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The Four Great Imams of Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh)
June 24, 2011 28 Comments	Religion Hasan
Why do we need to follow a specific madhab or school of jurisprudence (fiqh) when we have direct access to Qur'an and Hadith, which are the sources of this knowledge?
This question that echoes in the minds of many Muslims is of great importance as it directly relates to our lives in this world as well as in the hereafter. It is possible for all Muslims to learn about the fundamental beliefs of Islam like Tauheed and about general ethics directly from the translations of Qur'an and Hadith. However, understanding Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), which forms the foundations of our everyday life, isn't practically possible for most, except a very small number of scholars who have the requisite knowledge base and training. This is a slippery slope because while the text of Qur'an and authentic Ahaadith is free from error, its interpretations aren't. So anybody who tries to deduce conclusion without proper training in ijtihad is liable to make errors.
"Not all of the believers should go to fight. Of every section of them, why does not one part alone go forth, that the rest may gain understanding of the religion, and to admonish their people when they return, that perhaps they may take warning" (Qur'an 9:122)
"Ask those who recall if you know not" (Qur'an 16:43)
Four Great Imams
Any mention of fiqh can't be made without talking about the four great imams of fiqh and their schools of thought. Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Malik ibn Anas,Imam Shafi`i, and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal are the luminous stars of the sky of Islamic jurisprudence. It is very important to note and realize that despite the differences of opinion in the matters of fiqh, these blessed souls had nothing but the utmost respect for each other.
First of the four great imams of fiqh, Nu`man ibn Thabit, Imam Abu Hanifa was born in 80 A.H. in Kufa. He is known as imâm al-a`zam (the greatest imam) and called "The Imam" by Abu Dawud. His school has the largest number of followers among the four imams. He was the only tâbi`i (who met with the companions of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him) out of the four luminaries. He had the privilege of seeing Anas ibn Malik, Sahl ibn Sad as-Sa'idi, 'Abdullah ibn Abi Awfa and Abu al-Fadl Amir ibn Wasila.
Hammad Basri, Ata bin Abi Rabah, Imam Baaqir, Imam Jafer Saadiq, Abdullah ibn Umar, Aqabah bin Umar and many other distinguished scholars are among the teachers of imam Abu Hanifa. Qadi Abu Yusuf and Imam Muhammed are among his famous students.
He was the pioneer in classification and compilation of fiqh. One of the biggest contributions of Imam Abu Hanifa is that he organized fiqh into functional sub categories starting with tahara (purification). All other imams and scholars followed his organization. He is known for his unparallel knowledge of fiqh and skill in qiyaas as well as taqwa and an amazing memory.
A quote attributed to Imam Shafi'i states that a person who wanted to specialize in fiqh should read Abu Hanifa's books. Abdullah Ibn Mubarak said, "I have not seen another specialist as learned as Abu Hanifa in the knowledge of fiqh." Sufyan al-Thawri encapsulated all of the qualities of imâm al-a`zam in this statement, "This man holds a high rank in knowledge, and if I did not stand up for his science I would stand up for his age, and if not for his age then for his God wariness (wara`), and if not for his God wariness then for his jurisprudence (fiqh)."
Qadi Abu Yusuf , while describing imam Abu Hanifa's personality, said, "As far as I know, Abu Hanifah was extremely pious, avoided forbidden things, remained silent and absorbed in his thoughts most of the time, and answered a question only if he knew the answer. He was very generous and self-respecting, never asked a favor of anybody, shunned the company of the worldly-minded and held worldly power and position in contempt. He avoided slander and only talked well of people. He was a man of profound learning and was as generous with his knowledge as with his money."
Despite being regarded as one of the greatest contributors to Islamic jurisprudence, Imam Shafi`i openly acknowledges the stature of Imam Abu Hanifa. "People are all the children of Abu Hanifa in fiqh."
During the reign of Caliph Mansur of the Umayyad dynasty, Imam Abu Hanifa was offered the seat of Qaadi but he refused and was imprisoned thereafter. In 150 A.H. he was reportedly poisoned by the orders of the caliph and passed away.
Imam Malik Bin Anas
Imam Malik ibn Anas was the second of the four great imams of fiqh. He was born in 93 A.H. in Madinah. He had great reverence and respect for his birthplace and to show his respect, he never rode an animal inside Madinah. He studied under the finest teachers like Nafi'Abul-Zanaad, Hishaam bin Urwah bin Zubair, Abdullah bin Dinaar, Muhammad bin Muslim bin Shihaab al-Zhuhri and a number of other notables.
Muwatta ("the Approved") is his seminal work that contains the most authentic and sound ahadith and sayings of the companions of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Imam Shafi`i considers it the most correct and the most beneficial book on earth after Qur'an. According to Imam Malik, he had seventy jurists of Madinah examine Muwatta and each one of them approved it. He was extremely careful in narrating hadith and said, "I do not accept knowledge from four types of people: a person well-known to be foolish, even though all the other people narrate from him, a person involved in committing heresy and calling others towards innovation in Deen, a person who lies in regular conversation with people, even though I do not accuse him as liar in regards to Hadith, a person who is pious worshipper or scholar, but does not properly and correctly memorize what he narrates." His chain of narration (from Malik from Nafi' from Ibn Umar) was called "the golden chain of narrators" by Imam Bukhari.
He was regarded in the highest esteem by other three of the great imams.
Imam Shafi`i says, "If Malik and Ibn Uyainah where not here, the knowledge of Hijaaz would be gone."
Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal praised him, "I compared Imam Malik to Awzaa'eey, Thawri, Laith, Hammaad, and al-Hakam in knowledge, and he is the leader in Hadith and Fiqh."
Imam Abu Hanifah said while acknowledging his qualities, "I have never seen anyone more fast understanding, correct answering, and test-taking than Imam Malik."
After a brief illness he passed away on the 11th of Rabi-ul-Awwal in the year 179 A.H. and was buried in Janatul Baqi in Madinah.
Imam Shafi`i
Imaam Muhammad bin Idris Shafi`i was one of the greatest imams of fiqh. He was born in 150 A.H. in Palestine, the same year as Imam Abu Hanifa died. He shared the lineage with Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). With very humble beginnings, he came to Makkah at the age of 10 where he began his formal education. He studied fiqh from teachers like Imam Shaybaani who was one of the famous scholars of the Hanafi School of fiqh, Muslim bin Khalil al Zanji, Sufyaan bin Uyayana and Imam Maalik bin Anas. He had an amazing memory which enabled him to memorize Qur'an by the age of seven and by the time he turned 15, he had memorized Muwatta.
Imam Shafi`i is attributed with two madhahib; al-qadîm (the Old) from his stay in Iraq and al-jadîd (the New) from his stay in Egypt. Al-jadid forms most of the Shafi`i fiqh except in a limited number of cases where scholars have followed al-qadîm. The most famous works of the imam include Kitab al-Umm (the source of al-qadîm) and Kitab al-Hujja (the source of al-jadîd). A significant contribution of imam Shafi`i is the distinction between good bid`a and bad bid`a. In his words, "Therefore, whatever innovation conforms to the Sunnah is approved (mahmûd), and whatever opposes it is abominable (madhmûm)."
He is known for his mastery of the Arabic language, eloquence, humility, and knowledge of hadith. As acknowledged by Imaam Ahmed bin Hanbal, "Our napes were in the hands of the Companions of Abu Hanifah (RA) when it came to hadith (i.e. we were inclined to them more) until we saw Imaam Shafi`i, he was the most knowledgeable in the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) that he would even suffice one who was not well informed in Hadith."
On another occasion Imaam Ahmed bin Hanbal said, "When I am questioned about some matter that I do not know of I say to myself Imaam Shafi`i knows about this and he will have some say in it, because he is an 'Alim (Scholar) of Quraish. And the Prophet (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) said, An Alim of Quraish fills the earth with knowledge."
He met with his creator on the last day of Rajab in Egypt in the year 204 A.H.
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal also referred as "Sheikh ul-Islam" and the "Imam of Ahl al-Sunnah, was born in Baghdad in 164 A.H. He started learning fiqh from the famous Hanafi scholar Qadhi Abu Yusuf but later discontinued the study of fiqh in favor of hadith. He was an authority in many disciplines including Hadith, fiqh, tafsir, science of abrogation, theology, recitation of Qur'an, and Arabic language.
In addition to Masnad, his exceptional collection of Hadith, Kitab al-Zuhd is also considered to be an influential work in Islamic heritage as well as Kitabul A'maal, Kitaabut Tafseer, Kitaabul Naasikh wal Mansookh, Kitaabul Masaa'il and Kitaabul Fadaa'il. He strongly believed in the orthodox doctrine of Islam and propagated it. He wrote two important books on the orthodox religious doctrine, the Kitab al-Sunnah and al-Rad 'Ala al-Zanadiqah wa al-Jahmiyah. He was a great jurist but was reluctant to give fatwa. Al-Mukhtasar by al-Khiraqi is the first written manual of fiqh and an introductory work on Hanbali fiqh. Some of the notable Hanbali scholars include Abdul-Qadir al-Jailani, Allama Ibn al-Jawzi, Ibn Taymiyah, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya, Muhammad b. Abd al-Wahhab.
One of the most significant events of his life was the trial of 'khalq-e-Qur'an' (creation of Qur'an) during the reign of Abbaside caliph Ma'mun. Mu`tazila had instigated the belief that Allah created His speech as a distinct entity and called it the Qur'an. This was against the orthodox Muslim belief. The caliph forced all of the scholars of the time to accept this belief and most of them did but Imam Ahmad completely disregarded the pressure and refused to accept this heresy. As a result, he was imprisoned and severely tortured for over two years.
He was highly regarded by the likes of Imam Shafi`i, who said, "I left Baghdad, and I did not leave behind me a man better, having more knowledge, or greater fiqh (understanding), nor having greater taqwa (piety) than Ahmad Ibn Hanbal." According to Abu Dawood, "The lectures of Ahmad were sittings of the Hereafter. He would not mention in them anything of the worldly affairs; and I never saw him mention this world." The famous Hanfi scholar Yahya ibn Ma'in praised him in these words, "I have not seen the like of Ahmad, we have accompanied him for fifty years, and he never boasted about anything from the good which he was characterized with."
After a brief illness he took his last breath on Friday, the 12 of Rabi' al-Awwal 241 A.H. His funeral procession was perhaps the largest in the history of Arabia; over one million people attended the funeral.
Great Imams
Hasan Saleem is a seasoned Web professional with experience in planning, launching, and operating successful Web-based ventures. His business experience covers, Web design, Search & Social Media Marketing, and team management to bring it all together
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Ulama' say that an ordinary Muslim must follow one of these Imams as they know how to interpret Islam better with their great knowledge and grip on different related sciences. Also an ordinary Muslim scholar is better off following these prominent Imams as well.
shoaib October 24, 2014
What a great article. May Allah bless u.
Pls write more of such beautiful articles. We must respect all of our 4 imams and their followers too.
MySchizoBuddy August 25, 2014
"He was the only tâbi`i (who met with the companions of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him) out of the four luminaries"
Name of those sahabah that he met with?
Johngir Hussain October 24, 2014
He was the only tâbi`i (who met with the companions of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him) out of the four luminaries. He had the privilege of seeing Anas ibn Malik, Sahl ibn Sad as-Sa'idi, 'Abdullah ibn Abi Awfa and Abu al-Fadl Amir ibn Wasila.
Qamar July 09, 2014
Once upon a there were 4 men at well for water, all of them fetched water from the same well ar thier turn.
It ws surprising that, all 4 of them had diferent colour of water from the same well,.
What was the reasknof that diference????
Can any one explain me that???
ارشد July 15, 2014
سب سے پہلے آپ کو ثابت کرنا ہوگا کہ چاروں کے پانی کا ذائقہ یا رنگ الگ ہیں۔ پھر چاروں کے نام اور کنوئیں کا حوالہ دینا ہوگا۔
اگر آپ یہ سمجھ سکتے ہیں کہ سندھڑی، چونسا، دیسی، اور دسہری سب آموں کے نام ہیں لیکن تھوڑے فرق کے ساتھ۔ یہ فرق کیوں ہے اس کے لئے آپ مرنے کا انتظار کریں۔ تو ہمارے یہ چاروں امام پھلوں کے بادشاہ آم ہیں بس تھوڑے فرق کے ساتھ۔
Razzaq October 31, 2013
If one Muslim says that i do not believe in 04 Imam, I am only Muslim?
What Islam says about that??
Reply me pls
ارشد March 17, 2014
اکر کوئی پورا آرٹیکل پڑھنے کے بعد بھی یہ سوال کرے گا تو اس کی مثال مندرجہ ذیل ہے۔
۔" ایک آدمی اپنی اہلیہ سے کہتا ہے کہ جلدی سے شربت پلا کیونکہ آج میرا مناظرہ ہے کہ بیل کے سینگ نہیں ہوتے"۔
بیوی نے کہا کہ،" تم مناظرہ ہار جاؤگے، وہ تمہارے سامنے سینگ والے بیل کھڑا کردے گا"۔
اس آدمی نے کہا ،"او بھولی! میں پھر بھی انکار کردونگا کہ بیل کے سینگ نہیں ہوتے، تو وہ کیسے منوائے گا"۔
جس سے ماننی نہیں ہے اس کو منوانی ہی نہیں ہے۔
Yahya Hayatu Sanusi October 30, 2011
YAHYA HAYATU SANUSI PLEASE AND PLEASE HELP ME WITH WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTION OF IMAM IBN HANBAL TO THE ISLAMIC JURISPRUDENCE.
My name is Yahya Hayatu Sanusi, Please if anybody knows the coplete contribution of Imam Ibn Hanbal to the Islamic Jurrisprudence should help me with them throught this E-mail Address: yahyahayatu@yahoo.com THANK U AS U HELP ME
riyas June 29, 2011
it is realstic truth in islam. for find out the truth or reach in the correct place we aimed, it is necessary to follow up any one of the imams in four
Muhammad Sarooj June 27, 2011
JzK for gathering all the fruits and putting it in one basket!
Even these great Imams have said: "If my saying goes against the Quran & Ahadith, throw it away"
It would be great if all the Muslims in the world would unite as Ummat-e-Muhammadia! :-)
Mohamed Shihab July 03, 2011
Yes , Indeed . But their excellence in jurisprudence made sure that absolutely nothing went against Qur'an and Sunnah, for they were the torchbearers for the ummah in their time.
The muslims of today are more keen on criticising the works of these illustrious Imams as if these Imams were some ordinary muslims. Beware ! And don't make sweeping comments about any of the muslims,particularly the four Imams, of the golden era.
Allah Al Rahman June 26, 2011
MAY BE YOU WOULD KNOW WHAT IS ILM, WELL, WHEN ALL RETURN ME AND YOU TOO I'LL TELL YOU.
Ilm is more important than fiqh.
آپ نے جو بات کہی اس کی مثال بالکل ایسی ہے جیسے
۔"چونسے آم سے زیادہ آم کی اہمیت ہے"۔
ایسے بندے کو کیا جواب دے۔
SERKAN June 26, 2011
yes definetly informative article and i support it..
abdul rahman al mahadi June 25, 2011
mashallah aaqi……….u did a gr8 work.may allah give hidaya to the peoples by this msg……….may allah dealt a politness on the day of judgment
hajia ajeleye June 25, 2011
Asalam! I appreciate ds may almighty Allah increase your iman
sabera variawa June 25, 2011
A most interesting and informative article, well done
Asif Suffi June 25, 2011
Well let us not get divided of The issue of being Shafi,Hanfe.malike or humbale..We are Ummati Mohammad (pbuh) and we must focus on Quraan and Sahi Hadees…which all these great Imaams also laid stress on…let us be united as one Muslim community…..
Brother, nobody gets divided based on their school of thought. Those who reject Ijtihaad outrightly are the ones who unnecessarily create confusion among the muslim masses.
May Allah guide us all, Aameen !
9=kkk June 24, 2011
cool link, i like the communist hand with a pakistani flag tatoo
Ghazali mohamed mijinyawa June 24, 2011
May Allah reward u on this comprehensive details of this fathers of knowledge and may Allah forgive their shortcomings amin.
May reward u on this comprehensive details of this fathers of knowledge and may Allah forgive their shortcomings amin.
Abdal Illah BenHallam June 24, 2011
Those are great Imams indeed yet it sadens me to not see our beloved Imam Al Ghazzali counted among the greatest imams of all time. not that it will change anything to my personal belief but I would greatly advise anybody to read his works and mostly his "Revival of Religious sciences" which you can find on his website in many languages and more.
Thank for this beautiful article and may Allah grant you peace; Brother.
S.M.Hasan June 24, 2011
It was a very informative article on the major Islamic schools of thought. I wish even the followers of these great imams have utmost respect for each other as the imams did.
The fiqh is very important for the organization of the islamic law but the Ilm is the most important knowledge of Islam.


