Sunday, December 7, 2008

The answer to all our problems....

I wake up Sunday mornings, pour myself a cup of coffee, and get the paper off the porch.

After shedding it's fat suit (the ad sections) the paper is much slimmer, but still slightly bigger than the daily.

And then I peruse.

Today, I discover that the Bulletin has the answer to our economic problems.

BUILD MORE WALMART'S!!

But of course! That would solve everything. More minimum wage retail jobs, a huge cavernous building, and lots and lots of cheap stuff.

Why didn't I think of that?

Oh, and traffic on the North of town to die for....literally.

There you go, folks. The answer to not enough retail sales is to build the biggest retail store you possibly can.

Really, why do we even put up with all these little stores? Walmart is so much cheaper. Downtown shops are really a waste of space. Plunk one big Walmart down there, and the problem is solved.

Think of the efficiencies. We wouldn't need a national health care plan, because we could all get Walmart's --no doubt -- generous health and retirement plans. Wages would be standardized: the Walmart wage.

Maybe Walmart could build us some cheap houses, while they're at it.

And surely, they could run a system of buses around town to make sure their employees --er, associates -- make it to work on time.

The government would only have to worry about collecting taxes from one store, and best of all, our product could all be Chinese made, thus ensuring that everyone gets access to the exact same cheap product.

This is Utopia, folks. The wide aisles, the Christmas muzak, my, god! Greeters at the door!

I think the Bulletin has hit on something, here. It's a Walmart world, and we all just live in it.

9 comments:

rotorman said...

I was opposed to a Walmart on the north side when the subject first came up. I'm even more opposed to it now. Not having read the Bull piece I can't see how this makes any sense except for the construction work it will provide. However, that would certainly be taking the short view. As an aside, if this were built, I can't think of another area that has 3 Walmarts in as small a radius as Bend/Redmond

Duncan McGeary said...

Whatever they might say, I think it would quickly be 2.

rotorman said...

How about a senario where the only retail left in Bend/Redmond are the 3 Walmarts? Scarey.

Anonymous said...

13 reason why NO-FOLLOW SUCKS, and the KUNTS that enable it like HOMER&NED.

Well NED fess up, your a no-follow kind of guy, do you wear latex gloves before you take your customers money???


13 Reasons Why NoFollow Tags Suck
Dec 8th, 2008 by Loren Baker,

The NoFollow link attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments, due to the amount of blog comment spamming.

The theory is that if spammers are spamming in blog comments to get better SEO and anchored links for their sites, NoFollow would render such spam useless. Problem is, spammers still spam.

Now, NoFollow has been adopted beyond blog comments. Wikipedia is now using NoFollow for external links and Google recommends that paid links use a NoFollow attribute.

Here are 13 reasons why NoFollow is a failure.

1. NoFollow = NoWorky. Using NoFollow in blog comments, the original intent of the tag, does nothing to discourage comment spammers. Using other anti-spamming tools such as question, math and plugins such as Akismet and SpamKarma for Wordpress is much more effective.

2. If a blogger moderates comments, there is no need for a NoFollow attribute. “Everyone who passes a human inspection should get the link love.”

3. Since the use of NoFollow in comments on Wordpress blogs is default, many bloggers do not even realize they are using NoFollow.

4. NoFollow=NoValue. Why use NoFollow on sites, text ads, and blogs if there is no value in terms of search engine indexing? What if they made the Yahoo! directory nofollow? Would anyone continue to purchase listings? Obviously the value of that directory would be zero of nofollow tags were applied to the listings.

5. Linking to someone with a NoFollow attribute is a sign of not trusting them. It’s like reaching to shake someone’s hand, but stopping to put on a pair of latex gloves.

6. No Follow sucks because the search engines (particularly Google) can’t make up their mind about when and how it should be used, thus causing confusion among inexperienced webmasters who do STUPID things like No Follow ALL outgoing links from their website to “protect the site from page rank leakage” and other silly ideas.

7. No-follow is a poor search engine’s solution to conceal its own failure to rank websites appropriately. What’s next, No-linking?

Search engines should be able to develop a method of identifying and devaluing links to spam sites which were placed in blog comments. Why should everyone who posts in blog comments suffer from the actions of a greedy few spammers.

8. Commenting on a blog post is the same as adding more relevant to that blog post. A thought provoking one sentence post can lead to pages of comments. If someone takes the time to help build your site’s content via posting comments, it is professional courtesy to give them some link love.

9. Putting NoFollow on Wikipedia is like putting Grey Poupon on a Spam sandwich.(Or like putting perfume on a pig.)

Taking Wikipedia to task over nofollow is fun but ultimately you need to take them to task for why they implemented nofollow in the first place - that is, to prevent spam. Which in turn means that the way Wikipedia was setup was flawed because it opened itself up to easy spamming.

Therefore, instead of just letting Wikipedia take the easy way out (because ultimately it’s an important resource for many people and replacing it would be tough), they should look at ways into changing their systems so they are not as open to spamming any more.

10. Text link advertisements which use a NoFollow make no sense. If you want to spread your Google juice, why use a link-condom?

11. Even Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg says NoFollow was a failure; “In theory this should work perfectly, but in practice although all major blogging tools did this two years ago and comment and trackback spam is still 100 times worse now. In hindsight, I don’t think nofollow had much of an effect, though I’m still glad we tried it.”

12. Search Engines follow NoFollow. Yahoo has been known to count NoFollow links as backlinks in SiteExplorer. So, if you’re goal in comment spamming to to build backlinks, which builds your site’s value in terms of selling advertising (TLA, ReviewMe, SEOmoz’s PageStrength and other metrics programs use Yahoo Backlinks as valued criteria), NoFollow is useless.

13. NoFollow Sucks. Check It!

What are your thoughts on NoFollow? Do you support the use of NoFollow in Wikipedia or as a way to identify paid links?

Have more reasons why NoFollow is a failure? Please feel free to share them below.

Anonymous said...

I'll just say one thing about WALMART.

That be 'PATRON'.

The BULL ain't dumb, and their PATRON lord Hogg Hollern is a stumbled old fool on his last RE deal.

A smart codger would be whining & Dining da WALMART today, hell yes, FOLKS look at it this way, next year this time there will be ONE MAN standing in BEND buying AD SPACE, and who the fuck do you think that will be??

Anonymous said...

Dunc, Here's one for you, the answer to our problems, ... Who would have guessed?

Obama Warns Economy Will Worsen Before It Recovers (Update2)
Bloomberg - 1 hour ago
By Edwin Chen and Julianna Goldman Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama said the US recession will worsen before a recovery takes hold and that he will offer an economic stimulus plan “equal to the task” without worrying about a ...

H. Bruce Miller said...

This is an example of why I stopped reading The Bullshittin editorial page. Nothing but standard right-wing, screw-the-working-class claptrap anymore.

Anonymous said...

Wal-Mart. The evil empire and the death of small business.


Shows the progression of Walmarts chronologically. Reminds me of a virus spreading.
http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/

Anonymous said...

Today the stock-market is UP, Wall St, loves layoff's.

The two best performing biz today are Walmart & McDonalds.

This is the future, and the BULL will embrace the future, as they need a new patron.

COVA will soon be promoting the fact that McDonalds & Walmart are always nearby when visiting Bend. Bend is special.