialWork
• Twitter

Customize How Your Social Networking Software Looks And Behaves

Seesmic Desktop 2 lets you customize the way your updates are displayed in optional columnar layouts. You can even customize the color of the software to your own taste and designate how you will be notified of new updates. And adding your services is easy to do from right inside the software.

Learn More And Download The New Seesmic Software

Here’s the TechCrunch TV interview with Lolic Le Meur from a few days ago. He goes into the new Seesmic Desktop 2 social networking software in more detail:

Hopefully what this means, is a revolution in unifying social networking services from our desktops. If the Seesmic Desktop 2 social networking software really takes off, social networking may become much easier to manage. Soon we may be able to access all of our preferred social networking services from one location.

So download and try Seesmic Desktop 2 for yourself. Let me know what you think of it.

Related articles from around the web

• Seesmic Blog: Introducing Seesmic Desktop 2 [del.icio.us] (seesmic.com)
• With 40+ Customizable Plugins, Seesmic Desktop 2 Aggregates The Realtime Web (techcrunch.com)
• Seesmic Launches Swiss Army Knife for Social Networks (nytimes.com)

More Great Blogs With Wings Articles:

• As a Blogger, How Do You Measure Success?
• Followers On Twitter | Find The Ones That Really Matter
• Did You Sign Up For Your Hubze Card? Beta Release Date Announced!
• The Lazy Bloggers Guide To Blog Promotion With Free Social Networking Software
• Promote Your Blog For Free – 12 Free Blog Promotion Sites

Blog SEO Evaluation? Get Your Back To School Report Card was originally published on the blogs with wings site.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you are actually doing anything right on your blog. Blog SEO and all the other things that help create a successful blog can be hard to measure. Sometimes you wonder if the potential for greatness exists in the current incarnation of your blog. Well the kids are back to school and they will know how they are doing because they get regular report cards. So how about a free SEO report card for your blog?

Now, thanks to Website Grader , you can stop wondering about how your blog SEO strategy is doing and get a free report card for your blog. The reports are really very detailed and they take a very positive approach. They make sure to point out the things that you’re doing right and also offer ideas on how to make your site better.

Blog SEO Questions Answered

The 4 main questions they aim to help you answer are:

1. How well is your website doing?
2. Is it getting traffic?
3. Does it have SEO problems?
4. How popular is it in social media?

Blog SEO Easy To Read Report On Many Blog Success Measures:

• Content
• Recent Articles
• Number of pages indexed in Google
• Readability Level of your content
• Use of Metadata
• Use of headings and sub-headings
• Wether you have too many images
• Are your images search engine optimized
• Check your Domain Info
• Display your site’s MOZ Rank
• Show last Google Crawl Date
• Check for the number of inbound links

Blog SEO And Social Media Usage

A good blog SEO strategy and Social media usage go hand in hand., This free SEO report includes this by checking to see how well your site is being promoted on social sites by providing:

• The number of pages you have bookmarked on del.icio.us
• ALink Tweet Summary
• Your site’s Twitter grade
• A Google Buzz Count

Below is an image of the report and grade generated for Blogs With Wings. They really are well organized and easy to read and give you a good idea of where you stand with regards to how well you are promoting your blog and if your blog SEO tactics are working.

Clipped from: websitegrader.com (share this clip)

Display Your Blog SEO Grade For All To See:

You can copy and paste the code for your very own blog badge on your site and show everyone how well your blog is doing. The badge is very attractive and you can see mine displayed at the top of my blog in the featured items section.

So what are you waiting fo? Go get a free SEO report from Website Grader and see how well your blog is doing. It never hurts to have your blog SEO and blog promotion techniques reviewed. In fact, when you submit your blog, you can even opt to have a monthly update sent to your email. Great way to stay on top of your progress on the road to blog success.

Recent Blog SEO Articles Online:

• How To Use Images To Improve Your SEO (mt-soft.com.ar)
• FREE Ebook from SEO Design Solutions (seodesignsolutions.com)
• SEO Is Here To Stay, It Will Never Die [Voices] (voices.allthingsd.com)

More Great Blogs With Wings Articles:

• @font-face The Future Of Fancy Blog Fonts
• 10 Great Blog Articles You Shouldn’t Miss
• Tracking Visitors To Your Blog With Free Blog Tracking Analytics By Clicky
• Blog Comments, A Forgotten Social Networking And Blog Promotion Resource
• 5 Great Website Analysis Tools For Your Site

Blog Carnival Topic Is A Journey Back In Time was originally published on the blogs with wings site.

Cori Lost Her Cherry – She’s No Longer A Blog Carnival Virgin was originally published on the blogs with wings site.

The Sunday Blogging Paper – Great Reads From Around The Web was originally published on the blogs with wings site.

On Sunday morning many of us like to read the papers. Well, personally, I usually end up reading some interesting posts online. Let me share what I’ve been reading this morning. Some great articles for your weekend reading:

1. What is HTML5, and Why Should You Care? (switched.com)
   There is no getting around it folks, HTML5 is coming and as a blogger it will affect how you accomplish certain tasks on your blog. You owe it to yourself to find out what it is, what it does and when it will come into full effect. This is a great introductory article to help you understand the significance HTML5.



Clipped from: www.switched.com (share this clip)
2. A Gallery Of HTML 5 Sites (html5gallery.com)
   Keeping in the spirit of the above article here is a gallery devoted to featuring sites already using HTML5 for their web layouts. Stunning and so much simpler to accomplish with the new HTML5 tags.



Clipped from: html5gallery.com (share this clip)
3. SEO Top Analytics Tools – Blog Tips (cafeblogger.net)
   I’m sure you already track your blog analytics online. Don’t you? Well whether you do or not, here is a list of 9 of the top SEO Analytics Tools. Some of these you are probably already familiar with, some you might like to get to know.



Clipped from: www.cafeblogger.net (share this clip)
4. FeedBurner is Stealing Your CommentLuv Backlinks (synactable.com)
   I was really surprised by this article and a little embarassed to admit that FeedBurner was indeed stealing my link love from all the comments I was leaving around the web. If you are registered CommentLuv user and you comment regularly on CommentLuv enabled blogs make sure this isn’t happening to you!



Clipped from: www.synactable.com (share this clip)
5. Why bloggers should give a sh*t about search engine optimization (thebloggingacademy.com)
   Too many bloggers ignore SEO for their blogs to their own determent. But you can fix it. Let this article show you why and how it should be done.



Clipped from: thebloggingacademy.com (share this clip)
6. Tons Of Free Tutorials Bloggers May Find Useful (siteground.com)
   This is an excellent site for anyone who needs more information about hosting their own site or blog online. They have tutorials galore! Whether you are new to hosted blogs or you’ve been at it for a while, these tutorials can help round out your online skills!



Clipped from: www.siteground.com (share this clip)
7. 35 Entertaining 404 Error Pages (mashable.com)
   404 Not Found error pages are a little bit of a downer. But it’s all easier to take if the 404 page has a sense of humor. This clever collection is sure to make you smile.



Clipped from: mashable.com (share this clip)
8. Twitter Reaches 125 Million Users, 300 Thousand Apps (blogherald.com)
   I had no idea the numbers were this high. Did you? Wow that sure is a lot of tweet, tweet, tweeting going on! Are we a Twitter addicted society?



Clipped from: www.blogherald.com (share this clip)
9. Sustainable Blogging: Blog Like a Farmer (blogherald.com)
   This is a great article that makes an excellent analogy between good blogging and sustainable farming. Come on, create a successful and environmentally friendly blog by learning from the tree huggers.



Clipped from: www.synactable.com (share this clip)
10. Why You Need to Know HTML/CSS (bloggingtips.com)
    Some of you might not agree with this article. But I do. You don’t have to learn enough to be your own blog designer, but a little CSS and HTML knowledge can go a long way to letting you tweak your blog and get things just the way you want.

More Great Blogs With Wings Articles:

• Missing CommentLuv Backlinks? Feedburner May Be Hijacking Them
• Pay Per Post, How To Not Make Money On Your Blog
• Do You Dagaloo? Free Blog Promotion At It’s Best
• Get The New Twitter Button For WordPress And More
• Followers On Twitter | Find The Ones That Really Matter

Pay Per Post, How To Not Make Money On Your Blog was originally published on the blogs with wings site.

In the quest to monetize a blog some bloggers go completely over-board and turn a successful blog into a desolate waste of space. They do this by replacing excellent posts with an over-abundance of pay per post content instead. There is nothing that will turn off readers faster than advertising copy that is trying to disguise itself as quality post content. So how can you make money blogging, maintain quality content and use pay per post services to your advantage?

Choose A Reputable Well Established Pay Per Post Service

There are lots of services out there that will give you the opportunity to write posts for money. The trick is to choose the most well established services and the ones that suit your situation best. Before you sign up and commit yourself to anything, check out their terms of service. Make yourself aware of their policies and payment methods to make certain that you qualify.

You can find a list of 10 services from Make Money Online: Make Money with Top 10 Pay Per Post Blogging Sites. This should get you started in your search for the best pay per post services for you and your blog.

Pay Per Post Articles – Quality And Relevance

Always apply the highest standards of quality to all your posts, including the pay per post articles.  Make sure you choose relevant pay per post topics to ensure your readers the most benefit. Your pay per post articles should always be related in some way to your blogging topic or niche. Product and service reviews of any kind, will be better tolerated by your readers if they are a good fit with your blog category.

If you do these things and you do them well, your readers may find valuable products and services that they can actually use. It’s just common sense, if you have a food blog your readers won’t appreciate a pay per post article about a car. Apply high standards of quality and choose relevant pay per post topics to ensure your readers can find real value in your pay per post content.

Regular Posts Versus Pay Per Post – The 3:1 Ratio

Here’s the bottom line, if you want to keep your readers you must continue to provide an abundance of good quality content. I think that the 3:1 ratio is best. For every pay per post article you write, you should have 3 quality content posts as well. This means that 75% of your total posts will be real content. One in four posts that are promotional in nature will probably be well tolerated by your readers, especially if they are high quality and relevant. More than one in four may be pushing their patience and they may stop visiting.