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In the organic search listings you're probably familiar with Sitelinks. They are the collection of links that appear below the search result for your website, and they link to the main pages of your site. Sitelinks are there to help users navigate your site. They are created by analyzing the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time. Though they are generated automatically, if you are unhappy with these automatic links you can delete some or all of them using Google Webmaster Tools.Depending on how specific the search term is these Sitelinks are sometimes displayed on one line or across four lines. For example when searching for the broad term "broadband" one line of four Sitelinks appears below the first search result, and searching for the brand name "Vodafone" displays eight Sitelinks across four lines.
Sitelinks give your organic search listing more prominence in the results, and can also expose more of what your website has to offer. It's not surprising therefore that Google have decided to introduce this feature to its paid results.
Ad Sitelinks allows ads that appear in the top positions (ads with a very high quality score) to have as many as five links in their ad. This includes the main landing page as well as four additional links which appear beneath the ad text. Initially Ad Sitelinks was a feature introduced for brand specific searches only, but now you can enable this on more generic, unbranded campaigns.
Depending on how specific the search term is the Sitelinks will appear either as one line or two lines. For example when searching for "broadband" the 3 Broadband ad that is triggered has one line of links below the ad text, and searching for the brand name "3 broadband" will display this ad as having two lines of links below the ad text.
Ad Sitelinks will only appear when ads qualify for the top positions, however you can still enable this feature in preparation for a time when your ad will appear in a top spot. With Ad Sitelinks enabled, if your ad appears in the right hand side of the search results, it will appear in the same format as you are used to. For example, the ad below is the same ad triggered above in the search for "3 broadband" but now that it is no longer in the top spot the Ad Sitelinks do not appear.
Sitelinks don't cost any extra in comparison to ads without them. Also, the costs per click do not differ depending on whether someone clicks on the main ad link or any of the Sitelinks. Additionally, if a users clicks on more than one link while viewing your ad you will only be charged for one click.
You will find the option to set up Ad Sitelinks in your Campaign Settings tab, under the "Ad extensions" section. To change which ad extension you are viewing, there is a drop down menu labelled "view" (directly underneath the campaigns tab) where you will see three options – "Local extensions", "Phone extensions" and now "Sitelinks extensions".
If you choose "Sitelinks extensions" you will now be able to click "+ New extension" which will open the next step in the process.
Ad Sitelinks is a campaign level setting, so the first step in setting them up is to choose an existing campaign to assign them to. As this is a campaign level extension you should take note that all of your ads in that specific campaign will have the Sitelinks assigned to them, so choose your campaign wisely. Make sure that the Sitelinks you setup are specific to the entire campaign.
The next step is to choose the link text (35 characters max), and the destination URL (1024 characters max). The text and URL follows the same rules as the rest of your AdWords account, so for example the URL must direct users to a page from the display URL website being used in that campaign.
You can add between one and ten Sitelinks for each campaign, though only four Sitelinks will be shown, which ones are shown will depend on the keyword that triggered the ad.
If the campaign you are writing the Sitelinks for is a generic one it is more likely that the Sitelinks will appear as one line of text, so it is best to submit short and relevant link text. However, if the campaign is very specific e.g. brand focused, the link text would be displayed across two lines and can therefore take up most of the 35 characters without seeming cluttered.
Once you have saved these Sitelinks they will then appear listed in the "Ad extensions" section, with associated performance data such as clicks, impressions and CTR.
When choosing what campaigns to assign Sitelinks to, remember that this feature is being assigned to already highly successful ads and as with any new AdWords feature, you should make sure to regularly check their impact.
The best method of monitoring the performance of the Sitelinks is to create two identical campaigns, and enable Sitelinks for one, but not the other. You will then be able to compare the performance with Sitelinks and without.
It is currently not possible to see individual link level performance data from within AdWords, but using the tagging feature of Google Analytics you should be able to see what links were clicked on.
Unlike the Sitelinks in organic search, Ad Sitelinks gives you complete control over what links appear, giving you the opportunity to offer multiple landing pages to the user. Thus you can choose to provide text and links to other persuasive pages on your website.
It is still the ad's main Destination URL link that is taken into account when determining the landing page quality for individual ads. This enables you to utilize already successful AdWords campaigns to promote additional lower performing products or brand new products. However, Google suggests that you choose Sitelinks that are relevant for all your ads and search terms within your campaign, and to avoid attaching irrelevant links to your ads. As in the example below, the keyword "broadband" triggers the ad and the Sitelinks used all relate to broadband products that the company provide.
However, with regards to a branding campaign you may have a keyword list related to all areas of your business, therefore you could certainly use Sitelinks to promote lower performing or new products. For example, the keyword "3 broadband" triggered the ad below, however the Sitelinks relate to three other products (and product pages) that this company offers.
Ad Sitelinks make your ads stand out even more by giving your ads more real estate on the all-important first page of search results, with Google indicating that early users of the feature had reported on average a 30% increase in clickthrough rates. Some brands are even experiencing a 15-40+% lift in brand PPC sales YOY!
If you've already been bidding on branded keywords you're likely to have been sending traffic to your homepage, and in this case it's difficult to determine what the user was actually searching for. With Sitelinks you have the ability to offer multiple landing pages to the user, so searchers can choose the landing page that's most relevant to them, which increases the chances of a conversion.
Sitelinks also give you the ability to include extra text in your ad. The extra text could either be used as an additional description line, linking to special offers or product benefits, or for promoting other products/services. If you use text that accurately describes the link, you increase the likelihood of a conversion. You can read the transcript of an interesting talk at SMX on supercharging your sitelinks here.
When creating your Sitelinks take into account the most popular ads already running in your campaign. Focus on the text from these ads and their associated landing pages that have the highest conversion rates. Linking to already successful landing pages will further increase the conversion rate of the clicks on your Sitelinks. You can check out some interesting examples of sitelinks in use here.
TIP: Brad Geddes has another creative use for ad sitelinks. Add your phone number to one of your sitelinks to increase your "call through rate". If you're advertising a local business, create a sitelink with your phone number as the anchor text and the destination URL being your site's contact page.
Though Ad Sitelinks may improve your clickthrough rate it's important to utilize them in a way that continues to bring highly targeted traffic to your site. Monitoring the conversion rates of campaigns that use Sitelinks is essential to determine if they succeed for you.
This is a great post! Kudos to Sinead. Dave, you have made a great hiring decision. All the best!
Hi Sakis, thanks very much for the feedback.
What's a "very high quality score"? 8 and above? 9 and above? Or just 10/10?
Hi Cormac. Thanks for your comment.
As long as your ads already appear above the search results, you will qualify for ad sitelinks. Getting your ads into these top positions is done through a mixture of high quality score and your CPC bid, it all comes down to who ranks higher versus your competitors bids/QS. Google doesn't tell us exactly what QS you need to achieve to get into the top ad positions, all we can do is assume that the QS must be 10, or at least higher than that of the competitors bidding for the same keywords. I hope this answers your question.
All the best in the new job Sinead. Great post. Very helpful read.
Cheers Louise, it's going brilliant so far.
Hi Sian, thanks for the feedback. Let us know how you get on with the new extension, would be interested to see if it improves conversions/ctr for you.
Great blogpost Sinead, I haven't been testing out this feature yet but will be sure to do so now :) Well done.
Hi Lisa, thanks for the feedback. Good luck trying it out.
Glad to hear you are now on the road to Corporate Stardom! Great Adwords post by the way. It's been 2 years since my own Adwords campaign (which was successful) but I hear that the effectiveness of Adwords campaigns are losing ground of late.I'll be keeping an eye open for more under the radar stuff from you in the coming months.Incidentally recognised your Photo in your Facebook Ad as a Twitter Patriot.Keep it coming!
Hi Robin, thanks for your feedback. I'm very much settled in here at RedFly and having been using AdWords on a daily basis for a long time I can't say I've noticed a decrease in the effectiveness of PPC/AdWords. Though there are of course far more options out there these days for advertisers (such as Facebook, like you mentioned), but imho none offer the highly targeted relationship between the search user and the keyword marketer like PPC/AdWords does.
Do subscribe to the site for more great guides such as this and thanks again for your comment.
It certainly merits some mucking around with. I just wish they had not made it a campaign level option. I don't have many campaigns where one set of sitelinks will suit all my ads!
Hi Jordan, yes it really is a pity that all of the Ad Extensions are only available at campaign level for now. Hopefully AdWords will expand up this in the future.
Thank you Sinead, for that insight into Ad sitelinks – unfortunately, it is out of reach for me at the moment, due to the cost of adwords advertising, so I still have to hope for my site to do well so i can have organic sitelinks!
Hi Cisco, thanks for your comment. You know, even with a small budget AdWords can definitely work for you, all you need is a very highly targeted campaign. That way, all the traffic that does end up at your site will be highly targeted and will be more likely to turn into a conversion. Also, with AdWords you have great control over your budget, especially the prepay option – so at least you know you won't run up high costs.
