Can't tell the difference between a Pentobarbital and a Secobarbital or a roach and a bomber? Fear not, drug rookies, because the Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs Identification Kit can help.
Produced in the 1960s, Winston Products for Education created the drug ID kit as an instructional aid for schools and law enforcement agencies to get the word out back in the late 1960s.
Let's see Donald Trump top this. On a sandy island in Abu Dhabi Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan has inscribed what is in effect the biggest graffiti tag the world has ever seen. Hamad, 63, a scion of the billionaire Abu Dhabi royal family, has gouged his name in capital letters two miles across and half a mile wide. His moniker is so big it can be seen from space (as this Google Earth pic demonstrates). The tip of the "H" reaches into the strait that leads to the Arabian Gulf, allowing Hamad to fill the first two letters of his name with water. The "M" looks partially filled as well.
This is what happens when you combine Kung Fu, Soccer and Volleyball.
If you have incredible acrobatic skills, spot on coordination and superb soccer skills, then Sepak Takraw may just be the sport for you. Probably one of the craziest sports out there!
I hope I never get my picture taken by the official police photographer. I will certainly do my best to make sure it won't happen. That being said, just in case you were contemplating breaking the law you might want to take a look at these mug shots, none of the people look particularly happy. I hope this will help you reconsider your actions and just get a job.
By now you've heard about SEOmoz's study of Google ranking factors, but what about negative ranking factors? Sure, positive factors such as the correlations between social media shares and higher rankings earn a lot of attention - and they should. Smart SEOs look at all the factors, including those at the bottom of the list! Today we look at negative ranking factors - those SEO characteristics correlated with lower rankings - and how to avoid them.
Video Transcription
Howdy, SEOmoz! Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're going to be talking about negative ranking factors.
Now, we talk about ranking factors a lot here at SEOmoz. Every two years SEOmoz publishes a study called the "Ranking Factors." We just published one about a month and a half ago, two months ago. The positive factors get a lot of publicity. We find things that correlate to higher rankings, and we spend a lot of our time on those.
Some of the more positive famous ranking factors that we talk about are such things as page authority, which has a 0.28 correlation to higher rankings. Now, I know we say this a lot, but I need to give my disclaimer here, that correlation does not equal causation. What this means is that when we see pages with high page authority, they are most likely associated with higher rankings. We look at thousands of search results across the website, we analyze those pages, and we try to find relationships characteristic of those pages and those higher rankings. When we find a relationship, we often say that they are positively correlated. Other elements that have positive correlation would be exact match dot com domains. So if your domain name is, say, Diamonds.com, you have a pretty good chance of ranking for diamonds - for that keyword. Also, linking root domains with partial anchor text is a 0.25 correlation. That just means the broad diversity of domains that link to you with some sort of partial anchor text, there is a pretty high correlation between that measurement and higher rankings. Now, this is what we talk about a lot.
What we don't talk a lot about is the opposite effect, the negative correlation. There are certain factors, there are certain things we find associated with web page that actually are associated with negative rankings. We don't pay a lot of attention to those, but they are actually in there in the ranking factors and they are all the way at the bottom, but they are sort of worth paying attention to, because if we can avoid these, we might be able to learn something about better ranking models and better correlations.
Domain Name Length
Starting with some simple ones, an obvious negative correlation is the domain name length, 0.07. This is kind of an obvious one. If you had a domain, Shoes.com, this tends to rank better in search results than something like Buy-Cheap-Mens-Shoes.com. Now again, correlation does not equal causation. We can think of a lot of reasons for this. For example, Shoes.com, that's probably a much older domain name. It's probably been around for 10 years, has a lot of back links going to it. Buy-Cheap-Mens-Shoes.com kind of looks a little spammy. It is probably not something that is going to earn a lot of links. By the way, if you go ahead and look at these correlation statistics, dashes actually are another negative factor. The more hyphens a domain name has, that is actually another negative correlation factor. That doesn't mean you can't use long domain names. It just means they tend to not do as well from what we observed.
Response Time
Kind of a controversial one here - response time. We love drawing small pictures of animals here on Whiteboard Friday, so here is our tortoise and our hare. 0.05. Now, we don't really know what this is. There is a lot of debate in the SEO world if slower web pages, slower servers cause lower rankings. We don't really have a lot of data on that. We don't really have a definite answer. What we can see from the correlation, this isn't a huge correlation, but we see that these pages tend to rank a little lower than others. We know that faster websites, faster response times present a better user experience. If you have a slow site, it is definitely worth looking into.