If you just can’t live with the 3:1 ratio then perhaps you should consider starting a second blog or site. A shopping/review blog is all about providing information to consumers and are an excellent platform for writing paid posts. Some of these sites can be very profitable, but again do your homework and research what works and what doesn’t. Research and planning are essential to establishing any online enterprise. Look at successful review sites for examples of how they do it.

Full Disclosure Of Pay Per Post  & Other Advertising Activity

In December of 2009, the new American FTC policy on blog disclosure went into effect. I’m not going to go into all the legal mumbo jumbo. I don’t care where you live or whether your country has a law relating to disclosure on the web or not. It doesn’t matter, you still need to have a disclosure policy in place.

It’s all about good ethical practices. Full disclosure will go a long way to protecting you from a legal standpoint and do a great deal to help bolster your trust factor. It’s good for your reputation and that of your blog to fully disclose about your monetization methods.

For information on the FTC disclosure policy check out these:

• DisclosurePolicy.org
• A Screamingly Effective Blog Disclosure Policy: How (and Why) To Get One from ProBlogger.net

If you aren’t sure of how to create your own disclosure policy, DisclosurePolicy.org will help you generate one automatically.

Pay per post is just one way to add an income stream to your blog. There are other things you can do to monetize your blog, like: affiliate advertising, direct sell ads on your blog, create your own product to sell and more.

The point is, that any method you use to make money from your blog should not be so overwhelming as to chase your readers away. Implement any money making strategy gently and gradually. Make sure to disclose your money making methods fully. It’s okay to make money, but if you over-do the blog monetization process and try to do it all at once, you will lose readers. How will you make money if you offend them and they leave?

This post was submited as part of the Big Girl Branding / Blogs With Wings carnival the topic of which was “how to best go about taking a simple blog and turning it into a business blog without it being a turnoff to the readers. What would you do to turn a blog into a business platform without alienating the readers and maintaining your blog’s integrity?” Please take the time to visit all the posts in this carnival.

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Minimal Blog Designs – The Sexy Power Of The Little Black Dress was originally published on the blogs with wings site.

Almost every fashion conscious woman alive, owns at least one sexy little black dress. That’s because they understand the power of minimal design. The sexy secret of the little black dress is that it shows off your best features without detracting from them in any way. This is the essence of minimal blog themes and minimal blog templates, they showcase your content beautifully. Your words, your images, your media – whatever content you display, is always front and center in a minimal blog design.

Minimalistic Blog Designs For Media-Oriented Blogs

A minimalistic Blogger template or minimal WordPress theme can be a real boon to the blogger who wants to make their content the star of the show. These minimalistic web designs are particularly well suited for media oriented sites. You will find many portfolio and gallery type designs make use of minimalism in order to put the owner’s works front and center. These types of minimalistic templates are well suited to artists, photographers and videographers .

Minimal Blog Templates And Minimalistic Themes For The Rest Of Us

But that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t use minimalistic blog designs to our advantage. The clean uncluttered look is very inviting and helps create a blog that is easy to navigate. Your blog visitors are likely to appreciate how easy it is for them to get around and will never be fumbling around looking for your search box or other necessary tools

When combined with good typography, the minimalistic blog templates and minimal blog themes provide an excellent place for any blogger to showcase their words. Any blog can benefit from the clean and uncluttered trappings of a minimalistic blog design.

Sometimes it’s a little discouraging to take it all off, dawn that little black dress and bare all to the world, but if you chose the best cut for your body type, the effect will leave them breathless. The same is true of your blog. If your content is top notch, a minimal blog template or minimalistic theme can really help show it off in style.

Examples Of Minimalistic Blogger Themplates And Minimal WordPress Themes:

Minimal Xpert WordPress Theme v1.02

Just Lucid – Free WordPress Theme

Emire Blogger XML Template

24 New Blogger XML Template: BT Dark Green

Image by San Diego Shooter via Flickr

So when you’re looking for a new blog template or blog theme, don’t forget to give the minimal designs a chance. After all, you produce high quality content and you want to show it off to it’s best advantage. This is especially true for the artistic bloggers out there. A minimalistic portfolio or minimal gallery type design may be just what you need. Don’t be afraid to harness the power of the little black dress.

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The recent Passover/Easter holiday season got me thinking about family traditions. Several years ago, when I took over the responsibility of hosting our family's celebration, I realized I had the opportunity to create new traditions that might make the holiday more meaningful for my generation -- but I also had the obligation to honor the memory of our past celebrations around my parents' dining table.

The dichotomy of tradition and reinvention was a topic of discussion at the recent "Transitions 2011" conference, sponsored by Family Business Magazine and Stetson University's Family Enterprise Center. As each new generation assumes leadership roles in the family and the business, they must determine which parts of the legacy should be preserved and which are actually hindering family unity or business growth.

Charlotte Lamp, an owner of the Port Blakely Companies, told conference attendees that one of her family council's most important -- but sensitive -- tasks was "de-mything" the family's long-held myths. (She also wrote about this in Family Business Magazine's Autumn 2007 issue.) Scott Livingston, president and CEO of Horst Engineering in East Hartford, Conn., noted that family legacies of traditionalism and frugality can actually impede business progress. Family business stakeholders must continually monitor which legacies are propelling the business forward and which might be holding it back.

My family seems to be pleased with my incorporation of a few new twists into our holiday ritual. It took some scouting around to find the recipes and readings that would make our meal memorable, but judging from the feedback, my search was worth it.

Of course, setting a multigenerational business family on a new course is much more complicated than reinterpreting a holiday celebration. While I could unilaterally decide to put a new appetizer on my table, setting a new course for a business family requires consultation and consensus building. But, as our conference speakers told us, the rewards might well outweigh the risks.

Among the major business headlines of last month was the promotion of James Murdoch, the 38-year-old son of News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, to the newly created position of deputy COO and head of international operations at the media conglomerate. Although News Corp. spokespersons declined comment on succession plans at the company, analysts believe the move signals that James Murdoch will one day succeed his 80-year-old father as CEO of the giant global corporation.

Earlier in March, News Corp. shareholders filed suit against the company and Rupert Murdoch over its agreement to buy Shine Group, a London TV production company owned by Rupert's daughter Elisabeth, for $675 million. The suit alleged that the deal was an act of nepotism because "the transaction makes little or no sense for News Corp." and "is far above a price any independent, disinterested party would pay for Shine." Meanwhile, Rupert's eldest son, Lachlan, who was once News Corp.'s heir apparent, is reportedly preparing to resume a role in the business.

The Financial Times' "Lex" column on March 30 had an interesting take on James Murdoch's elevation. The column noted that there are two ways of looking at the promotion. On one hand, the shareholders who sued over the Shine acquisition would argue that "such practices make a mockery of public companies."

On the other hand, the FT column pointed out, "... News Corp. has always been completely open about the role of family in its business (the creation of non-voting shares for outsiders is a fairly big hint). If you don't like the set-up, don't buy the shares."

A week later, another FT writer, Michael Skapinker, penned an op-ed piece postulating that family business succession is falling out of vogue (although you and I can cite numerous examples to the contrary). The author compared family business successors such as the young Murdochs to royal family members. Indeed, Skapinker went even further than that, harrumphing:

All parents want the best for their offspring and, in ancient societies, it was the norm for leaders' children to succeed them. But democracy generally puts paid to that. The uprisings in the Middle East -- in Egypt, Libya and Syria -- are, in large part, revolts against dictators handing power to their sons.

So family business successors -- whose employees, shareholders, customers, lenders and suppliers are free to cut ties to their companies -- are akin to a new generation of dictators? Give me a break. Even the most passionate left-wing detractors of Murdoch's Fox News must admit that Skapinker's portrayal of family business succession is hyperbole at its worst.

True, sometimes family businesses name the wrong person as the successor (usually for the wrong reasons) -- but that doesn't mean all family business successors are destined to fail.

James E. Barrett, a family business adviser and frequent contributor to Family Business Magazine, addressed the issue of nepotism in family-controlled companies in our Autumn 2007 issue. In an article titled "The war against family control" (which, by the way, won an APEX Award for Publication Excellence), Barrett wrote:

... The assumption is that family successors ... lack the competence, motivation, common sense and business judgment to run a company, especially a huge one. 

Most of society's biases have been addressed: Race, religion, gender, ethnic origin, disabilities, etc. are recognized as areas in which unfair negative bias existed and created damage and loss. It will be quite a while before much sympathy is mustered for executives who began with silver spoons and have had every advantage for their entire lives. Still, it is unfair to assume automatically that they're not up to the job. My experience, after three decades in management succession, is that most rise to the occasion when given the top job. Those who can't, or won't, generally have gone into another career track either voluntarily or with assistance. 

The FT's "Lex" column noted that News Corp. shareholders might do better to focus their scrutiny on Rupert Murdoch rather than on any of his kids:

Rupert's undeniable passion for media is sometimes at odds with maximizing shareholder return. Over the past 15 years, News Corp. has lagged behind the S&P 500 index by a third.

The fact that James Murdoch is the CEO's son, by itself, is no reason to think he won't -- or shouldn't -- succeed.

In its current issue, Family Business's sister publication, Directors & Boards, features an article by a pair of executives from search firm Heidrick & Struggles on including independent directors on the board of a family-controlled business.

Most of D&B's readers are directors of public companies or executives at those companies, so the article focused on directors of family-controlled firms that are publicly traded. But many of the points raised are applicable to privately held family firms as well -- even the smaller ones.

The authors -- John Wood, vice chairman and global managing partner of Heidrick's Chief Executive Officer and Board of Directors Practice, and Thames Fulton, a principal with the firm's Chief Executive Officer and Board of Directors Practice -- noted:

Longstanding agendas of different sides of the family -- some that may go back for decades -- can complicate board service, creating the need for a "voice of reason" to counterweight family factionalism and historical bias.

Wood and Fulton point out that, compared with non-family firms, family businesses need independent directors who have "a more nuanced set of behavior and people skills." They recommend two qualities that family companies should look for when interviewing prospective outside directors:

• "Deft candor": In addition to empathy and patience in the face of family drama, outside directors should be "super-independent"; they should be unafraid to offer candid opinions about board and management decisions.
• Diplomacy: Independent directors should be skilled at bringing together people who have divergent interests (such as factions within the family). These directors should advocate for the company as a whole rather than for any one faction.