Great article Sinead. I'm currently using ad sitelinks on my branded campaigns, but I'm going to give them a try on all my other campaigns now as well. Hoping to see a nice CTR blip!
Hi Dillon, thanks for the feedback and good luck applying ad sitelinks to your other campaigns.
I was wary of the Ad Extensions features but have set up some Sitelinks to run in my next campaign.
How about a post on the Locations and Phone extensions next?
Hi Brendan, thanks for your comment.
and we'll look into the phone extensions one.
Thanks for that. I'd never come across Ads Sitelinks before (although I leave PPC to the professionals!), so it's good to know.
Nice post Sinead. As always RedFly have come up with a comprehensive and informative post.
Hi Mat, thanks for your feedback. I'm glad I've been able to live up to the high standard Dave has set here on the RedFly blog.
Thanks Sinead. I haven't had huge success with site links in the past but will have to try them again as traffic increases to see if there is a benefit against the space being used for other valuable text.
Hi Aaron, thanks for the comment and good luck with trying Ad Sitelinks out again.
Very informative.. Had come across Ad Sitelink option on Google interface but did not try to explore the same. After reading your blog things are clear and can use for couple of campaigns.
Hi Sayed, it's great to hear that you've read this guide and will be now trying out this new feature. Good luck!
Hi Paul, yeah it's great to see Google releasing lots of new Ad Extensions. Hopefully some of the newer ones will be available to us here in Europe soon.
Nice post, it's good to see Google continue to hide the organic listings :) – the integration with Google product reviews (tested in the US at the moment, don't think it's available in the UK) is really interested.
I have segmented data for sitelinks and it's pretty strong at being able to advertises discounts etc. As you say, great for branded search, when you don't know exactly what the user is looking for, you can just show your top performing pages.
With Google local extensions, sitelinks, product reviews, Google may actually get organic right to the bottom of the screen. Hopefully the will give organic something and role out a better version of rich snippets soon.
Hi searchbrat, while I don't necessarily agree with you that Google are hiding the organic listings I do see your point about how Ad Extensions can add some extra clutter to the SERPS.
Hi Stelios, yes we only just touched on the idea of using Google Analytics with Ad Sitelinks, so thanks for adding a useful link here in the comments.
Hi Mat, this is indeed pretty clever but I think this might be a feature Google is testing at the moment as I have seen these checkmarks before, as well as small arrows too. Only time will tell if this is a new formatting option to be rolled out soon.
Could you clarify for me how Adwords charges for these sitelinks? The scenario that I have in mind is, I right click on one sitelink and open it in a new tab, and click on another sitelink. Would the advertiser be charged for two clicks?
Hi Heta, thanks for the question. You are only charged for one click. Which is great if a search user does indeed click more than one link.
Hi Sinead good article, im inclined to agree with search brat, it seems at times google wants us all on adwords. There is a lot of clutter on a given serp, if your coming from a non tech user point, the line between organic and other is blurry. I would love to know how much of an adwords user spike Google gets every time there is an algorithm update.
Hi Derek, thanks for your comment.
Great to see that RedFly has a psychologist on board. I'm already liking your insights.
I'd like RedFly's professional opinion on a question related to click through rate.
Would you agree that when we focus specifically on our AdWords ads, the key metric we should optimize for is click through rate?
I think many people like to also optimize their AdWords ads against metrics related to conversions, e.g., conversion rate, cost per conversion, and other metrics that are relevant to conversions.
This, apparently, is why people like to set their AdWords campaigns to "Rotate," as opposed to "Optimzie," because the "Optimize" setting focuses on click through rate, and will automatically show the ad with the best click through rate more often.
Wait, these people say. Instead, you should set your campaigns to "Rotate" so your ads are shown an equal number of times. This, they say, will allow you to consider other metrics. You'll build up significant data for both of the ads in your AdGroup, allowing you to compare how the ads do regarding conversion related metrics, such as conversion rate, cost per conversion, etc.
But is this the best approach? If you instead choose the "Optimize" setting, Google AdWords will automatically favor the ad with the best click through rate, and if you think this is the ultimate metric to optimize against, it's an easy way to implement your optimization strategy.
The may be the best approach, since it's the users' search queries that are triggering the appearance of your ads, and each search query has associated with it a conversion profile. Some user queries have commercial intent (e.g, "free range chicken buy online"), whereas other queries are research oriented and not likely to convert as well into customers (e.g., "what is free range chicken").
It might be argued that search queries should be optimized by conversion related metrics, but ads should not, because they are seen only briefly and have little influence one way or the other on conversions. If we take this approach, we would optimize our search queries against metrics that are relevant to conversion, and we'd optimize our ads against a single metric – click through rate.
Lucky for us, we have data to show us which of the options are best. Since RedFly has extensive experience optimizing AdWords campaigns, I wonder what RedFly has to say on this question: As we evaluate AdWords ads and optimize, should we, (1) Concentrate our efforts on exclusively on click through rates?, or (2) Concentrate on click through rates, and only go through the effort of also looking at conversion related metrics for search phrases that take up a big percentage of our budget, because these efforts are not likely to yield results, or (3) Set all of our campaigns to "Rotate" so we can look at both click through rate and conversion metrics for our ads, or (4) Set our campaigns to "Rotate" and focus exclusively on metrics relevant to conversions?
Based on the data RedFly has seen, I'd be quite interested in hearing your comments and advice on these options. Thanks for any advice you have!
Thanks for your questions, but because all industries are different, there is never a comprehensive answer to questions such as the ones you have posted here, but I will give some advice with regard to CTR etc.
You should never concentrate your effort exclusively on one metric. A combination of metric works best, for example looking at high CTR low conversion ads can mean a good ad but a bad landing page.
With regard to setting your campaigns to "rotate" etc, you should experiment with this yourself, run a campaign for a 30 day period on "rotate" and then set the same campaign to 30 days on "optimize" and see what (if any) difference there was. This is the only way to tell, to see what works best for your particular account.
Hope this helps a bit, if you're looking for further help with AdWords, we do some work over on the Google AdWords Help Forum and highly recommend it as a place to post questions such as these.
Hi Alex, thanks for the feedback, glad it's helped.
Very well written and explained. Good and helpful post. Thanks and keep posting.
Would you have an idea how I remove unwanted and irrelevant google ads? thanks.
Sorry John, I'm not 100% sure what you're asking. This is probably a question best put in the AdWords help forum, but you'll need to expand upon this quite a bit.
Great article. Using the natural search sitelinks to explain the PPC side makes perfect sense to me. One question: can changing these ad sitelinks frequently have a negative impact on quality score?
Hi Tony, thanks for your feedback. Ad sitelinks don't have an impact on your quality score, so you could change these quite often for testing purposes, see which ones convert best.
Thank you for sharing your knowlodge with us.
Very good article with step by step guide.
Hi Tiago thanks for your positive feedback.
Excellent tip Sinead! I wonder if using this type of deep-linking ad campaign actually will help to get Google to create organic Site Links for your site? That would be worth the money!
Hi Jon, as of the moment organic sitelinks are completely automated. Although, using Webmaster Tools, if you think that the sitelinks displayed for your site are inappropriate or incorrect, you can block them so that they no longer appear.
So if Google reports getting on average 30% more clicks with Ad Sitelinks does it make sense to bid up to 30% more to reach these top positions. I am thinking if your ads show up in the 3rd of 4th position but you want to improve your CTR and QS it might make sense bidding a little more per click in order to be able to use this feature (even if your conversion rates aren't immediately effected it seems like your QS will rise and you'll end up having to pay less per click in the long run). Any agree/dis-agree?
Hi there, to be honest, I would never recommend to increase your bid in an attempt to improve CTR or QS. If what you are doing now isn't improving your CTR/QS, then spending more money isn't a solution. Focusing on ad/landing-page quality would be a better place to put your time.
This post is what I think I have been missing. I will start putting it to good use today and see how it goes. You've made it again. I appreciate it.
Hi Michael, thanks for your comment. Hope Ad Sitelinks work well for you.
Hi Trish, thanks for your feedback, appreciate it.
Thanks Sinead – i've used this before and I agree it's excellent for conversion. We're still on the fence as to whether it's improving clients sales' but it's definitely impacting on click through rates.
Hi North Star, thanks for the feedback.
I have set my site up with these links but goggle has not added them to searches for my website as of yet.
Thanks for the comment, hope your sitelinks come into effect soon.
Nice Post.Thanks for sharing it. Very useful post. Thank You.
Thanks Yash, glad you found it useful.
Thanks Sinead and Dave, this one helps my Landing Page. The problem is google banned my site due to their policy but when I went through their policy I don't think my site doesn't violates any of their policies. They said my site is into gambling that I have to make some chu chu thing there, and I told it is not about gambling, it is just about tips about an event…sigh, don't even know what my next step….
Dave and I do some work over there and either ourselves or some of the other forum contributors would be able to give some more detailed advice with regard to this and other questions.
The ability to allow the user to select the most relevant link and the advertiser to deep-link to the most relevant page is excellent. It's good for UX and it's good for the conversion rate.
Location extensions are excellent too – if you have an extension for the user's local area you immediately look more relevant.
