Monthly Archives ⇒ July 2008

The long life of 1950s sci-fi

July 2, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Part of the play­book for Amer­i­can tor­ture in Iraq and Guan­tá­namo comes from Chi­nese inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods used against cap­tured Amer­i­cans dur­ing the Cold War.

What the train­ers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied ver­ba­tim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chi­nese Com­mu­nist tech­niques used dur­ing the Kore­an War to obtain con­fes­sions, many of them false, from Amer­i­can prisoners.
The recy­cled chart is the lat­est and most vivid evi­dence of the way Com­mu­nist inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods that the Unit­ed States long described as tor­ture became the basis for inter­ro­ga­tions both by the mil­i­tary at the base at Guan­tá­namo Bay, Cuba, and by the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. 

It sounds like some­thing out of the 1962 thriller film The Manchuri­an Can­di­date. And in a way it is: the idea that Chi­nese Com­mu­nists had used inhu­man ruth­less­ness to unlock the secrets of the brain to cre­ate the per­fect truth tech­nique would be a charm­ing arti­fact of 1950s Amer­i­can cul­ture, some­thing to show along­side the hula hoop and the Jetson-like hov­er cars we’re all sup­posed to be dri­ving in the year 2000. Instead it’s yet anoth­er exhib­it in Pen­ta­gon amnesia.

Does­n’t any­one do any fact check­ing at the Pen­ta­gon? “Offi­cials who drew on the SERE pro­gram [in 2002 to design Amer­i­can intel­li­gence adap­ta­tion] appear to have been unaware that it had been cre­at­ed as a result of con­cern about false con­fes­sions by Amer­i­can pris­on­ers.” And yet… it’s clear that Pres­i­dents Bush and Cheney want­ed false infor­ma­tion in 2002 to launch the war against Iraq. What­ev­er “con­fes­sions” can be wrung from the Bagh­dad taxi dri­vers who got caught up in the arrest sweeps can cer­tain­ly be used to bul­ly the grow­ing num­ber who oppose the war.

But what do we want, jus­ti­fi­ca­tions or the truth? Peace in the region or pro­tec­tion from sins of the past? For­get that tor­ture is inhu­man: it’s also just an unre­li­able way of get­ting accu­rate infor­ma­tion. It’s hard to imag­ine a real­is­tic sce­nario where the hor­ri­ble events of 9/11 could have been stopped by acts of tor­ture by U.S. intel­li­gence or mil­i­tary per­son­nel but it’s could have been stopped if thought­ful ana­lysts had been allowed to share infor­ma­tion across agency lines and been focused on true knowl­edge and understanding.

Superstar? Aw shucks!

July 1, 2008
· Martin Kelley

And a shout-out back to Hit­Tail folks who linked to my arti­cle on Adword shenani­gans by nam­ing me a super­star! Every­one Loves Hit­Tail: Hit­Tail Helps Super­star Blog­ger Mar­tin Kel­ley Save Mon­ey. Is it get­ting hot in here?

I will say that these guys are real­ly good track­ers. I some­times think if I said “hit­tail” in my sleep I’d awake to an email thank­ing me for the men­tion. I’m always sur­prised at how many com­pa­nies don’t fol­low their own pub­lic com­men­tary on them across the inter­net, but Hit­tail cer­tain­ly does.

What to look for in SEO consultants

July 1, 2008
· Martin Kelley

This is part of my Beyond SEO series where I look at the myths and real­i­ties behind search engine opti­miza­tion, with prac­ti­cal tips about pub­li­ciz­ing your site and build­ing your per­son­al brand. Read all of my Beyond SEO arti­cles.

The Google blog asks for user input into what makes a good SEO and reports that they’ve just rewrit­ten their page that warns against rogue SEO artists and gives rec­om­men­da­tions about what to look out for. It starts with their definition

SEO is an acronym for “search engine opti­miza­tion” or “search engine opti­miz­er.” Decid­ing to hire an SEO is a big deci­sion. Make sure to research the poten­tial advan­tages as well as the dam­age that an irre­spon­si­ble SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and oth­er agen­cies and con­sul­tants pro­vide use­ful ser­vices for web­site owners.

