The Big secret is, “There is No Secret”

Every web site owner wants more traffic and higher rankings in the search engines. In the midst of an SEO campaign, however, it’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. So before you change a single title, you might want to shift your focus to answer some important questions.

So what do I mean by losing sight of the forest for the trees anyway? You’ve probably heard that expression since you were a teenager at least. You may even know that it means focusing on the details to the point that you lose sight of the big picture – and with the amount of detail work that goes into a proper SEO project, that’s easy to do.

The mission of search engines is to supply their visitors with relevant results, so penalizing or banning sites that appear to interfere with that mission is a necessity. Understanding which blunders adversely impact your search engine rankings is a prerequisite to a well-optimized site.

1. Do you use pull-down boxes for navigation? Search engine spiders can’t fill out forms, even short ones with just one pull-down. Thus, they can’t get to the pages that follow. If you’re using pull-downs, make sure there is an alternate means of navigating to those pages that the spiders can use. Note this is not the same as a mouseover menu, where sub-choices show up upon hovering over the main navigation bar; that’s fine if done using CSS (rather than Javascript.)

2. Does your primary navigation require Flash, Java or Javascript? If you rely on search engine spiders executing Flash, Java or Javascript code in order to access links to deeper pages within your site, you’re taking a big risk. The search engines have a limited ability to deal with Flash, Java and Javascript. So the links may not be accessible to the spiders, or the link text may not get associated with the link. Semantically marked up HTML is always the most search engine friendly way to go.

3. Is your site done entirely in Flash or overly graphical with very little textual content? Text is always better than graphics or Flash animations for search engine rankings. Page titles and section headings should be text, not graphics. The main textual content of the page should ideally not be embedded within Flash. If it is, then have an alternative text version within div tags and use SWFObject to determine whether that text is displayed based on whether the visitor has the Flash plugin installed.

4. Is your home page a “splash page” or otherwise content-less? With most webites, as mentioned above, the home page is weighted by the search engines as the most important page on the site (i.e., given the highest PageRank score.) Thus, having no keyword-rich content on your home page is a missed opportunity.

5. Does your site employ frames? Search engines have problems crawling sites that use frames (i.e., where part of the page moves when you scroll but other parts stay stationary.) Google advises not using frames: “Frames tend to cause problems with search engines, bookmarks, emailing links and so on, because frames don’t fit the conceptual model of the Web (every page corresponds to a single URL.) “Furthermore, if a frame does get indexed, searchers clicking through to it from search results will often find an “orphaned page”: a frame without the content it framed, or content without the associated navigation links in the frame it was intended to display with. Often, they will simply find an error page.What about “iFrames”, you ask? iFrames are better than frames for a variety of reasons, but the content within an iframe on a page still won’t be indexed as part of that page’s content.

6. Do the URLs of your pages Include “cgi-bin” or numerous ampersands? As discussed, search engines are leery of dynamically generated pages. That’s because they can lead the search spider into an infinite loop called a “spider trap.” Certain characters (question marks, ampersands, equal signs) and “cgi-bin” in the URL are sure-fire tip-offs to the search engines that the page is dynamic and thus to proceed with caution. If the URLs have long, overly complex “query strings” (the part of the URL after the question mark), with a number of ampersands and equals signs (which signify that there are multiple variables in the query string), then your page is less likely to get included in the search engine’s index.

7. Do the URLs of your pages include session IDs or user IDs? If your answer to this question is yes, then consider this: search engine spiders like Googlebot don’t support cookies, and thus the spider will be assigned a new session ID or user ID on each page on your site that it visits. This is the proverbial “spider trap” waiting to happen. Search engine spiders may just skip over these pages. If such pages do get indexed, there will be multiple copies of the same pages each taking a share of the PageRank score, resulting in PageRank dilution and lowered rankings.If you’re not quite clear on why your PageRank scores will be diluted, think of it this way: Googlebot will find minimal links pointing to the exact version of a page with a particular session ID in its URL.

8. Do you unnecessarily spread your site across multiple domains? This is typically done for load balancing purposes. For example, the links on the JCPenney.com home page point off to www2.jcpenney.com, or www3.jcpenney.com, or www4.jcpenney.com and so on, depending on which server is the least busy. This dilutes PageRank in a way similar to how session IDs in the URL dilute PageRank.

