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A Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community
About Me :
I'm a grownup nerd living in the Boston burbs. I write computer programs for a living and plays for fun.
I'm married to a wonderful woman, and we share a nice little house with our daughter and our cats.
I'm a humanist, a technologist, an artist, and an idealist. I believe in reason, freedom, love, equality,
and democracy. (Did I mention that I'm
an idealist? I did, OK.)
I'm also a pragmatist and an empiricist. I reject ideology and dogma, especially when they conflict with
practical facts (i.e., pretty much always). I particularly hate willful ignorance, which tends to go hand-in-hand
with ideology and dogma.
Like the alignment of the planets, this blog gets updated as I have the time, inspiration, and inclination to do so.
Like the alignment of the planets, this blog gets updated as I have the time, inspiration, and inclination to do so.
Monday, January 24, 2005
What Were They Thinking?
My web hosting service, like most such services, provides a facility for me to view this site's statistics, such as how many times the site is visited, which pages are the most popular, etc. (In case you're wondering, my site doesn't generate a huge amount of traffic, but there does seem to be a more-or-less regular readership. Thanks, Mom!)
In the very detailed report which my hosting service delivers to me on a daily basis, one of the more interesting headings is called "Search Strings". Did you know that when you type a search term or a set of search terms into Google, or Yahoo, or wherever, your search strings can be passed along to any page that you access by clicking on the links that the search engine displays to you? I didn't know that, either, and apparently the details of how your search terms are encoded into the referring page's URL vary with each search engine, so my hosting service can't deliver a comprehensive report of the search terms which have led people to my site. Still, the ones which do arrive provide an interesting glimpse into the minds of at least some of my visitors. (For example, that most people still haven't learned how to use quotes to group their search terms. But I digress.) Judge for yourself:
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My web hosting service, like most such services, provides a facility for me to view this site's statistics, such as how many times the site is visited, which pages are the most popular, etc. (In case you're wondering, my site doesn't generate a huge amount of traffic, but there does seem to be a more-or-less regular readership. Thanks, Mom!)
In the very detailed report which my hosting service delivers to me on a daily basis, one of the more interesting headings is called "Search Strings". Did you know that when you type a search term or a set of search terms into Google, or Yahoo, or wherever, your search strings can be passed along to any page that you access by clicking on the links that the search engine displays to you? I didn't know that, either, and apparently the details of how your search terms are encoded into the referring page's URL vary with each search engine, so my hosting service can't deliver a comprehensive report of the search terms which have led people to my site. Still, the ones which do arrive provide an interesting glimpse into the minds of at least some of my visitors. (For example, that most people still haven't learned how to use quotes to group their search terms. But I digress.) Judge for yourself:
- "asian religious text that predicted the tsunami tribe moves to": Looking to convert?
- "dell sony bank of america boycott abortion": Ah, yes. Dell, Sony, and Bank of America. Bring them down, and you end the scourge of abortion forever!
- "george bush on the issue of evolution the verdict is still out": It's hard to tell where this person stands on the issue, but at least he knows where George stands.
- Current Favorite - "help me humiliate my husband": Sorry, lady, I can't help you.