Hi Ben, I couldn't agree more. Thanks for your comment.
Sinead, I've been looking for this the whole time! I'm glad I found your article. I really find it very informative.
Thanks for clearing these out for us.
Thank you kindly Sinead – i'm a regular reader of your blogs – looking forward to the next one.
I would recommended signing up to Google Webmaster Tools and submitting a sitemap of your site, this could help, but unfortunately Sitelinks are automated for now though you can remove them (if you have any) through Webmaster tools.
Thank you so much for this information and for taking the time to share it with us.
This is excellent information that will take us to the next step with our marketing!
No problem, glad we could help.
Hi, thanks for reading and bookmarking. You should subscribe to the rss feed.
Glad you are seeing some success using Sitelinks.
Hi thanks for your feedback, good luck with your AdWords campaigns.
Wow. Thank you very much. I was unaware of Sitelink. Will be going over there now to set it up and make sure its relevant to my website.
Hi Paul, thanks for your comment. Glad we could be of help to you.
Hey very good tips there, I'm kind of a newbie to this and your posts really do help. Guess I've got a lot to learn and the indepth coverage of ad sidelinks does help. Keep up the good work!
Hi Stephen, thanks for your kind words and good luck with your future campaigns.
Great post, and great piece of research that ad sitelinks can be useful for increasing clicks on site page.
Hi Rahul glad you found it helpful.
This can provide additional visits/conversion without additional cost. And encourage websites to create highly relevant webpages that fits to their ad.
Hi Jack, thanks for your comment, sitelinks certainly do provide extra visits to our landing pages.
Great! Your information is very useful for my new being developed business. Did you find what I am talking about? Yes right, I am about to start my new online business then I will thank you again for this information after using your information.
Hi there, glad you found it of interest.
Hey Sinead! You've done a great job! I'm a little bit newbie here, but your article was easy to read and UNDERSTAND, what means so much for me! Now I'll use AdWords also, as I do with Videolsalesletters.
Hi Hanna, glad to hear it.
Thanks for the post…really great!
Hi Greg, we're glad to help.
We always care about search engine features. Now we must say thanks for you for this good potential to perform our site.
that is simply great Sinead.
from my experience, almost every ad click goes to head, so it's quite hard to get good ctr with those site links.
Works differently for everyone across different industries, my advice would be if that it doesn't work for you simply don't implement them anymore.
So my issue is this: I don't see any way to tie the site links to their respective conversion data. This seems silly to me and I suspect I may be missing something, but I can't find it and it's driving me mad.
Do you know how to drill down and reveal conversion data from site link traffic?
Seems like the kind of thing Google are probably working on because it really would be helpful to discern the conversion data on sitelinks.
your article contains some worthy information which i guess will help lot of people.
Thanks, hopefully it has helped a few people.
Is it mean that sitelinks can appear automatically in Google search engine result if Google 'sees' that a site has sitelinks?
Hi Trimulyawan, this is exactly what happens – Google basically decides if showing Sitelinks is helpful or not to a search user, and will choose to display them or not. You cannot request to have Sitelinks added to your organic search result, however, if Google does indeed show them for your site you can opt to edit them within Google Webmaster Tools.
Thanks for the article Sinead, very informative.
I have started to go through my Google tools and use many of the tools now.
Thanks for the great explanations as always!
Great post, thanks for this I never knew that you could edit your sitelinks believe it or not. Some other awesome tips, bookmarked and tweeted this. Thanks.
Thanks, Sinead. I'd noticed that these sitelinks are starting to appear more and more regularly in search results. Do you have to pay a premium for this or is it just down to the whim of google whether you get the benefits or not?
Clicks on ads that contain Ad Sitelinks will cost you the same as if there were none, so no, you don't pay a premium. If you read the article above, there is a detailed explanation of how to get Ad Sitelinks.
Sinead, thanks for this information. This will help a lot – giving some pointers to everyone on ads and click throughs.
Hi Stephanie, you should subscribe to the blog for more hints and tips on AdWords.
Thanks so much I have been trying to figure out how to ad sitelinks to my adwords campaign all day long. I appreciate the tips and the help.
sinead, I think you hit on something so very important – split testing. It's amazing how many marketers don't actually test their campaigns and then they wonder why their ads are not performing. You just pointed out the golden rule – always be testing.
I wonder if things like this will become more important with the new algorithm changes.
As mentioned above, natural sitelinks are indeed created automatically but only in the search results and not in your ads.
Thanks for this tip. I am very optimistic it will boost my click-through rate. Thanks for sharing it.
Hi Kingsley, glad you found the post helpful.
Hi Joe, thanks for your kind words. Glad to see everyone is learning from these types of blog posts, I hope to do more in the near future.
Thanks for this excellent information. I seriously have not seen this discussed in a better manner. Sitelinks would definitely improve your CTR, wasn't sure how to do this until now.
Delighted to hear that this post has been of help to you Louise.
I've seen a noticeable improvement in traffic on my own site from the organic site links in Google. After reading your post I'm seriously considering a targeted Adwords campaign utilizing ad site-links.
Let us know how you get on Alex.
This things would be helpful for us. We need to bring traffic to our sites. It's been a great pleasure for reading this technique in improving our marketing.
Awesome post. Very informative. Thanks for posting this.
Hi Shane, glad you found it informative.
Very well written post. I had always been curious as to how exactly sitelinks worked, and this cleared everything up. Thank you Sinead!
No problem, glad you found it helpful.
Thanks for the article, I had not really given too much thought to sitelinks before. After reading your article I think I'll start using webmaster tools a bit more to target my sitelinks to get the most out of my site.
Hi Stephen – yeah Sitelinks in the SERPS are just as important as your titles and descriptions, but as I mentioned, you can't add sitelinks for the google search results for your sites but can remove any you don't want to appear.
Thanks for sharing your information, I've never considered ad site links for increasing click through rates before! I'll need to look into this more now on how to structure my site for them, as you mentioned it does give your search results more authority!
I have to say, we got sitelinks on certain terms organically recently and theres been a definite increase in site traffic. We have put quite a bit of effort into our organic listings but I'm sure the sitelinks are a major contributing factor.
Thanks for your comment, glad you found it helpful.
If we includ sitelinks, it help users navigate to the right content on the page quickly, but it increased the likelihood that he left even faster. Sitelinks significantly reduced pageviews, had a negative impact. At the same time increase the bounce rate. What do you recommend?
Ah wow, great post Sinead!
Our website has just had sitelinks added into our Google SERP listing, and I was looking for ways to make the most of them.
I hope my blog can be on first page serp so I can see whether there is a sitelink or not. With sitelink I can go directly to the page that I google for without have go to index and search for sitemap or categories. That is why I aggree with you Sinead, if you find what you are looking for there is a big chance that you will take action right away. And if you leave right away then, probably you don't like the over or product and the page bounce rate going to be high.
Very interesting, our site now has organic sitelinks but didnt know paid for versions were possible. Need to try this out. Thanks for the insight, great info.
It is brilliant to track the sitelinks with AdWords. I am not too clear though as to whether this was your idea, Sinead, or Google's suggestion. It would make sense for Google to mention this to their clients to not only cross-sell paid results and AdWords, but also because their paying clients deserve to get the most out of their investment.
I think this will help me a great deal to increase traffic and page rank. Site Link makes it easier to find some relevant information.
Thank you so much for this post, I had no idea what Ad Site links were until you explained this so simply.
Interesting, I didn't realize that it was so easy to ed/delete the sitelinks using google.
Glad you found the blog post informative Jared.
Thank you so much Sinead. I have always wondered how those links appeared below some search results. A very enjoyable read!
You're most welcome, glad it helped.
I have been gathering as much info as possable about PPC for the bankruptcy attorney I work with and this is some very good key info!
Thanks for the guide Sinead, we've just got the sitelinks up and running on our PPC- really happy with it!
What a great post Sinead! I was always wondering how to setup these ad sitelinks, I think it's a great way to also gain coming traffic trust, which turns incoming Google traffic to much more quality traffic!
I've noticed these before but never understood how they were posted on google. This definitely seems like a good way to possibly gain more attentive eyeballs to your site.
I implemented sitelinks and my click through rate popped. It works well.
Great site Sinead. Amazing how many people are commenting. Titles and headlines are very important and often overlooked. I am only just getting my head around seo.
These are some fantastic tips, Sinead! I'm so excited to implement these over here in the States. Thank you!
Getting a high quality score and increased click through rate in PPC is crucially important to the success of your marketing campaign and the financial success of your enterprise –especially for those sites that don't receive that much organic (free) search engine traffic, and have to rely more or exclusively on PPC.
Your helpful and easy-to-follow post on 'how to maximize your click-through rate and add more control to your landing pages using ad sitelinks' addresses the subject matter quite adequately.
Awesome guide! lucky enough to have come across this valuable information! Can't wait to have my team implement many of these strategies.
I should admit that this is pretty tricky idea but the worst part is that t only works for the paid results and the statistics is showing that the number of people who are actually clicking there is less than 10 %. Of course this will work great added to your adwords campaign.
Fantastic Guide. Hopefully I can get my soon to no. 1 soon to implement them!


