[Buddha-l] Re: I confess

[Richard Hayes]

On Tuesday 20 February 2007 06:37, Gary Gach wrote:

> I confess.  I need root canal work

And if you get that done, then you'll need a crown. You're looking at a whole 
bunch of kilodollars worth of work there. So I hope you get the About.com 
gig. You'll do a great job, although the work will surely destroy your soul.

> I have my own problems with About.com thus far

I notice that the amount of advertising varies quite a lot from one page to 
another. The various Christianity sites seem to be heavily laden with ads. 
There are far fewer on the Buddhism and Hinduism pages. (Who wants a Buddhist 
as a customer, anyway?) My guess is that the more hits a page gets, the more 
ads appear. So one way to keep advertising down is to be a guide on a topic 
that nobody much cares about. Buddhism, relatively speaking, is such a topic. 

Maybe I should consider being a guide on something like Stoicism, which nobody 
gives a damn about. When was the last time you saw an advertisement pitched 
at a Stoic?

> but hope that if they 
> elevate me to be their house Dharma Whore, that I not be blocked from the
> rare edification and uplift of being a denizen of Buddha-L. 

Gee, I don't know. I think we have a requirement that everybody here be either 
retired, unemployed or dramatically underpaid and under-appreciated. If we 
didn't have such guidelines, we might start attracting Republicans, and that 
would destroy the ambiance of buddha-l. Look, Gary, if you do get hired to be 
a Buddhism guide on about.com, we'll put you on probation. If you start 
saying negative things about Hugo Chavez or Ahmadinejad (or positive things 
about Dick Cheney or Karl Rove), we may have to silence you and cut off the 
steady flow of wisdom from buddha-l to your computer. Free speech has its 
limits.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes