A funny thing about Blogspot

Have you ever noticed that the ads on top of the page actually pertain to the subject matter of the blogs?

This works well as long as I keep all the topics explicitly spiritual -- if anyone is reading this, they might actually like to order a Christian book by Francis Frangipane, for example, or buy a Bible.

It doesn't work as well when I talk about outreaches. Actually, it was fine as long as I talked about Christian outreaches in general. However, my blog of Nov 17 got more specific (I'm afraid to mention the topic again, for fear that I will perpetuate the problem), and now I'm seeing ads for particular cleaning supplies. I've been having a lot of fun checking out Steve's blog in this respect. He alternates between carefully crafted Christian essays, and brilliant comical satire. The poor ads just can't figure out what to do. This morning, I saw that he has a blog about life's most embarrassing moments, and the ad tried to come up with a blend of Christianity and humor, and is now promoting 'Christmas songs that tickle your funny bone'. That was a better fit than the day that the page kept showing the Armani ads. I mean, I'm sure Steve would look good in Armani, but I'm reasonably confident that his reading audience is not about to run out and buy Armani. Oh no, I just realized that in my attempt to quickly write another blog in order to turn off the 'T' outreach ads, I'm now going to get the fashion ads instead.

Actually, it's amazing how good computers are getting about figuring out what we're interested in. Having bought over 100 books from Amazon, their recommendations for me are really good. But I was quite disconcerted the day that they showed me another reader's list of books required for VLI. I figured it must be another acronym, such as Vermont Lumber Institute, but I clicked on the link and sure enough, they had figured out that I was interested in the Vineyard Leadership Institute. I was suddenly seeing Ladd's Theology of the New Testament, as well as Drane's Introducing the New Testament. (Notice how I cleverly inserted some Christian terms, in order to sway the ads that show up next? However, my attempt has not yet worked -- I think it pays more attention to the titles. )