The authors note that independent directors in family companies must tread the find line "between being empathetic to a family's long-held beliefs and values and being able to see when they are getting in the way of the company's growth and profitability."

If your company has not yet engaged any independent directors, consider whether two or three individuals with these skills could help your board work its way out of deadlocks.

Wal-Mart may be the world's largest family business, but it's not immune to missteps. A recent Page One headline in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, "Wal-Mart Tries to Recapture Mr. Sam's Winning Formula."

"Mr. Sam" refers to the company's late founder, Sam Walton, who built his empire on the philosophy of selling utilitarian goods to working-class customers at cut-rate prices.

The company -- whose current chairman is S. Robson Walton, Sam's son -- tried to compete with "cheap chic" retailer Target by stocking organic food and trendier clothes, raising prices on some items and changing store layouts to reduce clutter, the Journal article said. The strategy bombed, and Wal-Mart's U.S. same-store sales declined for two years in a row. A former Wal-Mart executive told the Journal:

"The basic Wal-Mart customer didn't leave Wal-Mart. What happened is that Wal-Mart left the customer."

Of course, you needn't feel too sorry for Wal-Mart. The company is still the world's largest retailer as well as the largest family business. Yet the behemoth's recent woes serve as a larger-than-life example of what happens when a family firm strays too far from its legacy.

This is not to say that every family business must blindly follow its founder's original vision. Indeed, doing so will often get a company into trouble. Consider, for example, the case of Fidelitone Logistics of Wauconda, Ill., a company profiled in Family Business Magazine's Autumn 2010 issue.

Fidelitone was founded in 1929 as a maker of phonograph needles. If the company had stuck with that business model, there's little chance that it would still be around in the 21st century.

Fidelitone's owners -- the Hudson family -- came to that conclusion way back in the early 1970s, when cassette tapes first became popular and threatened to replace phonograph records. The family opted to transform the company, building on its legacy of innovation and its expertise in distributing its product around the world rather than on its original mission. Under their leadership, Fidelitone evolved from a phonograph maker to a provider of supply-chain management and logistics services. The company now offers global support services to some of the world's largest brand names. It has grown through acquisition and generates $360 million in annual revenues -- a far cry from how it would have fared if it still produced parts for record players.

The challenge for next-generation leaders is to understand the difference between a business model that should be maintained (like Wal-Mart's) and one that must be changed (like Fidelitone's in its original incarnation). This is not always easy, especially in families who honor the founder and revere their legacy. (The Hudsons acknowledged their company's history by retaining the Fidelitone name after ditching the original mission.)

A board of directors that includes members not affiliated with the family or the company can help family members view the situation from an objective, market-based perspective. Even at a giant corporation like Wal-Mart, it can be tricky to manage the tension between tradition and innovation.

The Journal report noted this observation from a Wal-Mart executive at an investor meeting:

"You might say, in short, that we were trying to be something that maybe we're not."

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Vineet Nayar -- CEO of HCL Technologies, a global information technology services company based in India -- speculated on what would happen if members of Generation Y were permitted to reinvent companies.

Members of this generation -- who were born in between the late 1970s and the early 1990s -- have a tendency "to question how things are done, rather than following instructions," Nayar wrote.

[K]eep in mind how alien most organizational environments must seem to them. Used to the web's meritocracy, they face rigid hierarchies. Comfortable with the transparency of social networking sites, they bump up against information silos and knowledge hoarding.

Nayar noted some of the entries in a business-school competition his firm sponsors, which asks students to imagine the organization of the future. Themes that have emerged from submissions from this year's crop of young people, he wrote, include "increasing democratic influence on the appointment of leaders," "giving people the chance to shape their work and organizations" and "creating ways to bypass the filters that impede direct communications." He observed:

This new generation is driven by the unwillingness to inherit some of the negative features of traditional management; indeed, by a sense of indignation that corporate citizens haven't already demanded better for themselves.

Many family business leaders are now in the process of welcoming Gen Y family members into their companies -- and are shocked to find that the young family employees expect to remake the company on their first day of work.

In the Autumn 2010 issue of Family Business Magazine, Stetson University professor Greg McCann and a former student, Gen Yer Leah Sullivan, wrote that members of this generation "have high potential yet are challenging to manage."

They have the highest education, the largest social networks and the best support system of any generation in history. Sine they were young, they've been told that they could do anything and be anyone.... Delayed gratification is a struggle for them. They want it all, they want it soon, and they want your support in getting it.... Gen Yers' unrealistic expectations and sense of entitlement can leave a less than positive impression.

These idealistic yet exasperating people are the future of your company. "If you can understand and engage Gen Y," McCann and Sullivan wrote, "you will have greater access to this talent pool, retain those workers more effectively and even better understand your clients, customers and other stakeholders who are Gen Yers."

At the upcoming Family Business/Stetson University "Transitions" conference, a group of Gen Yers will meet to discuss their concerns and expectations about their future roles in their family companies, and then report on these issues to the older conference participants. I'm looking forward to hearing their thoughts on how their family businesses could be reinvented.

If you're struggling to rein in younger-generation members who think their status as the founder's descendants means they needn't pull their weight in the family firm, take comfort in the fact that you're not alone. Even in war-torn Afghanistan, business owners are facing the same issues.

Last month, the Wharton School blog Knowledge@Wharton reported that Afghan participants in Goldman Sachs' "10,000 Women" program -- a philanthropic effort to promote social change through economic empowerment of women -- are learning the hard way that trouble ensues when family employees aren't held to the same standards as non-family workers.

The article cited the experience of business owner Fatema Akbari, whose company makes wooden furniture and toys. Akbari has hired 82 women whose husbands have been killed or wounded in the war. At one time, she also employed her daughter and her son. That didn't work out so well, she told Knowledge@Wharton with the help of a translator:

"My daughter was fine but my son wasn't doing what I expected of him. Even if your employees are family members, they have to have responsibilities and be accountable for what they are doing."

Mahbouba Seraj, an instructor for the 10,000 Women program from the American University of Afghanistan, trains the business owners to hold family members to the same standards as their non-family co-workers. Seraj told Knowledge@Wharton:

"I tell women entrepreneurs that they shouldn't treat family members any differently than other employees. They should clearly spell out the expectations in the beginning, give them a trial period and keep up on their progress.... Otherwise, family members will take advantage of the situation, especially the boys."

As for Akbari, she did what she had to do. Her son has left her woodworking business ad is now serving in the military. "I told hem to go where he needed to go," she told Knowledge@Wharton. Her daughter has also left the company; she's started her own venture, a shoe business.

If an entrepreneur in an impoverished country besieged by war can ease out an underperforming relative, so can you.

(Click image to view video)

The auto industry took a huge and well-publicized hit in the recent recession, yet Dallas-based Chacon Autos generated year-over-year profit growth. The third-generation company -- profiled in Family Business Magazine's current (Winter 2011) issue -- operates two Suzuki dealerships and six used-car stores in Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio.

As reporter Dave Donelson noted, used cars represent 90% of Chacon's sales, which total about $80 million annually. The company, which has about 160 employees, primarily sells low-mileage used cars to customers with damaged credit. It also finances nearly all of them itself. Although this strategy is risky, it contributed to the company's success during the downturn. The company's rigorous but informal credit approval process might not be viable under non-family corporate ownership, family members say.

Second-generation brothers Darrell and Gary Cheney run the business along with a group of third-generation relatives. Many of Chacon's customers have bought three, four or even five cars from the Cheneys over the years, and some car buyers are third-generation clients.

In 2010, Baylor University's Texas Family Business of the Year program presented Chacon Autos with the Founders Award, given to "the successful family business that has grown and adapted to present and future markets while maintaining the identity and original concept of the founder." The accompanying video was prepared for the award ceremony. You can find our Winter 2011 profile of the company here.

At the magazine where I worked before I came to Family Business, a group of colleagues would lunch together in the cafeteria each day. As we ate our sandwiches and salads, we'd discuss our families, our weekend plans and the books we'd read. Often, the conversation would turn to politics. That's when things got interesting.

Our group included passionate liberals as well as ardent conservatives. We came from a variety of faith traditions. Several of these lunch buddies had firmly held beliefs and did not hesitate to express them. As could be expected of a group of well-informed professional communicators, there were heated debates that involved pointed criticism of the other side's views. And, also not surprisingly, no one ever succeeded in changing anyone else's mind. Inevitably, the conversation would wind its way back to movies we'd seen or places we'd visited or what we were planning to have for dinner.

Though we didn't vote as a bloc, we worked as a team. At deadline time, it didn't matter who was a Republican and who was a Democrat -- we bonded around our shared mission. We've since scattered to the four winds, but we've kept in touch. We occasionally reunite for lunch, but these days we're more interested in catching up with each other's news than in advocating for our preferred politicians.

As I read the horrifying accounts of the shootings at an Arizona "Congress on Your Corner" event on Jan. 8 -- in which a Jewish Democratic congresswoman was among 14 people wounded and a Christian Republican judge who had come to say hello to her was one of six people killed -- I reflected on my ideologically diverse group of former colleagues. While lunching together never resulted in any political conversions, it did something more important -- it strengthened our respect for each other.

As President Obama said in Tucson on Jan. 12 at a memorial for the shooting victims:

"[L]et's use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together."

Many family business owners, especially those whose enterprises are small, tend to surround themselves with people whose views are similar to theirs. But we must get to know each other in order for our country to get past its present destructive divisiveness. Moving beyond partisanship will help us bring about economic progress -- and will make our society safer.

The suicide of Mark Madoff, the eldest son of convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, on the second anniversary of his father's arrest calls attention to the devastation the elder Madoff wrought not only on his unwitting clients, but also on his family.