Heat oil over medium high heat in a large pot. Add ground chicken and use the back of a spoon to break up into smaller pieces as the ground chicken browns. Sprinkle with onion powder, garlic powder, cumin, 1 Tbsp (15 mL) oregano and 1 Tbsp (15 mL) chili powder and continue to sauté for 5 minutes, stirring often.
Stir in the can of beans, salsa, tomato paste and water. Mix well and cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes.
Slice potatoes leaving skin on for extra fibre and nutrients. Set aside.
Spray crock of a slow cooker with vegetable cooking spray. To assemble casserole place two cups (500 mL) chicken chili on bottom of crock followed by a layer of half of the sliced potatoes, 2 cups (500 mL) chili, one cup (250 mL) grated cheese, the remaining sliced potatoes, 2 cups (500 mL) chili finishing with the last cup (250 mL) of cheese. Smooth down the layers as you go. Sprinkle the top with remaining oregano and chili powder. Cover and cook on low heat for 6-8 hours until potatoes are tender and dish is beginning to brown on top.


Our restaurant serves a variety of flavors made from only the best, select ingredients. Our restaurant has progressed into modern times while preserving tradition and the basics.
We offer both Western and Japanese confectionery that we can recommend with confidence.


text:
exports.parse = require('./lib/parse');
exports.stringify = require('./lib/stringify');

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


You just haven't dined in Cambodia until you have tried Cambodian pancakes, or Khmer pancakes as they are also known. My first experience with them, while visiting Angkor, is something that I will never forget!
After our trip through Angkor, we arrived at a small restaurant in the area, and just in time for lunch too! The restaurant that our Cambodian guide had brought us to was one of those that the locals use, and not one where you would normally find tourists – those restaurants are much more expensive!
Of course, while we were excited to be trying something new, we just did not know what was customary to order in a restaurant like this. Our ever helpful guide informed us that Cambodian pancakes were on the menu, as where noodles fried with egg. Being the adventurous types that we are, and also hungry, we decided that we would very much like to try both.
Cambodian pancakes are cooked with lots of fresh vegetables, which can be bought from a market or taken straight from the jungle – and you can't get any fresher than that, can you? Popular, global, culture never surprises me anymore but I was still a little taken aback by the tablecloths in the restaurant – every one of them was red, and printed with the Coca Cola logo on them.
It was actually a very pleasant contrast to the vibrant greens of the surrounding jungle. Speaking of the scenery, it was fantastic as always! Restaurants all over the world would pay a fortune to have the kind of decor that our little restaurant had, with the walls replaced with open air and tall, majestic trees… The beauty of the place is staggering!
Before we could start our delicious looking, and smelling, meal a bowl of water was passed around so that we could clean our fingers. Next came the fresh herbs and salad, with a dipping sauce on the side.
When our pancakes arrived, they were served on banana leaves. The banana leaf has been used a 'plate' for a long time, throughout the history of Cambodia and indeed other countries too. These days it is not unusual to be given plastic plates, although these are often thrown away as casually as the banana leaf – which is a big problem in Cambodia today.
Dip your parcel into the dipping sauce, and enjoy!
Cambodian pancakes are absolutely delicious! If you have never been to the area before, I highly recommend it – and you simply must try the pancakes!


As beauty services go, keratin hair treatments might be the most controversial of the last decade, second only to indoor tanning, and maybe fake Kylie lip kits. And yet still two truths remain. Keratin treatments are A.) wildly popular and B.) widely misunderstood. We asked Cincinnati-based cosmetic chemist Kelly Dobos and Los Angeles hairstylist Clayton Hawkins to give us the facts, both in terms of science and in terms of looks.
In the mid aughts, a miraculous hair smoothing and straightening system, Brazilian blowouts, swept salons across the country. The results were so miraculous, the New York Times wrote about them; then, three years later, they took it all back. Heated methylene glycol in Brazilian blowouts realigned the disulfide bonds in curly hair, leaving it completely smooth—and releasing carcinogenic formaldehyde gas in the process. Oregon's Occupational Safety and Health Administration found dangerous levels of formaldehyde in many Brazilian blowout formulas and salons, which was risky, yes, for consumers, but mostly for hairstylists and technicians who inhaled the stuff everyday.
Regulations were put in place, the treatments were monitored to the extent that they could be. And Brazilian blowouts got rebranded. "After the backlash against Brazilian blowouts, many hair straightening products changed marketing strategy to call them keratin treatments," says Dobos. That's all well and good—but it doesn't really mean anything. "Keratin is an important structural protein in the hair but incorporating it into a topical formulation will do very little other than mild conditioning of the hair," Dobos continues.
If you want to get a formaldehyde-free keratin hair treatment, ask the salon technician to see the ingredient list or the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for the product they'll be using. If methylene glycol, formalin, methylene oxide, paraform, formic aldehyde, methanal, oxomethane, oxymethylene, or timonacic acid are listed, steer clear. All release formaldehyde gas when heated. As the FDA notes, though, not every company has been honest with their ingredient reporting, and some of those exact ingredients have been found even when they aren't listed. So consider the conditions of where you'll have the treatment done. Above all, it should be well-ventilated.
Keratin shampoos and smoothers are great. They just aren't the same thing.
Finally, manage your own expectations.