AdSense
Now here is a surprising one. There are a lot of people, getting new into SEO, they think that if you use Google services, such as installing Google Analytics on your site or putting AdSense on your site, that Google tends to favor those websites and that you'll rank higher. Correlation data shows exactly the opposite. Google AdSense slots correlated with lower rankings, 0.06. So website A here, if it has all these AdSense, and you've seen these pages - you click on them and they are filled with AdSense - they tend to not rank as well as pages with fewer AdSense slots. Another thing is the number of pixels. So, not only the amount of slots you have, but the pure amount of volume, of space on your website that is taken up by AdSense, we see those associated with lower rankings. Again, doesn't necessarily cause it, but that's what we see. As a user, if you think about it, which page would you rather link to? Both things being equal, I'd much rather link to that page. So it makes sense.
Percent of Followed Linking Pages
The most surprising result of this year's correlation data was the percent of followed linking pages. This requires a little bit of explanation. This means that if all your links pointing towards your domain are followed, we tend to see those sites ranking a little lower. That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense off the get-go. You'd think if all your links were followed, you'd just be great in rankings. But think of domain diversity. Sites that rank well tend to have a lot of sites linking to them. They have sites like Wikipedia that have no followed links, citations no followed links. In general, they have a diverse link profile, whereas spammier sites, smaller sites, newer sites, they are going after those links. They have to work very hard for each one of them, and their diversity is not as great.
These are only a few of the negative ranking factors that you'll find in this year's 2011 SEOmoz Ranking Factors. You can dig into it. We'll link to it in the bottom of this post and Explore Your Own. It's worth looking into all of them. You can learn so much SEO. I love to hear your comments. Thanks everybody. Have a great day.
Seven months ago, I announced a new publishing venture, powered by Amazon.
To date, we've published four books. We now have more than 250,000 copies in circulation across the four titles, and every one of them hit the Top 10 list (either hardcover, Kindle or both) on Amazon.
The blog has a bunch of juicy posts you might have missed, and subscribers to the blog get first dibs on our limited, free or sponsored titles.
The collectibles (one of my favorite parts) haven't been as fast to catch on as I expected, though the last two sold out within two days. I've been delighted at the great work BzzAgent and our street team have done in getting the word out, and blown away by how effective sponsored editions of Kindle books are. We've also had good luck with foreign translations, with many countries and languages in the works.
In the next four weeks, we've got four new titles coming out, each very different in its own way. I thought this would be a good time to invite you to subscribe to the blog. I'll keep our readers (friends) updated on the Domino blog. Thanks for reading and spreading the word.
Welcome to the West Wing Week, your guide to everything that's happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. This week, President Obama welcomed a civil rights icon, placed a call to the international space station, made an important personnel announcement and hosted a roundtable focused on education with business leaders. But throughout he remained focused on finding a balanced solution to deficit reduction. That's July 15th-21st, or "Two Minute Warning."
Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog.
Join a Twitter Interview on Development and Aid with the ONE Campaign Gayle Smith, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Development and Democracy for the National Security Staff, is taking your questions on topics ranging from the GAVI vaccines pledge to the latest issues on foreign aid, global health and international development.
9:30 AM: The President and The Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing
11:00 AM: The Vice President administers the oath of office at a ceremonial swearing-in for Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta
11:00 AM: The President participates in a Town Hall on the on-going efforts to find a balanced approach to deficit reduction 1:35 PM: The President meets with the Prime Minister Key of New Zealand
2:20 PM: The President and the Prime Minister Key deliver statements to the press
2:45 PM: The President meets with Secretary of Defense Panetta and Admiral Mullen
3:30 PM: The President meets with Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and Mrs. Eikenberry
The value of breaking news (news = whatever is new to you) is dramatically overrated, and the cost of keeping up with what someone else thinks is urgent is just too high.
If it's important today, it will be important tomorrow. Far more productive to do the work instead of monitoring what's next.
[Exceptions: Emergency room doctors, producers at CNN, day traders.]
The EU summit hammered out yet another temporary fix today, albeit a complicated one.
The proposal involves the creation of a "European Monetary Fund" and it will require changes to the Maastricht Treaty. Paul Krugman does not like the austerity measures and ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet had to eat his words regarding defaults and acceptance of defaulted bonds as collateral. German taxpayers may potentially be screwed big time on this bailout.
Can this agreement hold together? Before deciding let's look at some details.
After eight hours of talks in Brussels, leaders announced 159 billion euro ($229 billion) in new aid for Greece late yesterday and cajoled bondholders into footing part of the bill. They also empowered their 440-billion euro rescue fund to buy debt across stressed euro nations after a market rout last week sparked concern the crisis was spreading. The fund can also aid troubled banks and offer credit-lines to repel speculators.