The blog asks “how would you define SEO? What ques­tions would you ask a prospec­tive SEO?” I’ve been doing a lot more opti­miza­tion for clients late­ly. What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly fun is run­ning across the work of the SEO scam artists their com­pe­ti­tion have brought in. I’ve seen many instances where the oth­er SEO firm has stepped over the bounds of fair prac­tice and been penal­ized by Google.

Google’s job and our job

I’ve always tak­en the approach that it’s Google’s job to give people
the most use­ful and rel­e­vant return for their search and our job to
make sure we have use­ful and rel­e­vant mate­r­i­al and arrange it in such a
way that Google can access it.

SEO is impor­tant but only in the
con­text of smart web design and a coher­ent and well thought out
inter­net mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Firms that claim to do SEO
with­out check­ing the ana­lyt­ics data and con­sult­ing with the client
about their busi­ness strat­e­gy will not help the site in the long run.

What your SEO expert should be doing

I would agree with most of Google’s rec­om­men­da­tions of what to look out against. But what to look for? A quick list would include:

  • A SEO con­sul­tant that looks at ana­lyt­ics data before mak­ing any changes. If the client does­n’t already have Google Ana­lyt­ics run­ning on the site I install it and wait a month before doing any­thing. I do that because you want:
  • Quan­tifi­able results. You should be able to see shift­ing use pat­terns if the opti­miza­tion is work­ing. The inter­net gives us pre­cise fig­ures and it’s often very easy to demon­strate the val­ue of the work you’ve done. Clients should have full access to the ana­lyt­ics and be trained enough to be able to inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy the results.
  • A con­sul­tant that fre­quent­ly answers ques­tions with “Hmmm…, I don’t know.” No one knows what Google is doing. You try some­thing, then you try some­thing else. Any­one who claims to know every­thing is scam­ming you.
  • Some­one who looks at your entire busi­ness mod­el and asks hard ques­tions about your inter­net strat­e­gy. What do you hope to accom­plish with your site. Are there spe­cif­ic goals that we can measure?
  • Think about your Inbound and Out­bound strate­gies. Google will send peo­ple your way if you have use­ful mate­r­i­al so think about what com­pelling con­tent you can offer the uni­verse. And once peo­ple come to the site you have to make it com­pelling for them to stay a while, sub­scribe, etc. 
  • The SEO con­sul­tant should make you sweat: any­one who says they can sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost your site with­out you hav­ing to lift a fin­ger is fool­ing you. You will almost always have to add com­pelling con­tent and it will take you com­mit­ting staff time to the project (a good devel­op­ment team will look for ways to make this fit into your exist­ing staff rou­tines so that it’s as pain­less as possible!). 

Any oth­ers sug­ges­tions for what to look for in poten­tial SEO consultants?

Pew survey on dogma and spirituality

July 1, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Sur­vey: More have dropped dog­ma for spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in U.S. — USATO​DAY​.com

“Every reli­gious group has a major chal­lenge on its hands from all direc­tions,” says [Pew Forum direc­tor Luis] Lugo. When he fac­tors in Pew’s Feb­ru­ary find­ings that 44% of adults say they’ve switched to anoth­er reli­gion or none at all, Lugo says, “You have to won­der: How do you guar­an­tee the integri­ty of a reli­gious tra­di­tion when so many peo­ple are com­ing or going or fol­low­ing ideas that don’t match up?”

Lugo’s ques­tions is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant for Friends, as many of us are con­verts. But the gen­er­al turn toward a more expe­ri­en­tial reli­gios­i­ty points to pos­si­bil­i­ties for fur­ther out­reach. Don’t have the time to check the sur­vey itself but USATo­day looks to have some good graphs about it.