As the New York Times reported, Mark Madoff, 46, hanged himself in his Manhattan apartment on December 11, with his two-year-old son in an adjoining bedroom. The Times account cited a person close to the family who said

Mr. Madoff had expressed both continuing bitterness toward his father and anxiety about a series of lawsuits that were filed against him, his brother Andrew and other family members.... Mr. Madoff was particularly upset that [bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard, working on behalf of victims of the scheme,] had named his young children as defendants in a lawsuit filed in late November seeking the recovery of money Bernard Madoff had paid out to his extended family over the years....

According to the Wall Street Journal, a friend of Mark Madoff's said he "worried about his children, whether they'd face a life of harassment because they were Madoffs."

A post on the Times' "DealBook" blog noted that Mark Madoff's wife, Stephanie, had applied to the court this year to have her surname and that of her two children with Madoff changed to "Morgan." The blog quoted a friend of Mark Madoff's, who said:

"He had always been so proud of his name and being the guy who was Bernie Madoff's son. And then afterwards all anyone ever saw in him was that he was Bernie Madoff's son."

Mark and Andrew Madoff were the ones who first confronted their father and then reported his confession to authorities. The Times article noted that "on the advice of his lawyer, Mark Madoff ... had no contact with his parents since the day before his father's arrest two years ago."

The "DealBook" report quoted another person close to Mark Madoff, who said:

"He was deeply, deeply angry at what his father had done to him -- to everybody. That anger just seemed to feed on itself."

Another family friend and business associate told "DealBook" he found it unlikely Mark Madoff knew about his father's fraud because Mark "was always a nervous wreck. He never could have stood it -- keeping a secret like that would have torn him apart."

By all accounts, the Madoffs had been a close family. That closeness, combined with Mark Madoff's role as head of trading at his father's firm, led Picard and others to question whether Mark really was unaware of the fraudulent scheme.

"Contrarian's Notebook" columnist Dan Rottenberg wrote in Family Business Magazine in Summer 2009 that Bernard Madoff's guilty plea and refusal to cooperate with authorities against other individuals

implies that Madoff is covering up for others. It points a finger of suspicion at his closest relatives even though they may indeed have been unaware of his criminal activity. And by confessing to his family before he confessed to the feds, Bernie effectively made his loved ones accessories to his crime, forcing them to turn him in, lest they be arrested as well.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Andrew Madoff "has had moments of intense grief" since his brother's death. "[T]he loss of his childhood family is complete," the article noted.

According to news reports, Mark Madoff was cremated, and no funeral service was held. A private memorial service took place at an undisclosed location.

His children, the youngest of whom are two and four, are now fatherless. News accounts have reported that Picard's lawsuits will continue despite Mark's death.

Whether or not Mark Madoff played a role in his father's grand swindle, the sins are being visited on a third generation.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you've heard that President Obama has signed into law a bill that extends the expiring Bush tax cuts for all Americans for two years, extends unemployment insurance benefits for 13 months and cuts payroll taxes by 2% in 2011. The bill -- the result of a compromise between the president and congressional Republicans -- also resurrects the estate tax, which had been temporarily repealed in 2010, but at a lower rate than scheduled under the Bush law.

For the next two years, the estate tax rate will be 35% for inheritances above $5 million for individuals ($10 million for couples). Before the new bill was enacted, the estate tax had been scheduled to return in 2011 to its 2000 levels: a 55% rate on inheritances above $1 million for individuals ($2 million for couples).

For business families and families of wealth, the bill alleviates uncertainty about the future of the tax -- but only until 2012. A Wall Street Journal article published before the bill was passed lamented that a temporary solution requires owners of small family businesses to pay significant fees to lawyers, accountants, appraisers and other advisers to help them with strategic planning and "to keep up with the shifting code." The Journal cited the case of John E. Anthony, patriarch of Anthony Timberlands Inc. in Bearden, Ark.

Each time the tax code changes, Mr. Anthony re-evaluates his succession plan and analyzes his exposure to the tax. Because it is uncertain what the tax rate will be when he dies, he and his hired advisers develop several "what-if" scenarios.

Under the newly enacted bill, the heirs of any wealthy American who survives past December 31 will forgo a windfall (the Wall Street Journal estimated that the family of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who died July 13, 2010, saved up to $600 million in estate taxes), but they will pay less than they would have paid if the new law had not been passed.

Estate tax opponents plan to continue their advocacy for lower rates. According to some reports, they will push to have the rate lowered to 15% and the exemption level for couples raised to a level as high as $14 million for couples when the current compromise expires in two years.

But tax avoidance isn't necessarily what these families should be most concerned about. Consider this advice, offered by attorney Joe Goodman in Family Business Agenda 2009:

Do not be preoccupied with minimizing taxes. Family dynamics, asset protection and raising good kids are three examples of objectives that should be considered in the financial and estate plan for people of wealth. This is not the place to cut corners, minimize time or save a few thousand dollars.

In the same issue, attorneys Henry C. Krasnow and Karin C. Prangley warned:

Successful businesses all need some of the same things: cash, leadership that can implement forward-looking plans to keep up with competition, and owners who understand the need to sacrifice short-term satisfaction for long-term goals.... Denying these to a business in order to save taxes is a very shortsighted tradeoff. Unfortunately, business owners often ask their advisers only for tax-saving techniques.... Think long and hard about several "what-if" scenarios and come up with a solution that will best ensure the continued success of the business..... [R]emember that the manner in which the stock of the business is distributed can have a profound impact on how the company is managed.

The auction room is in Double Bay and filled with people who look far richer than me.

There's a young guy with his girlfriend and they have a just-finished-counting-our-money-look about them. His light-woollen scarf is slung over the shoulder of his pinstripe suit like's he's hopped out of a biplane drinking a martini, while his shirt has that rumpled, aristocratic look people get when they realise they don't have to make an impression because they've got a bank balance.

An older guy stands off to the left in sensible brown slacks, expensive leather slip-ons and a white short-sleeved shirt. He's reading the running order over the top of his spectacles and I notice the laminated security pass for St Vincent's Hospital in his top pocket.

A doctor no doubt. A surgeon if I had to make a guess; he's got that precise, sterile look about him. Probably on about $600,000 a year ...

I sit next to an Asian couple and flick through the glossy booklet of the properties up for sale. They've spent more money on the printing than they did on my high school year book. Lord, I'm in the wrong business.

I'm not going to buy anything tonight, can't even countenance it, but the very fact I'm here means something has taken root in me, some kind of natural order is asserting itself, or maybe it's just a concession of defeat.

I've told myself I have to stop running, stop living in this dream world of writing in Spain like Hemingway and drinking red at some charming bar with a teenage local girl as my companion. I have to start making the decisions everyone else does - buckle up, settle down, think about my future.

I'm closing in on 40 and wish I'd done this years ago; things would be so different now. I wish I'd just put some money down on a little apartment, got some collateral behind me.

Oh, Christ, listen to me; this is what makes me want to run, get the hell out of here, the sheer cowardice of it.

- Number 232 Jersey Road, Woollahra, says the auctioneer and starts to click through slides of a terrace I could afford if I dealt coke or guns or even sold bread rolls. Bakers, I hear they make plenty of money. I can't imagine a baker owns this place, however.

The house has lots of sleek glass cut into convict sandstone walls, skylights and floorboards polished like insect eyes. I'd like to live in a house like this but I don't know where to start, don't know how I'd ever manage to get that much money in one place.

The bidding jumps along in $10,000 chunks, over a million, then 1.2, finally getting passed in at $1.4 million. One point four million friggin' dollars. Where do people get that sort of wedge?

Is this what it costs to stay in the suburbs I grew up in? To live where I've known my whole life?

I shift in my seat and watch the Asian guy next to me open his briefcase and clink something inside, probably gold bars.

- Apartment 18, 220 Campbell Parade, says the auctioneer.

This is me, this is the ballpark I'm swinging in. It's a tiny one-bedroom in the same block I'm renting in now. But it's central, a minute from the beach and if you hang out the window with someone holding on to your belt, you can see the sand at Bondi.

Not a beach house, but as close as I'm going to get without starting an international Ponzi scheme. It would be nice to have a bolt hole, to look at a glowing window from the street and think "well, there will always be that, I'll never have to live under a bridge, I'll always have this", because part of me fears that's what will happen, part of me fears that's the trajectory I'm on, that it's what I deserve.

And away it goes: $380,000, $400, $450, the bidding climbing until it shudders to a stop at $487,000. Far more than I'd want to pay, far more than I have, but there you have it, the cost of security, the price of that feeling that I want from the street, for the warm yellow light of "I'll never be homeless."

I stand and walk outside and see an over-priced bookstore. The Lonely Planet guides are for places like St Barts and Monaco, but I dig around and find what I'm looking for. Spain. I pay the woman behind the counter and then walk outside to find a pub.

THE CONTAINER
Congratulations to Sydney-based producer Julia Booth, whose film The Container has been selected for the Cannes Film Festival's Short Film Corner.

An Australian-Bhutanese co-production, The Container is this is a story of a mother who travels from her poor, remote community to get medicine for her sick child.

When she arrives at a small hospital she learns that though the medicine is free, she must supply a container to hold the precious liquid. However, she doesn't have a bottle and can't afford to buy one.

The tiny budget film was shot with just one construction light and reflectors made of tin foil and has now made it all the way to Cannes.

For more info, see The Container

TWITTER
If you're interested in seeing me embarrass myself in more than one medium, you can follow me on Twitter here.

If you'd like to email me with a topic suggestion or just vent, try here. I now have too many unanswered emails to catch up on, so I'm instituting a no-reply policy. In advance, I thank you for your email.

Recently, I was swapping tweets with an ABC producer named Maddie Palmer and we were throwing each other links to songs and quotes we liked.

I'm not sure how we got around to it, but she directed me to an essay written by American author Joan Didion, first published in Vogue magazine in 1961, which you can read here in its entirety.

Maddie said she "read it every week" for inspiration and after absorbing it four or five times over the course of the last month, I can see why: it is so loaded with wisdom.

Didion's topic in the essay is self-respect and she argues one of the great obstacles to achieving this happy state is self-deception - the lies we tell ourselves that everything's okay ...

"Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception," writes Didion.

"The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself; no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions.

"One shuffles flashily but in vain through ones' marked cards, the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed."

This is a jolting piece of perception because I think we've all looked at people who seem to have had good fortune land in their lap and wondered how they can take credit for simply being lucky.