The euro strengthened as officials drew concessions from Germany, the European Central Bank and investors for a twin- track strategy to support Greece and ensure its woes don't spread. The summit is the latest in a running-battle to resolve the crisis amid calls this week for tougher action from U.S. President Barack Obama and the International Monetary Fund.
The Greek financing package will consist of 109 billion euros from the euro region and the IMF. Financial institutions will contribute 50 billion euros after agreeing to a series of bond exchanges and buybacks that will also cut Greece's debt load, the leaders' communiqué said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy compared the transformation of the bailout fund to the creation of a "European Monetary Fund."
The pact still doesn't "make a significant dent" in Greece's debt and may disappoint investors by failing to boost the size of the rescue fund, said Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London. "We doubt that this package alone will bring an end to recent contagion effects and prevent the broader debt crisis from continuing to deepen over the coming months."
For now, Merkel and her allies have succeeded in their drive to make investors co-finance bailouts after voters balked at the cost of saving spendthrift nations.
Banks will reduce Greece's debt by 13.5 billion euros by exchanging bonds and "potentially much more" through a buyback program still to be outlined by governments, said the Institute of International Finance, a Washington-based group representing banks.
Trichet signaled governments will guarantee any defaulted Greek debt offered as collateral during money market operations. That may enable Greek banks to keep tapping the ECB for emergency funds. Officials said the aim would be limit any credit event to a few days.
The facility will be able to buy debt directly from investors so long as creditors agree and the ECB declares "exceptional financial market circumstances." EU President Herman Van Rompuy said the purchases could be used to stabilize markets as the ECB was doing or to help countries retire debt at a discount.
The fund may also start passing money to countries to support banks a week after stress tests on 90 financial institutions put as many as 24 under pressure to show they can raise capital. Precautionary credit lines would allow it to lend to nations before markets freeze, mimicking a system introduced by the IMF for states that start losing investor faith even though they have relatively sound economies.
Governments will have to ratify the facility's new powers, posing a potential obstacle given domestic critics in Germany, Finland and the Netherlands.
One Step Closer to Nanny State
If Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands foolishly approve this, it will be one step closer to the European Nanny State that Germany has feared so long.
This is not a restructuring of existing debt from the perspective of the host country! Simply said Greek debt will continue growing as a percentage of its GDP, meaning it, and Ireland, and Portugal, and soon thereafter Italy and Spain will be forced to borrow exclusively from the EFSF.
In a just released report by Bernstein, which has actually done the math on the required contributions to the EFSF by the core countries, the bottom line is that for an enlarged EFSF (which is what its blank check expansion today provided) to be effective, it will need to cover Italy and Belgium.
[Bernstein]
An extension of the EFSF to cover Italy and Spain would require a €790bn (32% of GDP) guarantee from Germany
This strategy is not only unlikely to succeed but would also run into some serious structural difficulties. To cover 100% of the roll-over for Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Belgium as well as an allowance for bank support at 7% of the banks' balance sheets until the end of 2013, the support mechanism(s), would need to be able to deploy a total of €2.4trn in available funds.
1937 Replay
Paul Krugman is unhappy with the deal and is screaming 1937! 1937! 1937!
The Telegraph has a leaked draft of the eurozone rescue plan for Greece. The financial engineering is Rube Goldbergish and unconvincing. But here's what leaped out at me:
9. All euro area Member States will adhere strictly to the agreed fiscal targets, improve competitiveness and address macro-economic imbalances. Deficits in all countries except those under a programme will be brought below 3% by 2013 at the latest.
OK, so we're going to demand harsh austerity in the debt-crisis countries; and meanwhile, we're also going to have austerity in the non-debt-crisis countries.
Plus, the ECB is raising rates.
The Serious People are determined to destroy all the advanced economies in the name of prudence.
Greece Defaults
Felix Salmon has a nice comprehensive wrapup of the new agreement in his post Greece Defaults.
The latest Greek bailout is done and it involves Greece going into "selective default," which is, yes, a kind of default.
This is a bail-in as well as a bail-out: while Greece is getting the €109 billion it needs to cover its fiscal deficit, both the official sector and the private sector are going to take losses on their loans to the country.
As such, it sets at least two hugely important precedents. Firstly, eurozone countries will be allowed to default on their debt. Secondly, a whole new financing architecture is being built for Greece; French president Nicolas Sarkozy called it "the beginnings of a European Monetary Fund."