Now that I've completed most of my complex paper-work and having received the good news from both your program and my doctors, I would like to take a brief moment to say "thanks" for giving me the help I sincerely needed from your organization.
Despite both my wife and I being retired, I never thought I'd need assistance paying for RX Medicines. However, when the tests revealed I had Prostate Cancer which was moving into advanced stages, my doctors and pharmacist teamed up and together with your program, prolonged my life "BIGTIME."
Each medication (there are many) I take is good for about 30 days. Multiply that times the cost for each one, and no way can the average person pay for them without help.
I NEEDED IT, I GOT IT, AND AGAIN I SALUTE YOU, THANK YOU, and keep up the GREAT WORK!!


Oskri Recalls All Nut Butters For Listeria!
Fresh Necatarines, Peaches And Plums Recalled For Listeria!
Gold Medal Unbleached Flour Recalled for Salmonella!
Boost Your Immune System This Cold & Flu Season!
Its National Fig Newton Day!
Restaurant Robots Designed For Food Safety!


One of the most powerful teachings of the Buddhist tradition is that as long as you are wishing for things to change, they never will. As long as you're wanting yourself to get better, you won't. As long as you have an orientation toward the future, you can never just relax into what you already have or already are.
One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not good enough. We think back to the past a lot, which maybe was better than now, or perhaps worse. We also think ahead quite a bit to the future - which we may fear - always holding out hope that it might be a little bit better than now. Even if now is going really well -we have good health and we've met the person of our dreams, or we just had a child or got the job we wanted-nevertheless there's a deep tendency always to think about how it's going to be later. We don't quite give ourselves full credit for who we are in the present.


text:
The Unsuspecting Angel (German: Der ahnungslose Engel) is a 1936 German comedy crime film directed by Franz Seitz and starring Joe Stöckel, Lucie Englisch and Franz Nicklisch. It was shot at the Munich Studios of Bavaria Film and on location in the city. The film's sets were designed by the art director Max Seefelder.

Cast
 Joe Stöckel as Hörl, Grenzoberaufseher
 Lucie Englisch as Jozi
 Franz Nicklisch as Hans Markwart, Grenzaufseher
 Erika Glässner as Frau Bergmann, Wirtin vom Hirschenstand
 Otto Fassler as Stefan Meser
 Josef Eichheim as Onkelchen
 Erna Fentsch as Manja
 Jola Jobst as Steffi
 O. E. Hasse as Kornitzki
 Arnulf Schröder as Babitz
 Elisabeth Flickenschildt as Lotte Grün
 Richard Häussler
 Ludwig Schmitz
 Justus Paris as Heuer
 Herta Schwarz as Paula
 Liane Kopf as Frau Guggemoos
 Michl Lang as Loidl
 Ludwig Ten Cloot
 Thea Aichbichler
 Franz Kronach
 Erika Stauffenberg
 Lydia Schulenburg

References

Bibliography
 Bock, Hans-Michael & Bergfelder, Tim. The Concise CineGraph. Encyclopedia of German Cinema. Berghahn Books, 2009.

External links

1936 films
Films of Nazi Germany
German crime comedy films
1930s crime comedy films
1930s German-language films
Films directed by Franz Seitz
Bavaria Film films
Films shot at Bavaria Studios
German black-and-white films
1936 comedy films
1930s German films

