Double Secret You Got Yr Link Bomb Probation Part One: LIGHTNING ROUND!

Image via Wikipedia You Got Yr Link Bomb is meant as a cross between the Will Cordero Memorial Linkpunch and the Week in Review post of the Gawker Media blog of your choice. Hence: links featuring commentary with heavily regulated snark. These links did not get the full Tynan's Anger treatment, through no fault of their own.

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Double secret YGYLB probation means three days of YGYLB posts, starting right now.

• My friend good friend Pat at Albatross Hour, perhaps the awkwardest person I know, recommends you watch this video if you feel deprived of Even Stevphen. Trust me: you do.
  
  
  10 F#@king Years - Even Stevphen

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  Comedians on Tour

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• While were on the subject of video trips down memory lane, see if you can name all the indie icons who graced Pete & Pete. Don't look at the cheat sheet! Via Idolator:
  
  Man, there's no way you can expect a non-deeply disturbed kid to get the Dead Zone reference. My major complaint with the vid is the .5 seconds allotted to Michael Stipe's cameo, despite being the one musician who perhaps shaped Pete and Pete's spirit more than anyone else. Have you found your target yet?
• The annual rite of passage of BCS grumbling has started, and Bryan Curtis of the Daily Beast isn't having it, despite what Obama clamors for. Or at least he wasn't having it. Bryan Curtis, as it turns out, is a die-hard Texas Longhorns fan. I'd be interested to see what he has to say about the BCS now (this is the benefit of having two weeks of YGYLB hindsight).
• According to Clyde Fitch, the excellent Pearl Theater Company is taking new steps to create affordable theater in dire times by eliminating the press comp. For a volunteer critic like me, this is devastating news, but the side of me that likes innovative theater solutions likes the move immensely. I just hope this is treated more as a method of innovation than as a sign of the death of theater criticism (though the Pearl's coverage may suffer as a result of the move).
• Is the NHL starting to take precedent over the NBA, like it supposedly did in 1994? You wouldn't know it from ESPN's coverage, but Puck Daddy's Greg Wyshynski thinks this may be happening. Yes, the NHL's ratings are crappy, but the NBA's isn't much better. Plus, at least the NHL still has devoted fans, which are dwindling rapidly in the NBA (Nick Friedell's description of an Orlando Magic game is pretty depressing). Even though the NBA has bigger stars, they're not seen as local stars. Does anyone in Cleveland really think Lebron is staying in 2010? It's starting to look like even Lebron doesn't think so.
• I once praised John Zogby's polling but dismissed his writing. Now it's starting to look like his polling is going sour too. Nate Silver reports that Zogby engaged in ridiculous, empirically-challenged push polling. All of a sudden, the Onion's analysis of Zogby seems more accurate.
• Finally, we have one of the best contrarian, anti-Google SEO articles I've ever read. In an era when everyone is calling people on their bad SEO strategies, why is no one calling Google on having us all suck on the SEO teat? John Andrews shows more courage in SEO writing than has been shown since some dude claimed that all SEO is Black Hat.
  

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Dear Google Adsense: Please provide actual human support, k thx bye

I've been trying to reactivate Google Adsense Support for this blog, but when I log in it says I don't have an account. When I try to apply for a new account, it says I already have an account at this email. I tried switching from one Adsense blog to another almost a year ago. This is my only personal blog now, and I'd like to try to switch everything to it. Google's Help Pages don't answer my question. Their forums, which they STRONGLY promote, are completely useless, where users troll to insult people with problems rather than help (see this post, which may have actually answered my question). My best hope is to send an email. I have done this multiple times over the past year, and have yet to get a response.

You'd think, this being the bread and butter of their business and all, that Google would actually care enough to provide a way of making actual human contact. A phone number perhaps? A live chat with a dude in India? I understand there's a high frequency demand. But this has been a consistent problem for me and I don't know how to talk to an actual human being regarding AdSense, thus costing both me and Google money. I'm not going to do a rant on the downfall of human civilization. I just want my AdSense account set up, and not have to struggle for a year to get it set up.

UPDATE: So as you can see, it's working now. When you got it, flaunt it.

Is Taking Things off Google Censorship?

There's a brouhaha at the Seattle Pacific University student newspaper over a request to take an article from 1998 off their website. 33-year-old Ethiopian immigrant Shakespear Feyissa, now a lawyer, is pressuring the school and the paper, The Falcon, to remove an article which discussed a dropped sexual assault charge against him and his indefinite suspension from the school. At the time, Feyissa wanted his story to be heard. Years later, it became one of the top results on Google for his name.

I agree with the school paper on the matter. You can't force them to take the article off the web, as they have the rights to everything they publish. There's no way I would have agreed to this when I was an editor at my college newspaper. But is adding robots.txt censorship? Does taking something off Google, but not the web, is a violation of freedom of speech? I don't think it does, but I may change my tone on that in a few years. It raises some legal questions about how important Google is to accessing information in today's world, and whether a governing body (or in this case, school administration) is prohibited from forcing the press to take something off Google without taking it the web.

Of course, now the point is moot. Because of the coverage of the controversy, the article is nowhere to be found on the Google results for "Shakespear Feyissa," But the stories on the controversy are all over the place. Not exactly the best SEO strategy if you're trying to remove a rape allegation from Google.

(via Romenesko)