Didion's essay suggests they damn well know they've been fortunate, which may be why so many reality TV contestants, rock and film stars and sportsmen lose the plot when they achieve "overnight success": they know they haven't earned it.

Didion's observations dovetail nicely with those of documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, who once told author Chuck Klosterman: "I think the larger sect of liars are people who think they are telling the truth, but who really have no idea what the truth is.

"So the deeper question is, what's more important: narrative consistency or truth? I think we're always trying to create a consistent narrative for ourselves. I think truth always takes a back seat to narrative. Truth has to sit at the back of the bus.

"I'm a great believer in self-deception. If you asked me what makes the world go around, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. I'm not saying truth doesn't matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive."

The first sentence of Didion's essay The White Album would appear to back this up: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live," she writes.

(This also became the title of a collection of her non-fiction works published in 2006.)

The thoughts of these two storytellers got me thinking about the tales we all tell ourselves so that our narratives make sense.

The most common one I suppose is that we're "good people" and then we surround that with various "truths" that justify our actions or non-actions in particular parts of our lives.

I'll have more to say about the Didion essay on self-respect tomorrow, but today I thought we'd tackle the concept of self-deception, whether the lies we tell ourselves are our ways of staying sane or, as songwriter Elliott Smith put it in his song Coming Up Roses: "The things that you tell yourself. They'll kill you in time."

What do you think? What are the lies you tell yourself?

THE CONTAINER
Congratulations to Sydney-based producer Julia Booth, whose film The Container has been selected for the Cannes Film Festival's Short Film Corner.

An Australian-Bhutanese co-production, The Container is this is a story of a mother who travels from her poor, remote community to get medicine for her sick child.

When she arrives at a small hospital she learns that though the medicine is free, she must supply a container to hold the precious liquid. However, she doesn't have a bottle and can't afford to buy one.

The tiny budget film was shot with just one construction light and reflectors made of tin foil and has now made it all the way to Cannes.

For more info, see The Container

TWITTER
If you're interested in seeing me embarrass myself in more than one medium, you can follow me on Twitter here.

If you'd like to email me with a topic suggestion or just vent, try here. I now have too many unanswered emails to catch up on, so I'm instituting a no-reply policy. In advance, I thank you for your email.

There sure are a lot of old chicks having babies.

I know this because I'm an old dude who became a father last year and, when I'm out and about doing things with my baby, I see all these old chicks doing the same with their newborns; women simultaneously battling mastitis and menopause.

Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with matching liver spots and maternity wear, nor having crow's feet and breastfeeding - because I'm no spring chicken and one day will surely be confused for my daughter's grandfather.

It just struck me recently, as I watched a group of new mums all pushing 40, that we're going to have a generation of children whose parents will struggle to see their 21st birthdays ...

I know I do the maths with my daughter and realise she's going to be one of those children about whom the other kids say, "Wow, your dad is really old."

While her friends' fathers run the hockey sideline, cheering their teenage daughters, I'll probably be cheering a decent bowel movement at the nursing home.

Being a "mature" parent is thus a great motivator for staying fit and getting on the Propecia, but the sheer joy of the experience has also made me wonder why I waited so long to become a father.

One reason was the smug entitlement of parents I associated with, who used to say knowingly: "You'll understand when you have kids."

"Understand what? Green shit?" I'd think as I ran screaming, readying myself for another sweaty one-night stand or long weekend on bikie speed.

I'd sit hungover in cafes and watch men my age pushing prams crammed with bawling, mucous-festooned brats and think: "You poor muppet, your life is over."

Not content with that private sentiment, some years ago I even wrote a taunting op-ed piece for The Sydney Morning Herald labelling "children, the mistake you can't undo" and cackled as the insulting emails from outraged breeders piled into my inbox.

Then, of course, I became a father and I did understand.

For the first time I saw my life not as a one-night stand but a continuum for which I owed the generation that followed protection and respect.

Instead of feeling suffocated by responsibility for a child, I was overjoyed I'd have the privilege of guiding this precious little person into adulthood.

In my daughter, I've seen not only the best of me and her mother, but also an opportunity for us both to correct the blind spots of our upbringings and society.

What I used to view as a life-time of obligation, I know see as an infinite vein of joy, and my only regret is I'll experience less of my daughter's life than those men I used to pity, who became fathers in their 20s and 30s.

This is what I'm tempted to tell the thirtysomethings I see following in my indulgent footsteps, as they search for meaning in handbags and midweek benders.

Sure it's fun, but it's nothing compared to the laugh and touch of your own flesh, of seeing your bloodline in the gorgeous eyes of an innocent.

For many, I guess this is a decision that comes down to meeting the right person, but I also know many committed couples who say they "want to wait" - travel a bit first, get financially secure.

While there's no doubt it's better to be worldly and cashed up when you have kids, there are also plenty of people who are not and don't regret the decision.

I also know when I walk into a cafe carrying my daughter and feel the pitying stare of footloose 20-year-olds, I smile because they're actually seeing the very best part of my life, the time I spend with my favourite person in the world.

Humans do a lot of things that defy logic, but the now almost universally endorsed decision to wait until you're older to have children, thus forestalling the greatest experience of your life, is one I reckon is worth reconsidering.

And their poo doesn't stay green forever.

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There's an American footballer by the name of Rashard Mendenhall (pictured, left), whom you've probably never heard of, who to my mind made some of the most penetrating comments about the death of Osama bin Laden I've read anywhere.

A running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers NFL team, Mendenhall has caused quite a stir in the US by tweeting: "What kind of person celebrates death? It's amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We've only heard one side ... "

He was of course referring to the street celebrations that broke out in the US after bin Laden's killing was announced by the White House.

It's a point that's been made by other commentators, but the fact that the unseemly sight of people rejoicing over a murder was noted by a 23-year-old football player made me wonder why it hadn't registered with more people ...

Mendenhall didn't help his cause by also posting a tweet making a reference to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre.

"We'll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style," he wrote.

To many, that put Mendenhall into the bizarro conspiracy theorist bucket, but since making the initial comments on Monday, enormous pressure has been put on the guy to clarify his tweets and this is what he said.

"This controversial statement was something I said in response to the amount of joy I saw in the event of a murder. I don't believe that this is an issue of politics or American pride; but one of religion, morality, and human ethics," he wrote.

"I wasn't questioning Bin Laden's evil acts. I believe that he will have to face God for what he has done. I was reflecting on our own hypocrisy.

"During 9/11 we watched in horror as parts of the world celebrated death on our soil. Earlier this week, parts of the world watched us in horror celebrating a man's death.

"It was only meant to encourage anyone reading it to think," he wrote.

Now, there's a man I'd like to have beer with, not because I condone what bin Laden did, or that I in any way mourn his passing, but because here is a young guy prepared to stand by his values.

It's one thing to say I don't believe in the death penalty, but then someone comes along and rapes and murders one of your relatives - where do you stand now?

It's one thing to say murder is wrong - but it's OK to kill people such as bin Laden or Hitler or ... special cases.

That's when the slope gets slippery, that's "some animals are more equal than other animals" thinking.

If you grant a human right to one person, it applies to all, no matter how evil or dastardly we consider them, no matter if they've murdered 10 people or 10,000.

The facts now seem clear that bin Laden was unarmed when shot so he was effectively murdered without trial.

Again, you'll find few people who have a problem with this; our Prime Minister even "welcomed" bin Laden's death, but it's a slippery slope.

On the ABC's Drum website barrister Greg Barns said of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott: "The killing of Osama bin Laden provides a disturbing reminder that the West's rhetoric on the universality of human rights and the rule of law is easily sacrificed.

"Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are essentially saying that the Geneva Conventions and international human rights instruments can be abandoned, depending on the political circumstances."

Which is the response I'd expect from lawyers such as Barns and Geoffrey Robertson, who wrote in a piece for The Sydney Morning Herald that the scenes of jubilation following bin Laden's death were "unattractive".

But that a 23-year-old guy playing for an extremely prominent football team would say this? In the patriotically-deranged country of America?

That gives me hope for the human race.

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During last week's marathon All Men Are Liars type-back question-and-answer session, I took a poop coffee break and continued reading the fantastic Booker Prize winning novel Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

Chronicling the rise of Thomas Cromwell during the reign of Tudor king Henry VIII, Cromwell is painted as a man of almost limitless talents - being able to draft laws, butcher a deer, forge a sword, calm a regent and avoid a war with equal dexterity.

One of Cromwell's greatest gifts, however, seemed to be his chimera-like ability to draw on the disparate experiences of his upbringing in order to blend into any gathering of souls.

The low-born son of a blacksmith, Cromwell was a soldier, lawyer and merchant, who also lived in the household of Florentine banker Francesco Frescobaldi, spoke five languages and rose to become the second most powerful man in 16th-century England at a time when your social progress was almost entirely governed by the nobility of your bloodlines ...

According to Mantel's admittedly fictionalised account of his life, Cromwell made no secret of his common past, but never justified it.

"It is no good to explain," writes Mantel in the voice of Cromwell, "it is weak to be anecdotal.

"It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face.

"It is the absence of facts that frightens people; the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies and desires," writes Mantel.

As I sat on the dunny at the kitchen table pondering these words, I couldn't help but reflect that my effort on Friday, coupled with hundreds of confessional blog posts and newspaper columns put me as far away from a man like Cromwell as you could conceive.

Frankly, I've always been that way; I'm ashamed of very few things I've done, and those I do feel remorse for, I admit freely.

To my way of thinking, if you own your past, your flaws and your mistakes, you deprive them of their power to hurt you ... (of course, if I were in the public service or politics, I could kiss my career goodbye).

It got me thinking about what is the best policy when it comes to divulging aspects of your personal life.

We've all heard about the phenomenon of "over-sharing", whereby friends or even strangers launch into detailed and excruciatingly personal admissions.

I admit I'm prone to this as well, but it's mostly done out of boredom because routine conversations are so predictable and annoying and I like to see if a person has got any bend in them.

The thing I've noticed about people who "over-share" in public or online, is that they often tell you the dreary shit about their life: what they had for dinner, what their cabbie was talking about or how many grapes their kid ate at breakfast - not the interesting, juicy stuff.