The nature of massive precedent-setting international financing deals is that they never happen only once. One thing is for sure: these tools will be used again, in future. They will be used again in Greece, since this deal is not enough on its own to bring Greece into solvency; and they will be used in other countries on Europe's periphery too, with Portugal and/or Ireland probably coming next.
The Maastricht treaty will get resuscitated, with all eurozone countries except Greece, Ireland and Portugal committing to bring their deficit down to less than 3% of GDP by 2013. Paul Krugman is screaming about this, but this was a central part of the eurozone project from the get-go, and clearly the eurozone needs some kind of fiscal straitjacket for its constituent members to prevent the rest of them from running up enormous deficits and then getting bailed out by Germany.
Finally, the EU will provide "credit enhancement" for Greece's private-sector bonds. This is a central part of the default plan, and it looks a lot like the Brady plan of the late 1980s. The official statement from the IIF, which is representing private-sector creditors in this matter, is a little vague, but essentially if you're a holder of Greek bonds right now, you have three [four] choices.
You can do nothing, and hope that Greece pays you in full and on time.
You can extend your maturities out to 30 years, and accept a modest coupon of 4.5%; in return, your principal will be guaranteed with an embedded zero-coupon bond from an impeccable triple-A-rated EU institution, probably the EFSF.
You can extend your maturities out to 30 years, take a 20% haircut, and get a higher coupon of 6.42%; again, the principal is guaranteed with zero-coupon collateral.
You can extend your maturities out to 15 years, take a 20% haircut, get a coupon of 5.9%, and have only a partial principal guarantee through funds held in an escrow account.
There is much more in Salmon' s article regarding what exactly is happening and what the options are. It's worth a closer look. Inquiring minds may also wish to consider the Official Statement by the EU.
Three Critical Points
The critical point from Salmon is "The nature of massive precedent-setting international financing deals is that they never happen only once."
The critical point from Bernstein is the amount German taxpayers will be on the hook once Salmon is proven correct.
The critical point from Krugman involves short-term pain. Even if one disagrees with Krugman in the long haul (as I do), the short-term pain for Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Italy is likely to be unbearable.
In light of the above, let's return to the question I asked earlier: Can this agreement hold together?
European services and manufacturing growth weakened more than economists forecast to the slowest pace in almost two years, adding to signs the euro-region recovery is losing momentum as the debt crisis persists.
A composite index based on a survey of euro-area purchasing managers in both industries fell to 50.8 in July from 53.3 in June, London-based Markit Economics said today. That's the lowest since August 2009. Economists forecast a drop to 52.6, the median of 17 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey showed. A reading above 50 indicates growth.
"We expect the euro-region recovery to lose momentum over the coming months," said David Kohl, deputy chief economist at Julius Baer Group in Frankfurt. "The German boom is mainly export driven and the global economy is also cooling. The second half will be significantly weaker overall."
Exclude Germany and the Eurozone is contracting already. Expect to see an overall contraction next month.
Whatever the EU comes up with today will not fix the Eurozone structural problems or the US deficit problem. Nor will it address the problems of an overheating Chinese economy.
The market however always seems to appreciate news of another bailout. One day that will not be the case.
European leaders were poised to sign off on a second bailout for Greece on Thursday, even at the cost of making the country the first euro state to partially default on its debt.
With the new rescue program, leaders want to "address the problems really at the root," by lightening the country's debt burden and restoring its economic competitiveness, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said as she arrived at an emergency summit in Brussels.
That will include getting private creditors to contribute to new aid, a move that would put Greece in so-called "selective default," a partial renege on its debt deals.
Dutch finance minister Jan Kees de Jager said objections "to avoid a selective default ... have been swept from the table." Speaking to lawmakers in The Hague, de Jager said the plan for Greece would "do something for the debt duration and also lower the debt burden."
Few economists believe that even with more support, Greece will be able to repay its debt -- some euro340 billion ($483 billion) -- without some kind of cut to the overall value.
However, so far the eurozone has ruled out forced haircuts on Greece's debt, fearing that it would heighten panic on financial markets and destabilize larger economies like Italy or Spain.
Instead, the 17-country currency union has been working on an alternative support plan that will see banks and other private investors give Greece more time to repay its bonds, while the eurozone and the IMF will continue to prop up the country with rescue loans.
For a few days this week, the eurozone had hoped that it could stay clear of a selective default rating by instead recouping some of the money they spend on new loans for Greece through a tax on financial institutions. Yet that plan, strongly opposed by banks that don't hold Greek bonds, did not survive last-ditch talks between Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy Wednesday night.