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


A new scientific paper authored by seven scientists affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences was just published in the scientific journal Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Physics.
The scientists dismiss both "greenhouse gases" and variations in the Sun's irradiance as significant climate drivers, and instead embrace cloud cover variations — modulated by cosmic ray flux — as a dominant contributor to climate change.
A concise summary: As cosmic ray flux increases, more clouds are formed on a global scale. More global-scale cloud cover means more solar radiation is correspondingly blocked from reaching the Earth's surface (oceans). With an increase in global cloud cover projected for the coming decades (using trend analysis), a global cooling is predicted.
Stozhkov, Y.I., Bazilevskaya, G.A., Makhmutov, V.S., Svirzhevsky, N.S., Svirzhevskaya, A.K., Logachev, V.I., Okhlopkov, V.P.
Another newly published scientific paper also projects cooling in the coming decades. Dr. Norman Page, geologist, attributes climate changes to natural (60-year and millennial-scale) cycles of solar activity (and cloud cover changes), and he notes that the rise in solar activity since the depths of the Little Ice Age has been the predominant climate driver. The millennial peak in solar activity occurred in about 1991, with the corresponding (lagged) temperature peak in 2004. Within the next few years the temperature is projected to drop significantly. Annotated graphs depicting the robust correlation between cloud cover changes and global temperature, as well as the forecasted global cooling, are included below.
Cosmic rays may have ended the CA drought.
With the destruction of our electric 'national grids', à la South Australia (etc), I think people's living rooms will be affected more than the climate, for those in higher latitudes, anyway.
The main concern is the high cost of energy and its reliability both of which have needlessly been compromised by inappropriate energy policies.
Let us hope that if the globe cools, the politicians will wake up, smell the coffeee and start taking steps to reverse the crazy policies that they have enacted and foistered upon us.
If the globe cools. And what happens if it doesn't?
If it doesn't cool, that would be a good thing. The climate of the Little Ice Age (1300-1900 C.E.) or the Dark Ages (400-800 C.E.)led to shorter growing seasons, crop failures, more droughts, more famines, the demise of civilizations, more hurricanes, etc.
Why do you believe that cooling is better than warming?
Personally, I consider that if the globe were to warm say a further 3 to 5 degrees above its present day temperatures, that would be a very good thing for life in general here on planet Earth.
Life has in the past flourished when the globe was far warmer than today. There is no reason to thing that things would be different this time round. The greatest bio diversity is seen in warm tropical rain forests and the least in cold arid places such as Antarctica.
Obviously there would be some winners and losers, but overall for life and bio diversity a warmer world is a better world.
The world is presently CO2 deficient. It needs far more CO2 and if adding CO2 brings about some warming then that would be a win win scenario. Unfortunately, it appears that the Climate Sensitivity to CO2, if any at all, is small such that adding CO2 is unlikely to bring about any significant warming. What a pity.
As a suggestion for the peers who "reviewed" that one: the author should have deducted his characteristics for the four curves/waves from a previous period of time and then should have tested if it accurately forcasts the last hundred or so years. As I recall this is not the first paper that tried to do science like this, someone linked to something similar in the comments a few weeks back.
So are we to assume that you believe decadal-scale cloud cover variations are modulated by anthropogenic CO2 emissions?
Also: https://www.skepticalscience.com/cosmic-rays-and-global-warming-advanced.htm anything to say about this rebuttal?
sebs little meaningless fantasy curve again.
The SkepticalScience blogscience concerns itself with attempting to challenge whether there is a direct connection between cosmic rays and temperature. The cosmic ray connection described here (Russian Academy of Sciences) is about what seeds low level cloud formation; it is well established that cloud cover changes significantly affect temperature. SkS is trying to claim that the GCR connection to climate is direct. GCRs do not affect temperatures directly, but they affect temperatures indirectly by influencing cloud formation, which do have an effect on temperatures via albedo alteration. In other words, the SkS essay is like one long, drawn-out straw man argument. Much like many of your own posts, SebastianH.
So you believe cloud cover is linked directly to cosmic rays? Do they dominate cloud cover increase/decrease? 2% change doesn't sound like a lot. What else influences cloud cover? Might it be the surface temperature and therefor evaporation rates? Does warmer air mean the clouds form at greater height? What is the difference between low clouds and high clouds?
What I'm trying to say: you believe cloud cover is a cause for temperature changes. Do you think it's impossible that cloud cover changes are an effect or feedback? And not one dominated by cosmic rays?
I read scientific papers. Scientific papers say that cosmic ray flux has an influence on cloud formation. Cosmic ray flux is ultimately modulated by the Sun within the climate system.
[D]ecreasing/increasing GCR [galactic cosmic ray] flux can influence the rainfall and the temperature. We speculate that the proposed hypothesis, based on the Indian climate data can be extended to whole tropical and sub-tropical belt, and that it may contribute to global temperature in a significant way. If correct, our hypothesis has important implication for the sun – climate link.
Increased Earth surface heating during solar maxima regulates integrated water vapor, cloud liquid water content, and rainfall.
•Solar control on [Indian Summer Monsoon] ISM rainfall, [cloud liquid water content] LWC and [integrated water vapor] IWV is observed over India during 1977–2012.
•Sun influences the formation clouds and rainfall activity through GCR [Galactic Cosmic Ray] mediation.
•Increased Earth surface heating during solar maxima regulates IWV, LWC and rainfall.
•SSN [Sunspot Number] shows both positive and negative correlation with LWC and ISM rainfall.
•Wavelet analyses also indicate a solar control on ISM rainfall, LWC & IWV over India.
Seb has absolutely zero idea how anything in the atmosphere actually works. Pointless asking him to explain anything.
He has given up looking for a paper to support his AGW scam religion.
Have you ever explained something here and replied to criticism about your explaination without insults masking your insecurity?
Keep hunting for that mythical paper, little seb.
So far you have found absolutely NOTHING except fairy-tales.
An EMPTY vessel, making a lot of meaningless sounds.
SebastianH, you shouldn't mind about AndyG55: this person never proposes valuable arguments. Insulting others is all he is able to do.
I have presented lots of provable scientific arguments, I'm sorry if you are incapable of comprehension…. Your problem to fix.
You also are welcome to produce a paper that proves that CO2 causes warming in a convective atmosphere.
Until then you are just another FAILED AGW shill.
If i were you folks, i would bet all my money on this one paper and start building a major skiing resort in the middle of Germany.
Go for it, there are millions to be made that way!
There you go again, ignoring the many natural factors that no one can predict. And no one sees you planting palm trees in the middle of Germany either. Your arguments are poor, as usual.
They grow banana trees in the Rhine Valley.
And plenty of palm trees too.
Actually, there is more than just one paper – and more than just the Russian Academy of Sciences – predicting global cooling for the coming decades. Cooling predictions have become more and more commonplace.
Well the pomegranate plantations didn't work out so well, sod, right?
You mean like the ones already there???
Actually, the temperature has been dropping in January – by 3C over 30 years – at Germany's highest mountain.
I guess they know it already.
If you use a trend then it is better to understand what you are doing.
The equation of the DWD January temperature trend is : T = 8.201*e-3*x – 27.057 [C], where [x] is the year.
It means that in year 1 the January temperature at Zugzpitze would be (-27. deg C). So almost Ice Age, I would say.
So careful with trends. Surely you can see increased/decreased trends in these data.
0.8 C January temperature increase in 2117, and 1.6 C July temperature increase in 2117.
Surely below these holy 2 degrees.
Thanks again Kenneth Richard. Your compilations are epic!
As to this paper, 'This one is a bad joke' is right!
There is no cosmic ray cooling; there is solar radiation cooling, which is what we're experiencing now. These people are 100% backwards!
We are at nearly the highest cosmic ray counts since 1964, and the only major cloud cover is still originating near the tropics, not the poles, no different than it was during the recent solar max.
Cloud cover is formed from tropical evaporation and moves towards the poles, not the other way around. Cooling comes from low TSI.
AFAIK, there is no more evidence for CR cooling than for CO2 warming.
Cosmic ray theory will join Co2 theory in the junk science bin.
You do agree that cloud cover increases are a net negative feedback because shortwave cloud forcing dominates over longwave cloud forcing, right?
In other words, as cloud cover increases, the more cooling there is. As cloud cover decreases, warming occurs (like it did from the 1980s to 2000s – "global brightening" depicted in the graph above). In this way, warming or cooling is modulated by decadal-scale variations in albedo, or cloud cover.
TSI variations (in the Sun's output itself) are also influential, yes, but in indirect ways.
The cosmic ray explanation for climate change is just a still-controversial theoretical conceptualization as to how clouds are formed. So yes, it isn't "cosmic ray" cooling or warming. It's cloud radiative forcing affecting the radiation budget, and cloud cover changes are connected to cosmic ray flux.
Maybe so, but it still has FAR more scientific integrity than the "CO2 causes warming" fallacy !
One can observe the CR radiation at 15km over the NH here http://sol.spacenvironment.net/raps_ops/current_files/rtimg/dose.15km.png.
The darker colored area is less intense today than it was a week ago, when it was in the 25-30 range, ie darker red. This means the CRs are becoming less intense during the current seasonal insolation change to NH spring & summer, and in reaction to incoming variable solar radiation, such as the geomagnetic storm yesterday, which caused a Forbush decrease (in CR).
It seems logical that the major CR cloud formation would occur over the area of highest CR intensity, the polar region, and if there were to be cooling clouds formed that effected temperatures they would have to move from the north southward to have such an effect, but as I said before, there appears to be scant evidence for that happening.
The tropical ocean isn't very easily capable of being mediated by theoretical CR cloud formation from the far north, and my research shows tropical temperatures and evaporation are controlled by TSI.
I don't have good citations (though a quick google yielded this amongst others in general press: http://sciencenordic.com/bacteria-atmosphere-cause-rain ), but I read a while back how marine bacteria especially are major drivers of cloud formation; further that the bacteria themselves have something to do with whether or not they start lifting off and floating into the sky. Since reading that have often wondered if climate scientists would be able to assess their degree of influence in cloud formation. Similarly, would be nice to get general stats of X increase in cosmic rays due to Y decrease in sunspot activity results in Z increase in cloud formation. Unless things like this can be measured in some way, over time, everything seems to be just one interesting sounding theory (like the CO2 one) after another.
The surface of the earth is about 59F warmer due to greenhouse gases. Yet people find it inconceivable that doubling the level of the second most important heat trapping gas coupled with its positive feedbacks could make a few degrees difference.
Please provide a paper that proves empirically that CO2 causes warming in a convective atmosphere.
The radiation from different greenhouse gases can be measured and therefor it has an effect.
Please provide a paper that proves you magic gravito/thermal thing with lightspeed convection and magic energy reservoirs.
dodge and weave. little seb. I provided several links to papers proving the gravito/thermal effect.
Maybe, perhaps, you will find one to prove the MYTH of CO2 warming in a convective atmosphere.
So far you are firing NOTHING BUT BLANKS.
Seriously, provide something that isn't just fantasy physics like the last few times you linked to something about that gravito/thermal effect of yours.
You have still not produced a single paper proving CO2 causes warming in a convective atmosphere.
No amount of pretending and DENYING that fact, will allow you to avoid it.
You are the one DENYING the proven facts of the gravito/thermal effect.
There is only one master denier here.. and its not me.
Radiation form bushfires, industrial processes etc produce FAR more radiative energy.
What is so mystical about a tiny amount of CO2 radiation that the heat from it get trapped??
It is dealt with just the same as any other extraneous heat, because the energy in the atmosphere is regulated by the gravito/thermal/pressure effect.
There is no mechanism whereby CO2 can cause warming in a convective atmosphere.
And your continued anti-science DENIAL of this fact, and your inability to produce one single paper to back up the fallacy that CO2 causes warming in a convective atmosphere can only be described as RELIGIOUS DOGMA.
It has been proven that uvB radiation is now the prominent wavelength of the uv spectrum reaching the Earth's surface. It now contributes 60% of the spectrum, ie 55% above the official figure. The shorter wavelength will cause increased evaporation, resulting in more water vapour in the atmosphere. uvA creates ozone, uvB destroys it. Ice caps reflect around 80% of uv, hence the ozone holes above the polar regions.
In areas of little cloud cover, drought will prevail. The major problem will be reliable crop production. Skin cancers and eye problems will also sky rocket.
I'm interested in finding this information, and have attempted to find it on NASA site but found too many dead-ends.
Could you please provide a link for the data?
Recent observations made by the Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM) on the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) spacecraft suggest that the Sun's visible and infrared spectral irradiance increased from 2004 to 2008, even as the total solar irradiance measured simultaneously by SORCE's Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) decreased. At the same time, solar ultraviolet (UV) irradiance decreased 3–10 times more than expected from prior observations and model calculations of the known effects of sunspot and facular solar features.
Short period — 2004 to 2008.
Cosmic rays may have ended the drought in CA.
Thank you, Dr. Page. The introduction has now been reworded to better reflect this clarification.
Certainly, Russian scientists and engineers can dismiss the term CO2 forcing because there is no such thing. CO2 in the atmosphere can not force anything. By definition a force is mass times acceleration. In SI units a force is called a Newton. A mass of snow when it moves will have a force. Similarly a sudden flow of water will have a force. Pressure in units called Pascals is defined as a force per unit area. Atmospheric pressure is at standard conditions is 101.3 kPa.
So-called climate scientists do not understand basic units and dimensional analysis. They have no idea of thermodynamics, or heat&mass transfer which are engineering subjects. Their predictions fail because they do understand the basic. The Russian engineers who landed space craft on the surface of Venus, took pictures of the surface and horizon and made measurements of pressure and temperature know more than all the so-called climate scientists and hangers-on put together.
I'm guessing your native language is not English, isn't it? The term "forcing" is just that … a forcing. It has nothing to do with the SI units for force.
Ahhh , so no energy is involved.
Oh dear And … you never fail to disappoint.
I can't help it if you keep talking with your foot in your mouth.
You seem to have FARCE mixed up with force.
Where's that CO2 warming paper.. found it yet ?
Everybody is waiting and waiting and waiting for you to produce something…. ANYTHING !
Maybe when you get your EV you will be able to drive far enough to find it.
Yep, as described the sun is our controller of climate, everything else is just a bit part player.
I do not understand figure 1 on top of this article. The solid line shows the decline, but the fine curve shows a sharp uptick.
Is there an explanation for that?
The dark line is highly smoothed. no detail.
The fine line is temperatures, looks like NOAA/GISS at much finer detail.
The up-tick is the recent El Nino transient, which has now decayed back down to near the pre-El Nino temperature.
The only worry with this graph is that it matches NOAA/GISS temperature data, and this puts a large query over the whole thing.
Is it a sign of great intelligence to to suspect that something else might be causing the warming besides the .002 percent of the atmosphere that is manmade carbon dioxide? And the release of 10^23 Joules of heat energy into the ocean from a magnitude 9.2 earthquake is somehow irrelevant to warming of the ocean and the environment and melting of the Arctic sea ice not to mention the fact that the graphs are just about identical. Stupid is the new smart.