This impulse is being ardently transposed on to useless programs such as Blippy, which enables you to tell people about every item you buy during the day; the site Ijustmadelove, so you can broadcast where and when you had a root, and in what positions; as well as products such as these bathroom scales with WiFi, that allow you to tweet your weight every time you get on them.

Naturally, I'd think my confessions are more interesting than any of the above because they're about me, and when I admit something embarrassing or potentially damaging, I do it because I think it might help people in the same boat.

Many of us keep stuff bottled up because we're ashamed of habits or actions that LOTS OF OTHER PEOPLE indulge in, but no one ever talks about - at least in the media.

We snigger about so and so being bulemic, a chubby-chaser, an alcho, having an STD or a girlfriend with a penis, then retire into our own little weird world and do stuff that's just as bizarre.

Or not.

I reckon the more we talk about things, the more we realise we're all the same, the better the world will be but this is your chance to argue the opposite side of the coin, to hector us about the need for privacy and the wisdom of cloaking your past with secrecy.

I'd even wager that if Thomas Cromwell had been more forthcoming about his inner thoughts, things might have ended better for him.

He was beheaded after all.

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My fellow Fairfax blogger and bestselling Australian author John Birmingham announced last month on Twitter that he'd bought a New York Yankees baseball cap while holidaying in that city.

Birmingham, the much-loved author of He Died With a Falafel in his Hand and the current Without Warning trilogy is one of our keenest social observers and also knows a stack about the US, as much of the action in his current novels is set there.

It's thus surprising he didn't realise that putting a New York Yankees cap on his head is the sporting equivalent of wearing a swastika. It says you either know nothing about baseball (or you wouldn't support the loathsome Yankees) or that you are in fact evil.

This might sound like hyperbole, but to the rest of America, this is a team known as the "Mother F---ing Yankees" and the "Evil Empire" (Google it!) ...

Birmingham's fashion faux pas is similar to that of Aussie tourists who land in London and immediately buy a Manchester United jersey, which is akin to saying nuclear power is your favourite energy source, or cheering for the lions chasing gazelles on the nature channel.

Both the Yankees and Man U are symbols of obscene wealth and arrogance, and symbols are powerful messengers of, and to, the unconscious.

Just as hanging a swastika, crucifix or star of David around your neck says something very specific about you, so does wearing the colours of certain sporting teams or the labels of various brands.

For example, if you pull on an Ed Hardy T-shirt, you might as well knock your two front teeth out as well, while a woman wearing Supre suggests to many she's five Vodka Cruisers away from a one-night stand.

A grown man sporting an Australian one-day cricket jersey anywhere other than the cricket says "I also wear tracksuit pants to funerals."

Dressing in Cue suggests you're a receptionist with misplaced ambition, while pulling on G-Star jeans, thankfully identifies most possible nightclub gropers.

Ksubi? Aren't you a crrrrazy kid?

Surf brands after 40? You're still trying to work out what you want to do with your life.

Sportsgirl after 35? Let it go, honey.

Am I being too judgmental?

Think about tourists who come to Australia and, out of some misdirected sense of esprit de corps, buy Aussie flag board shorts, thus aligning themselves with nationalist bogans.

This stuff says something about you. I know because I've made the same mistake.

One year I went to Poland for New Year's Eve and spent half a day ignoring chains of multinational clothing retailers such as The Gap and Quicksilver, trying to find an "authentic" Polish T-shirt.

I had to settle for a slogan shirt from a tragic souvenir store that my Polish girlfriend later told me said the equivalent of "Where's the beer, dude?"

Band T-shirts are another interesting subset of this discussion with almost every person on earth who wears a Ramones T-shirt announcing they actually know none of the band's songs except "I Wanna Be Sedated."

(If you really wanna be obscure and impress people with your hard-rockin' credentials, track down a G.G. Allin T-shirt and hope there's not poop smeared on it.)

It's the same with students who naively buy Che Guevara T-shirts, giving the thumbs up to a mass-murderer they've confused for a Hispanic Nelson Mandela.

Do you not think it strange some people are so brand-conscious, yet oblivious to what that brand says about them to the wider public?

Girls might think a $3000 Hermes or Fendi handbag makes them look chic, but I reckon many observers would instead describe them as vapid and venal for spending so much money on a tote.

As a child I remember being horrified when my stepdad used to pick the labels and brand names off his clothes because he "didn't want to be a walking billboard".

As I've got older, I've come to understand the wisdom of his blank canvas approach and can't remember the last time I bought a piece of clothing because it was a "brand" - unless you count the T-shirt that says "Mother F---ing Yankees", which I bought online.

Ironically, probably the strongest brand statement you can make in polite company is to wear no clothes at all.

Nothing quite says "I don't give a f---" like walking shirtless through the CBD at lunch time on a Friday.

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Okay, today I thought I'd try something different - mainly because I'm feeling a little tapped out for ideas - and so many of you complain about me never answering your questions.

For all of today - that's Friday - from roughly 9am until 5pm, I will endeavour to answer every question or comment posted on the blog.

Soooo, if you have a question or a topic idea, write a comment and I'll do my best to reciprocate. I won't, however, be answering questions about my break-up or daughter.

If you'd like any advice on writing, journalism, getting published, getting into TV script-writing, blogging or how to shag chicks, I'll be happy to offer what help I can.

If you want to post questions in advance (this post will go up on Thursday night), feel free ...

Can you please try to limit the number of questions: people are putting 20 questions in one comment and it's becoming very time consuming. I don't know if I'll be able to keep up.

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Do you know anybody who actually gives a crap about the royal wedding?

I've talked to dozens of people about this and can't say I've met one who is genuinely excited or anticipating the event*, except for a dash of car crash curiosity about which fossilized aristocrats and celebrities might turn up.

Guaranteed, however, it will be the biggest media occurrence of the year, probably the decade, outstripping natural disasters, war and political turmoil for column inches, air time and bandwidth.

The pointy heads at CERN and the Large Hadron Collider could discover the Higgs Boson particle and unlock the secrets of the universe, but if it happened the day of the wedding it'd be a down page story on page 17 in most newspapers (no pic) ...

But here's the weird thing: In the last two weeks I've also spoken to at least a dozen senior media figures - including newspaper and magazine editors, television producers and senior journalists - and all of whom have said the same thing.

"I could not give a crap about the royal wedding," was the chorus (and I've sanitised it).

Of course, all of them are readying their packages, live crosses, commemorative warp-arounds, spreads and photo galleries because to not do so would be media suicide.

Why?

Obviously there is genuine interest out there amongst the general public and fickle creatures that we are, we'll go where the best and brightest coverage is (as long as it doesn't involve Big Brother's Fitzy).

One editor at a national woman's magazine told me her children had just about forgotten what she looked like, such was the time she was spending in the office planning and doing deals for the wedding.

"However, I don't know anyone in the media who is otherwise engaged with the event as anything other than commercial enterprise. That said, the parent of the kids my children go to school with are having princess parties," she said.

They're not the only ones.

A reader told me via Twitter she knows a family who are having their own mock 'wedding reception': "fully catered, white linen table cloths, champagne and yep, they even sent out formal, printed invites!"

A friend's wife said her old neighbours were planning a champagne breakfast (at night) to celebrate, while another reader told me she had a colleague who has planned her holiday itinerary so she'll be in London for the wedding "vibe" .

"She scares me," said the reader.

What this brought home to me is that, despite our protestations, the media (and the people we tend to hang around with) really are a cynical lot, because if ever there was a pure good news story, a royal wedding is it.

There is no downside to the spectacle, unless you count the millions of pounds be spent on the ceremony and security - which could be used to combat Britain's many social problems.

Whatever your thoughts on the monarchy and the no-brainer of Australia becoming a Republic, you also can't deny that this is history in the making and that it'll be talked about by nanas for years to come.

The other unavoidable fact is it's a money spinner.

A few years ago, a friend's father questioned the motive behind the surge of nationalism surrounding Australia Day and wondered why it had happened so suddenly.

"It can't just be that there's more bogans and boofheads around," he remarked.

Being both, I kept quiet.

However, what's certain is that everyone from petrol stations to national retailers have cottoned on to the fact there's a buck to made from Australia Day; thus all the dinky di whitegoods sales, mini Aussie flags and fake boxing kangaroo tattoos you can now buy.

It's much the same with a royal wedding, with everybody keen for their piece of the pie, including our betting agencies, which have opened markets on everything from whether the royal couple will ride in an open carriage to the colour of the queen's hat.

It all generates hype, but despite this, you also can't deny millions of people are actually getting a kick out anticipating and planning for this wedding.

And listening to those stories of joy has made me realise you'd be a true wanker to begrudge anybody that emotion.

Life's short: get your happiness where you can, I say - and congrats to the happy couple.

* After I wrote this piece, I happened to speak to my agent who it seems is a bit of a Diana nerd and has been counting down the days to the weeding for about two weeks.

"Almost time to put the Bollinger in the fridge - Diana had it at her wedding," she wrote.

So I do know one person.

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With the speed technology is developing, hardware shrinking and interactivity seeping into every human orifice, how long until we have a camera embedded somewhere capturing every moment of our lives?

If you think that's laughable, imagine explaining mobile phone videos, GPS, cloud computing and programs like foursquare to people just 15 years ago.

Is it thus a stretch to envisage a set of eye-glasses or contact lenses integrated with a micro-camera, streaming everything the wearer sees via WiFi to a server?

While that might sound like a terrifying leap towards Big Brother, I'm sure some people would welcome an incontrovertible record of their interactions ...

Parking cops. Nightclub bouncers. Police. Ricky Nixon.

I'm sure Brett Stewart, the Manly rugby league player falsely accused of sexual assault and subsequently cleared of all charges by jury trial, would have given his left ... football, to have video evidence of the contested contact with a teenage girl.

More prosaically, how many times have you had a discussion with someone and they later claim "I didn't say that!" or "you're lying!"

Really? Let's roll the tape then, Sunshine.

It would settle lots of arguments and perhaps keep the corrupt, degenerate and delusional honest, as well as making for a seriously engrossing Funniest Home Videos.