Look for Trichet to come up with some lame reason why the ECB will be able to temporarily hold defaulted bonds. Alternatively the ECB will be bailed out by selling them to the EU's EFSF, the European Financial Stability Facility whose role is about to get much bigger.
I must caution there are still no firm details, likely on purpose.
Lots of rumors are circulating this morning including still undisclosed agreements between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, more talk of Greek default from Jean-Claude Juncker, discussion of a "Marshall Plan" for Greece, guarantees of Greek debt and an expansion of the size of the EFSF as well as the EFSF being allowed to buy bonds in the secondary market.
That so many rumors are circulating, I wonder if Merkel and Sarkozy have really agreed to do much more of anything than agree to agree.
The granddaddy speculation of them all is the possibility Merkel might drop her opposition to common Euro bonds. That is the "nanny state" option I have written about many times recently.
Euro Gravediggers and the Nanny State
Fearing the common bond nanny state possibility, Otmar Issing, former ECB president issued a statement called the backers of common bonds "Euro Gravediggers".
German Chancellor Angela Merkel may need to abandon her opposition to issuing common bonds in order to stop a debt crisis that is threatening to splinter the euro region.
Merkel, who calls the single currency a "work of peace" and part of Europe's "uniting idea," is the key holdout on so- called euro bonds.
"Once they look into the abyss of a major speculative attack on Italy," Merkel will have to embrace euro bonds, Peter Bofinger, a member of the chancellor's Council of Economic Advisers, said in a telephone interview. "That would be the turning point. There needs to be a joint guarantee for all outstanding debt."
Political Union
France sees little room for a common bond without more integration of Europe's fiscal and budgetary regimes, a French official said. German Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer said it will require a closer "political union."
"If we further develop the European Union toward a political union, then the question of liability via euro bonds is an option," Hoyer said in an interview today. German constitutional rules bar the introduction of the debt instruments currently, he said.
"It's a fact of life that common currency areas have subsidies from the rich to the poor," said Marchel Alexandrovich, an economist at Jefferies International Ltd. in London. "You need euro bonds for the show to go on."
Euro Gravediggers
Eighty-six percent of Germans are concerned about the value of their savings and 47 percent want Greece evicted from the euro area, according to a poll for ZDF public television published last week.
Politicians who back measures such as common bonds "will prove to be the euro's gravediggers," Otmar Issing, the European Central Bank's former chief economist, said in a July 19 interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. "The consequences of this policy will strangle Germany."
A compromise proposed by the Brussels-based research group Bruegel would see countries fold debts up to 60 percent of gross domestic product into a joint "blue" bond. That would likely enjoy relative lower interest rates than even low-deficit governments now pay, in part because of the more liquid market.
Any excess debt would then be sold on a national basis as a "red" bond with a higher yield.
"I'm growing more sympathetic to the red-blue bond approach," said Gilles Moec, co-chief European economist at Deutsche Bank AG in London. "You want a combination of accommodation and incentives for fiscal discipline." Final Straw
Euro bonds may become inevitable, said Frank Schaeffler, a lawmaker for Merkel's Free Democratic Party coalition partner, who predicts Greece will succumb to a temporary exit from the euro region.
They "would be the last straw and Merkel knows it," he said in an interview. "The reality is we're steaming ahead into euro-bond land, it's just a few stations down the line. We may not be about to create instruments that are called euro bonds but don't be fooled by the labels."
Red and Blue Bonds?
When it comes to talk of red and blue bonds you know those involved have lost their collective minds. Regardless, the number of folks screaming for adoption of the European Nanny State continues to climb.
Among the Eurocratic fools controlling things, support for the Nanny State Eurocracy is now approaching "critical mass". The only thing stopping common bonds is such a change would require a major overhaul of Maastricht Treaty that created the European Union, and a fresh vote by every country. Common bonds would also require changes to the German constitution.
Spanish, Greek and Italian 10-year bonds jumped while bunds slumped after a media report said a draft document of conclusions from the European Union summit today calls for an extension of bailout loans for Greece.
Loans from the European Financial Stability Facility may be lengthened to 15 years from 7 1/2 years and offered at a rate of 3.5 percent, according to the Reuters report. Yields on benchmark German bunds climbed to the highest in almost two weeks after German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed on a joint position to solve Greece's debt crisis. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said a so-called "selective default" is a possibility for Greece.
German Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer said Germany may back common euro bonds in the future as legal rules bar such a move for now.
Loan extensions will not solve a thing but they will help did a bigger hole.
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