text:
Generic Consent	Helen Pitman	2019-11-21T18:05:57+00:00
CM-Path Generic Consent Strategy Group
Following the Alder Hey retained organs scandal, written consent must be obtained from donors before securing tissue and data for biomedical research in the UK. However, there is often little consensus between research ethics committees (RECs) on what makes a good consent form, even though basic requirements for consent vary little between projects. Consequently, consent forms are often of variable quality, too long and complex, resulting in failure to communicate effectively to all potential donors.
Research involving human tissue is made possible because people are, in general, willing to donate tissue samples, with only a very small percentage of individuals refusing to do so. Indeed, high quality translational research frequently relies on this. Work done by groups such as UseMyData and Independent Cancer Patients Voice have demonstrated that individuals are generally content to donate tissues, but concise consent forms which use simple language are preferred; when too long and/or overcomplicated, in general donors do not read them properly. Furthermore, preparing consent forms and supporting materials such as Patient Information Sheets (PIS) for ethical approval is time consuming for researchers and often various iterations are required to satisfy RECs, presenting a barrier to research.
How to overcome this:
CM-Path proposes to work with key stakeholders; patient groups, funders, researchers, ethics committees, government bodies, to assess the feasibility of producing a nationally agreed, HRA-endorsed consent form for tissue donation.
Development of a consent form template which is agreed by all stakeholders. This will be lobbied at the highest level to initiate change, then taken to the HRA to seek regulatory approval, to be implemented in the UK within the next 3-5 years.
Generic Consent Project Lead
Professor Valerie Speirs
Generic Consent Project Team
Professor David Harrison
Dr Vijay Sharma
Professor Nicola Curtin
'Evidence shows overwhelmingly that patients want to be part of moving research into their disease forwards. Making that research as easy as possible for health professionals to do, benefits us all. We welcome a simplified way for patients to provide consent for their tissue and data to be used for this research, and therefore improving patient outcomes.'
Emma Kinloch, NCRI Consumer Lead
Clinical Trials Guidance

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Home » Fiction
In the Upper Country
The fates of two unforgettable women--one just beginning a journey of reckoning and self-discovery and the other completing her life's last vital act--intertwine in this sweeping, powerful novel set at the terminus of the Underground Railroad.
In the 1800s in Dunmore, a Canadian town settled by people fleeing enslavement in the American south, young Lensinda Martin works for a crusading Black journalist.
One night, a neighboring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman who recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before she can be condemned for the crime.
But the old woman doesn't want to confess. Instead she proposes a barter: a story for a story. And so begins an extraordinary exchange of tales that reveal an interwoven history of Black and Indigenous peoples in a wide swath of what is called North America.
As time runs out, Lensinda is challenged to uncover her past and face her fears in order to make good on the bargain of a story for a story. And it seems the old woman may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda's destiny.
Traveling along the path of the Underground Railroad from Virginia to Michigan, from the Indigenous nations around the Great Lakes, to the Black refugee communities of Canada, In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way.
Kai Thomas


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When Concerns Of Cultural Appropriation Risk Supporting Intellectual Property
William Gillis | May 25th, 2017
The latest entry in panics over social justice comes from my hometown, where some folks have created a list shaming restaurants and foodcarts that were owned by white people but sold "non-European international cuisine." One of the more annoying restaurants on that list has now closed as a result of hate mail.
"Intellectual Property" Keeps Right On Killing
Kevin Carson | May 24th, 2016
Habitual apologists for agribusiness like Reason's Ron Bailey gushingly cite studies that show glyphosate, the "active ingredient" in Roundup, is unlikely to cause cancer in the concentrations that appear in supermarket produce. But as it turns out, the focus on glyphosate may actually have been a distraction. There's evidence ("New Evidence About the Dangers of…
"Intellectual Property" Just Keeps Getting Deadlier
Kevin Carson | April 27th, 2016
You may be familiar with the role of proprietary automobile diagnostic software in enforcing a repair cartel of the Big Auto manufacturers, dealership mechanics, and auto repair chains and big garages that can afford to license the software. By using closed software that makes it impossible for an independent party to access it, or open…
How "Intellectual Property" Impedes Competition on Feed 44
C4SS | January 8th, 2016
C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson's contribution to Part 7 of Markets Not Capitalism: "How 'Intellectual Property' Impedes Competition," read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. The levels of invasiveness required by "intellectual property," in the digital age, cannot be exaggerated. The intrusive DRM embedded in proprietary media, and the draconian legislation criminalizing…
"Intellectual Property" Kills on Feed 44
C4SS | August 25th, 2015
C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson's "'Intellectual Property' Kills'" read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. The key agenda at the center of all the so-called "free trade agreements" is the imposition, at the behest of the giant corporations that depend on "intellectual property" monopolies for their profits, of a form of protectionism…
IP Czar Admits Hamiltonian Nature of "Intellectual Property" on Feed 44
C4SS | August 4th, 2015
C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson's "IP Czar Admits Hamiltonian Nature of 'Intellectual Property'" read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. Genuine productivity and progress destroys GDP. In a free economy, here's how it should work: Profit is self-liquidating, and increased efficiency of producing things with less labor and capital — or even…
IP Czar Admits Hamiltonian Nature of "Intellectual Property"
Kevin Carson | May 9th, 2015
In an April 24 speech, new "Intellectual Property" Czar Danny Marti confessed that the whole point of federal IP policy is to inflate nominal GDP and corporate profits by maximizing what monopolists are able to charge for stuff. He didn't mean to state it that baldly, of course. But that's what it amounts to —…
C4SS | April 27th, 2015
C4SS Feed 44 presents "How "Intellectual Property" Impedes Competition" from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Kevin Carson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Since intellectual property is not necessary to encourage innovation, this means that its main practical effect is to cause economic inefficiency by levying a monopoly charge on the use of existing…
"Intellectual Property" Kills
The New York Times revealed April 7 (Bernice Dahn, "Yes, We Were Warned About Ebola") that there was adequate prior warning of an Ebola outbreak in Liberia, but nobody drew the proper conclusion from the data and acted on it because the necessary information was all hidden behind academic journal paywalls. An article in Annals…
"Intellectual Property" is Why We Can't Have Nice Things on Feed 44
James Tuttle | December 17th, 2014
C4SS Feed 44 presents Thomas L. Knapp's "'Intellectual Property' is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" read by Erick Vasconcelos and edited by Nick Ford. I came late to the news of Twitpic's impending (and thankfully partial) closure and even later to an explanation for it. … That may not seem like a big deal but it was,…
I Thought Monopoly Was the Whole Point of "Intellectual Property" on Feed 44
James Tuttle | December 9th, 2014
C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson's "I Thought Monopoly Was the Whole Point of 'Intellectual Property'" read by Christopher B. King and edited by Nick Ford. Bear in mind that DRM itself — Digital Rights Management — was adopted at the behest of music companies, who saw anti-copying protections on proprietary content as central to their business model….
The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property on Feed 44
James Tuttle | November 28th, 2014
C4SS Feed 44 presents "The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property" from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Roderick Long, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Some will say that such rights are needed in order to give artists and inventors the financial incentive to create. But most of the great innovators in history operated without…
I Thought Monopoly Was the Whole Point of "Intellectual Property"
Kevin Carson | October 31st, 2014
In one of the weirdest permutations of "intellectual property" ever (Mike Masnick, "Apple Facing Trial Over Whether Its Use Of DRM Violated Antitrust Laws," Techdirt, October 6), Apple may end up in court for anti-trust violations because its iTunes Digital Rights Management code gave it monopoly power back in the day. The US District Court for…
"Intellectual Property" is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Thomas L. Knapp | October 27th, 2014
I came late to the news of Twitpic's impending (and thankfully partial) closure and even later to an explanation for it. My initial assumption was that the service had failed to turn a profit and become financially insolvent. I couldn't have been more wrong. This is, in the worst way, all about "intellectual property." And it significantly and negatively impacts…
Jaron Lanier, "Intellectual Property" and Parasitism on the System of Violence
William Gillis | July 29th, 2014
Over-35s seem to love nothing more than being told that the Internet — and the rapid cultural developments that have paralleled it — have been a terrible mistake with huge downsides that will surely doom us. And there's no end to the opportunistic hacks lining up to dress this generational reactionary spasm as the contrarian…
Is "Intellectual Property" a Necessary Incentive?
Kevin Carson | January 19th, 2014
Download: "Intellectual Property": A Libertarian Critique I. The Ethics of "Intellectual Property" II. Privilege as Economic Irrationality III. "Intellectual Property" and the Structure of the American Domestic Economy IV. "Intellectual Property" and the Global Economy V. "Intellectual Property," Business Models and Product Design VI. Is "Intellectual Property" a Necessary Incentive? Advocates for "intellectual property" defend it as necessary to encourage innovation, asking…
"Intellectual Property," Business Models and Product Design
Download: "Intellectual Property": A Libertarian Critique I. The Ethics of "Intellectual Property" II. Privilege as Economic Irrationality III. "Intellectual Property" and the Structure of the American Domestic Economy IV. "Intellectual Property" and the Global Economy V. "Intellectual Property," Business Models and Product Design VI. Is "Intellectual Property" a Necessary Incentive? Earlier, we quoted Murray Rothbard's observation that the enforcement of "intellectual property" rights…
"Intellectual Property" and the Global Economy
Download: "Intellectual Property": A Libertarian Critique I. The Ethics of "Intellectual Property" II. Privilege as Economic Irrationality III. "Intellectual Property" and the Structure of the American Domestic Economy IV. "Intellectual Property" and the Global Economy V. "Intellectual Property," Business Models and Product Design VI. Is "Intellectual Property" a Necessary Incentive? In the contemporary global economy, "intellectual property" plays the same protectionist role…
"Intellectual Property" and the Structure of the American Domestic Economy
Download: "Intellectual Property": A Libertarian Critique I. The Ethics of "Intellectual Property" II. Privilege as Economic Irrationality III. "Intellectual Property" and the Structure of the American Domestic Economy IV. "Intellectual Property" and the Global Economy V. "Intellectual Property," Business Models and Product Design VI. Is "Intellectual Property" a Necessary Incentive? Patents promoted the stable control of markets by oligopoly firms through the…
The Ethics of "Intellectual Property"
Download: "Intellectual Property": A Libertarian Critique I. The Ethics of "Intellectual Property" II. Privilege as Economic Irrationality III. "Intellectual Property" and the Structure of the American Domestic Economy IV. "Intellectual Property" and the Global Economy V. "Intellectual Property," Business Models and Product Design VI. Is "Intellectual Property" a Necessary Incentive? "Intellectual property" is a contentious issue among libertarians. Among the individualist anarchists alone,…
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