Most of all, however, it might teach us a powerful lesson: being wrong feels exactly like being right and the majority of us don't know the difference.

Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong, says that examining our conscience is an ineffective method of determining whether we are correct because most of us still manage to be wrong about many things, every day.

Not only that, when we do realise we're wrong, we often won't admit it and even invent rationalisations and reasons to prove we're right.

Many of us do this in our personal and business lives - or have seen people do it - and this innate human fallibility and unwillingness to accept error is thus encoded into our greatest endeavours: Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq anyone? Global Financial Crisis? Deep water oil drilling?

It's also enshrined in language by sayings like "to err is human" and "everybody makes mistakes" and is fantastically evidenced by the divisions of politics and the billions of people convinced their religion is the only true calling.

I mean, someone's gotta be wrong? Right?

So how do we counter our proficiency for making mistakes?

If you ask me, it's down to one word - accountability - and that's only possible when our behaviour and actions are scrutinised by others.

So, let's go to the replay from the micro-camera!

Schulz suggests similar, saying: "We need to look outside, we need to look to each other. This is why we have co-pilots and safety valves and devices ensuring we're not relying on the psyche of one individual, fallible human being when the stakes are high.

"The wider you cast this net, the more people you recruit to figure out if you're wrong, the better you are. Specifically, we need people who disagree with us, we need to invite the doubters, the critics and the adversaries into the conversation with us," says Schulz.

Speaking on ABC radio last month, retired High Court Justice Michael Kirby said as much, insisting "diversity of opinion" was essential to the evolution of humanity.

Unfortunately, most people don't like to be disagreed with. They collect like-minds to shore up their position, rather than testing its validity with intelligent dissent: i.e "all my friends agree with me, so I must be right."

There's a philosophical theory wordily named the "pessimistic meta-induction from the history of science" that argues every major scientific belief once hailed as true and certain, has eventually been proved wrong.

Well known examples are alchemy, the four humours of medicine, ignorance of germs and, of course, the flat earth theory.

This is beautifully dramatised in the 2009 Rachel Weisz film Agora, in which she plays the 4th century astronomer Hypatia, murdered by Christians for questioning the then absolutely accepted theory the sun orbited our earth.

Listening to the learned men of Roman Egypt sneer at the idea our planet actually revolved around the sun made me wonder who is their modern equivalent?

Climate change deniers? Quantum physicists? The idiot you used to date or, maybe, just me?

Time will tell, I suppose and, hopefully, there'll be a video recording of it for us to laugh (or cry) at.

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A couple of months ago I caught the very good film 127 Hours, which details the true story of Aron Ralston, a climber forced to cut off his arm after a fallen boulder traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah.

If you didn't know that was the gist of the film, too bad, because it doesn't ruin what is almost ... almost, a great film, so it's very much worth watching.

Anyway, the scene that got me thinking about this post was in which Ralston (played by James Franco) prepares for his ill-fated trek, and searches in vain in a cupboard for his Swiss Army knife.

He doesn't find it, prompting a line later in the movie when he's trapped in the middle of nowhere and trying to cut off his arm with his blunt, back-up knife and says: "Lesson: don't buy the cheap, made-in-China multitool" ...

A few days after I saw 127 Hours, the Christchurch earthquake happened and then, a month later, the Japanese quake and tsunami and I got to thinking about worst case scenarios in this country and being prepared for such.

I did a bit of surfing on the net and came across a bunch of different articles telling people how to prepare for Armageddon, but then I thought, you can't really carry a room full of canned food and bottled water to work, can you?

So many survival guides assume you're at home when disaster strikes - but that's often not the case.

Then I watched the new Peter Weir film The Way Back, which tells the story of Siberian gulag escapees who walk 4000 miles overland to freedom in India in 1941.

The group spend a lot of time wondering if they're walking in the right direction (south) but thankfully one of their number knows how to make a compass using the sun, a stick and two rocks.

Aaaaaaanyway, it got me thinking about how pissed off I'd be with myself if I ever broke down somewhere and didn't have a compass or a lighter in my car.

Then, of course, I started obsessing a little bit and decided I'd put together an emergency kit or "calamity bag" as it's been described elsewhere.

I bought myself a shaving bag from K-Mart and filled it with the following:

Compass.
Leatherman multi-tool.
Water-purification tablets.
Torch and batteries.
Flint fire-starter.
Lighter.
First aid kit.
Solar phone charger.
Solar AM/FM radio.

I was thinking about chucking a $30 pre-paid mobile in there as well, but hell, I always seem to have my mobile on me.

All this stuff fits in a bag smaller than a VHS tape, and I shoved it into my glove-box because I'm weird and it makes me feel better just knowing it's there.

Anyway, I'm sure many of you will be travelling somewhere this Easter - and you never know - you could roll your car down a ravine and not be heard from again.

The question is: what would you put in your calamity bag? And where would you keep it?

TWITTER
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There are few things more terrifying than going to prison. For starters, most of your personal freedoms and the majority of your dignity are stripped from you the moment you step inside a prison. Then there’s the whole matter of living with serial killers, murderers, and rapists.

So who can blame inmates for wanting to escape prison? While successful prison breaks are rare — except, as you’ll find out, in Afghanistan — they do happen. And when they do, they’re totally awesome. They rely on luck, the help of crooked guards, other inmates, buddies nice enough to hijack a helicopter, and some pretty ingenious planning. At least, that’s the case with these eight amazing real-life prison breaks.

Alcatraz Federal Prison | San Francisco, California | June 11, 1962
During its 29-year existence as a federal prison, Alcatraz held big shots like mob boss Al Capone — but it couldn’t hold Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin.

The trio, led by Morris and with the help of Allen West (he didn’t make it out of his cell in time to actually take part in the escape), spent two years preparing. Behind their cells was an unguarded corridor that led to a vent on the roof. To get there they had to chisel away a concrete cell wall, and, of course, it had to be done slowly and on the QT. Once they were through, they put lifelike paper mache dummy heads adorned with flesh-tone paint and hair from the barbershop in their beds to fool the guards. Then they climbed out of the vent, onto the roof, and down 50 feet of piping to the ground where a makeshift raft made from raincoats took them across 1.5 miles of water to San Francisco.

Well, maybe. The official report claims the men drowned in the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay. But we prefer to believe the TV show MythBusters, which concluded in 2003 that the escape from Alcatraz was, in fact, possible.

Secretmarmalade.com’s Rebecca Swanner hooked us up with this recipe for Spicy Bourbon Brownies, which require one pot, can be made in eight simple steps, and serve as a great excuse to drink bourbon.

Ingredients:
• 1 ¼ cup sugar
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• 6 ounces (approx. half a bag) of dark chocolate chips (we recommend ones made with about 60 percent cacao)
• 11 tbsp (1 stick + 3 tbsp) unsalted butter
• 2 eggs
• 3 tsp bourbon
• ¼ tsp ancho chili powder
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• Vegetable/canola oil spray

Tools:
• 9x9x2 baking pan
• Spatula
• Aluminum foil

1. Position the oven rack in the middle of your oven and preheat to 325. Cut a piece of aluminum foil to fit a 9 x 9 x 2 pan, leaving a 2-inch overhang. Precision isn’t necessary; this will just make it easier to remove the brownies.

2. Spray the foil with vegetable oil; use a paper towel to make sure it’s evenly covered, and place the foil into the pan.

3. Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat. The butter will foam. Stir continually for about five minutes or until brown bits form on the bottom of the pan.

4. Remove the butter from the heat. Add vanilla, salt, bourbon, sugar, and chocolate. Mix . Let the mixture cool for 5 minutes.

5. Add one egg to the mixture. Beat it (heh heh) vigorously with a spatula. Repeat.

6. Add flour, cinnamon, and chili powder. Stir until everything is mixed.

7. Pour into the pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes. When the mixture is done, the top should look set and dry.

8. Remove from the oven and set on a rack to cool. When cool, remove the foil, flip the brownies onto a cutting surface, and slice.

If the directions were too tough to follow, you can fire Rebecca questions via email at recipes@secretmarmalade.com. Tell ‘er Large Marge sent ya!

We’re not going to lie to you — buying a vintage watch is kind of a pain in the ass. They can be costly, it’s easy to get ripped off, and you need to do a lot of research.

But on the other hand, a vintage watch is a piece of history on your wrist; just think of what an old military-style watch might have been through. Wearing a vintage watch lets people know that you care about distinguishing yourself since you’re wearing what is essentially a unique timepiece. Plus, vintage watches tend to look a lot cooler than a Casio.

You just have to know where to shop, how to choose the right style, and how to tell if the watch is a lemon. And it just so happens we have time to give you a hand. Yeah, we know. Sorry.

KNOW THE MARKET
Vintage watch prices vary. A lot. You can go with a 1970s Hamilton or Timex military watch for $200 or less. Or you can pay … much, much more.

Narrow your search to a specific model or brand before spending money. Then comparison shop online and use sites like Chrono24.com to see how much that style is going for. Lastly, if you want to be super thorough (or lazy), call a vintage watch dealer and ask them to price out the one you had in mind.

KNOW WHERE TO SHOP
Pawn Shops/Secondhand Stores: Both are good for finding undervalued watches, but they also require a lot of footwork and a little luck. Also, there’s a good chance that you’ll find watches in need of repair or servicing.

eBay: The good news is that the variety pretty much can’t be beat. The bad news is that you have to know what you’re doing. For one, you obviously won’t see the watch firsthand until after you buy it. So who’s to say it won’t show up with more dings, scratches, or mechanical issues than the seller either forgot to mention or avoided mentioning. Another potential problem: eBay sellers can be ignorant. Emailing questions, even ones as simple as, “Does it work?” won’t always get a helpful reply.

Vintage Watch Dealers: This is the safest place to go for first timers. Dealers have the connections to track down tough-to-find timepieces, and most of their watches are serviced and restored. But you’ll pay a steep premium for the convenience.

Auction Houses: You’re likely to find “investment grade” vintage watches in excellent condition, but “investment grade” essentially means “extremely expensive.”

Here’s a wild guess: The only time you think about ice trays is when you want to drink a cocktail or soothe your lumbago, and you realize you forgot to fill them up last time you emptied them. That amount of ice cube-tray consideration is just fine — standard ice cubes do a fine job of, well, being ice cubes.

But if you like to entertain guests or just want to spice up your lonely existence, funky-shaped ice cubes are an easy way to do it. They can actually say a lot about you. For instance …

SPACE INVADERS ICE TRAY ($8)
What the cubes say about you: You’re at least in your mid 30s … and may or may not have ever kissed a girl. (We’re kidding — these are actually awesome.)

LEGO MINIFIGURE ICE TRAY ($8)
What the cubes say about you: You have a fanciful imagination and enjoy using your hands to create things. Or you like to pretend you’re a gigantic monster dining on tiny, crunchy people.

BONE CHILLERS ICE TRAY ($7)
What the cubes say about you: You know how to host a parrrrrrrty.

GIN and TITONIC ICE TRAY ($7)
What the cubes say about you: You’ve found the perfect complement to your Hindenburg party balloons and Chernobyl grill.

ALPHABET ICE TRAY ($25)
What the cubes say about you: You control that depending on what you spell out in your guests’ drinks. May we humble suggest naughty words for various body parts?

You may or may not recognize Chris Hemsworth from 2009′s Star Trek. He played Captain Kirk’s father, and while that character was cool enough to give his son the middle name Tiberius, he also got his spaceship blowed up after like 10 minutes in the movie.

Now that Hemsworth is playing the lead in Thor, it’s his career that’s blowing up. In addition starring in the movie that unofficially opens 2011′s summer blockbuster season, he’ll be reprising the role in The Avengers, star in the horror film The Cabin in the Woods, and appear in the remake of the awesomely bad Red Dawn.

So we asked him about it.

What were the most miserable things you had to do in order to look like Thor?
I didn’t mind so much the working out. But my body doesn’t naturally exist at that weight, so I had to force-feed myself so much chicken breast and rice and steak — all prepared so that they were very boring and plain. Eating was the most exhausting part of the whole film. But then the first couple weeks of filming, I was pouring so much sweat in the costume that weight was just falling off me. So the costume designer came up with this cooling vest, which I think race car drivers wear — a little vest with pipes that cold water runs through to cool you down.

Okay, but can a mere mortal ever get truly jacked enough to play a Norse god?
[laughs] No. But I certainly read enough to get a sense of who Thor was. I read some things on Norse mythology and learned about the fatalistic view they have that everything’s preordained. It’s what lead the Vikings to have a fearless attitude in battle and with their lives in general.

Who were your favorite superheroes growing up?
I think Superman was probably the very first one I was aware of. I would run around the house pretending to be him. I also had a Robin costume, which was a nice pair of green underwear and a yellow shirt and red cape.

What was it like acting in a summer superhero movie directed by a guy [Kenneth Branagh] best known for doing Shakespeare … and Wild Wild West?
I was like forging metal. He would keep working scenes until they became as strong as they could be. One suggestion Kenneth had for me was to just let the costume do it, because I had this huge helmet on my head and could hardly even see. Plus Anthony Hopkins was so good in some scenes that I thought, “That’s amazing … and I’m useless. I may as well drop my hammer and leave.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, enough about Hopkins. What about Natalie Portman?
Scenes with Natalie were sort of dream time for me. Some of my favorite moments are the sequences between Thor and Jane.

We can imagine. Lastly: How do you spell “Mjolnir”?
Uh, good question. M-L-J-O-I-N-E-R?! Is that right? Is it even a word? [It's the name of Thor's hammer.—Ed.]

Mother’s Day is a time to let your mom know how much you love her by giving her a card, flowers, or a card with flowers on it. But all moms aren’t created equal — some are actually terrible human beings who deserve a different sort of recognition on Mother’s Day — ridicule! Now, there’s nothing funny about real-life bad moms, so we rounded up the worst of them from some of our favorite movies and TV shows. From boozy, bougie family matriarchs to straight-up Commie spies, these broads are some of the best/worst antimoms ever.

Margaret White from Carrie
Mrs. White was a total religious fundie wing nut, but this was back in the 1970s. So instead of going into politics, she went door to door and preached fire and brimstone, and routinely terrorized her daughter. When Carrie got her first period, Mrs. White told her it was because she was a sinner and locked her in a closet. After Carrie was terrorized at her prom and as a result sorta accidentally kinda killed almost all of her classmates, her mom reacted by … literally stabbing her in the back. Parents like Mrs. White just don’t understand.

Peg Bundy from Married… with Children
Peg was a bonbon-hoovering layabout who watched Oprah all day, cared little about her children’s constant hunger and descent into juvenile delinquency, and spent her shoe-selling husband Al Bundy‘s meager paycheck on things that benefited only her — like gaudy clothing and trips to the hair salon to maintain her antigravitational coif.

Al often pleaded with Peg to use the cash to buy food. Peg even agreed once. But when Al handed her all the money he had — $10 — she bought … well, check out the clip.

We like several kinds of Mexican beer, and frozen margaritas spewing out of repurposed frogurt machines have their place (for instance, roiling around in your belly the next day whilst giving you an epic hangover). But if you’re having people over to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, you’d score major puntos if you had other, more unique options.

So we asked master mixologist Steve Calabro for a few easy-to-make recipes. Why Steve? Because he creates cocktails for Los Angeles restaurant Red-O. And the drinks there are held to the same sky-high standards as the unbelievable Mexican food. (They also have a “tequila lounge,” which is as awesome as that sounds.) Andale!

SPICY MARGARITA
Margaritas are great, but if you use cheap tequila and a store-bought mix, you’re going to wake up with a crushing hangover and/or in a diabetic coma. Instead, reduce the sugariness and increase the sabor with this picante twist.

• 2 oz. Tanteo jalapeno-infused tequila

• .5 oz. Triple Sec

• .5 oz. Veev acai berry liqueur

• About 8 leaves of fresh muddled mint

• Limeade to taste

LA SANGRE DE FRANCIA
No idea why you get blitzed every May 5th? In a nutshell, it’s to celebrate an unlikely Mexican military victory over the French. And since not everybody loves tequila, you can serve this drink made with — you guessed it — French vodka.

• 2 oz. Grey Goose Pear vodka

• 4 oz. Italian blood-orange soda (You can find it at Trader Joe’s and other retailers.)

• 1 squeeze from a lemon slice

SANTA ROSEMARIA
Gin and lemonade go great together. And adding a sprig of rosemary is an easy way to both give the drink a little spice and make you look like you actually know what you’re doing.

• 2 oz. Beefeater 24 gin

• 4 oz. lemonade

• 1 sprig of Rosemary

NOT-TOO-FRUITY FRUITY MARGARITA
Fruity margaritas can be even more overpoweringly sweet than regular ones. So make them with fruit preserves instead of syrupy flavoring.

• 2 oz. Don Julio Blanco tequila

• 4 oz. lemonade

• 1 spoonful of fruit preserves (not jam or jelly)

SIDRA DE LA MULA
This last one was actually created by H. Joseph Ermann of San Francisco’s Elixir. It’s refreshing and won’t have you doing an embarrassing Mexican Hat Dance quite as quickly as the other cocktails.

• 1.5 oz. Espolon Tequila Blanco

• 12 oz. bottle of Sidral Mundet (If you don’t have a nearby Mexican grocery store that stocks the apple-flavored soda, you can substitute sparkling apple cider or ginger beer.)

• 2 dashes Angostura bitters

• 1 squeeze of a lemon slice

Police have now found 10 sets of human remains — and counting — on the South Shore of Long Island. Profilers believe the serial killer is a white male in his mid-20s to mid-40s who’s married or in a relationship, and well educated. In other words, he’s one of about a half million dudes on Long Island.

So whoever this psycho is, he’s still anonymous. That’ll of course change once he gets caught … but it’s still no guarantee he’ll go down as one of history’s most famous serial killers — fellas like John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy. Yep, those guys had real star power.

Thing is, just because they were famous doesn’t mean they were the best. There are a whole host of serial-killing maniacs who don’t get the recognition they deserve. They’re the real unsung heroes … and by “heroes” we of course mean “twisted lunatics.”

Andrei “The Red Ripper” Chikatilo (1978-1990)
Number of victims: 53 to 56
Unfortunately, this handsome Ukrainian had a problem getting it up …until he realized that stabbing women to death totally did it for him.

He discovered this when he murdered a nine-year-old girl in 1978, marking the start of a 12-year killing spree. That spree, however, could have been cut in half had Commie cops been more on the ball. In 1984, police arrested Chikatilo after he was observed trying to lure young girls away from a bus stop in an area where mutilated bodies had recently been found. Police found a butcher knife and rope in his bag, but let Chikatilo go. Chikatilo was finally arrested in 1990, and subsequently executed in 1994.

We’ve already chronicled people celebrating Osama bin Laden’s death. But it turns out we had yet to see the ultimate celebration. In fact, we’d go so far as to say that nothing says “USA! USA!” quite like this guy saying “USA! USA!”

Part of the fun of growing a beard is seeing how many goofy facial-hair styles you can shave into your face before you completely shave it off. Prior to serving as Conan O’Brien’s barber on Conan last night, Will Ferrell suggested three styles he thought the talkshow host could sport, but instead Conan went straight back to his squeaky-clean mug.

While we wouldn’t hesitate to take career advice from Conan, his facial-hair instincts left us a little disappointed. So here are some facial-hair styles we wistfully envisioned Conan trying before Ferrell clear-cut his face.

1. The Hogarine
Half Hulk Hogan. Half Wolverine. All man.

2. The Rapey Mennonite.
You’ll blend right in whether you’re raising a barn with the Pennsylvania Dutch or raising the roof in a South Philly nightclub.

3. The Snidely*
*Rope, damsel, and Amtrak schedule not included.

4. The Sassy Re-enactor
This looks ridiculous … unless you’re wearing suspenders and/or a Civil War-era saber.

5. The Little Tramp
What’s that? Yes, that’s correct, Ferrell suggested the “Hitler” to Conan. What’s your point? This is the Little Tramp, which is a totally different mustache.