9. Are your title tags the same on all pages? Far too many websites use a single title tag for the entire site. If your site falls into that group, you’re missing out on a lot of search engine traffic. Each page of your site should “sing” for one or several unique keyword themes. That “singing” is stifled when the page’s title tag doesn’t incorporate the particular keyword being targeted.

10. Do you have pop-ups on your site? Most search engines don’t index Javascript-based pop-ups, so the content within the pop-up will not get indexed. If that’s not good enough reason to stop using pop-ups, you should know that people hate them – with a passion. Also consider that untold millions of users have pop-up blockers installed. (The Google Toolbar and Yahoo Companion toolbar are pop-up blockers, too, in case you didn’t know.)

I expect many of you will look at these questions and think that they should be asked well before a site goes live, very early in the design process. That’s probably true. But it’s also true that web sites evolve over time, rather like people. They change, grow, and adapt to conditions in the marketplace. By the time a web site has been up for a couple of years (or even less), it might be a very different creature from what the site owner originally had in mind.

This kind of change is not a bad thing, per se. We all get a certain amount of satisfaction out of growing and tweaking our sites, and then watching what happens. If we’re not looking clearly at what the site is turning into, however, we can’t see what it needs.

Search engine optimization could be a tiring task but with time it sure helps you get better traffic.

Today Google Real-Time Search Changes Everything. Not being where your customer is looking could be costing you their business! Search engines are tightening up the loopholes to manipulate positioning.

So called “doorway” pages, tricks with meta tag/keyword files, etc. no longer are effective. Keyword positioning, along with indexing, is the way to be seen on today’s Internet.

•The vast majority of clicks occur within the top 5 positions on a search page.

• As a rule, the more competitive the business category, the harder it is to attain decent placement. Conversely, the more competitive the business category, the more important placement is to success of the business.

Entrepreneurs and small businesses constantly find themselves looking around asking themselves why they can’t quite seem to find a good fit for what they need from service providers.

People do business with who they like, who they trust and who truly care about their business. In fact, a recent study by US News & World Report revealed that when clients leave their current provider it’s not because of a pricing or product problem, but a “people” problem. People that no longer value their business, or seem indifferent to it. A whopping 68% of them.

• A fractional 14% defected because of a pricing issue followed by 9% who were successfully wooed by a competitor.

• With Google Real-Time Search the playing field has been leveled.

• No longer can you or your competition sit back and think they own their TOP organic Google positions!

To Improve Web Site Search Engine Rankings, it’s SEO Specialist Online for all your search engine optimization needs Why not let us do a Free Website Evaluation for Your Business TODAY!

In today’s economy, it can be pretty tough to make money anywhere, but some folks are earning money hand over fist online and they’re doing it in a real 11 year old business.

There’s a lot that can be learned from people like me, especially if you’re willing to listen.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the average person can get started making money online. So I tried to look at things from a beginner’s standpoint, and I did a few different searches of Google and found that the majority of the results were for sites that were trying to get you to buy stuff to “teach” you how to make money online.

Truthfully, this made me sad. While it does require hard work and some persistence, one of the biggest draws to the internet opportunities is the simple fact that it shouldn’t require a huge initial investment to get started…

The tools are out there, they are often just hidden amidst the sites that are trying to profit on people who are trying to get started.

Many believe that in order to build a successful business online you need a web site you have to invest a lot of money into it and become some web programming genius. Or they believe you have to have some kind of product to sell.

Not true at all.

The key to success with any affiliate program is finding your topic of passion and developing a web site on a topic you love and know a lot about. Find your niche, develop your site’s theme, and attract as much targeted traffic as you can. or

Find a company like Nutronix International that will do that work for you.

Find a leader like myself that will take you by the hand and show you what I’m doing to be successful and teach you to do the same thing.

I love this job… Although only serious about it for 16 years now, I have been fortunate in that others willing to lend helping hands came easily…. It was up to me to take advantage of their generosity… and that I did…

I’m telling you this for a reason…success in network marketing is attainable…especially when you have good people lending those helping hands…

Please forgive my sermon to those who have already reached a level of success… but I am a regular person just like many of you who are trying to make a go of it Online…

As I progressed it didn’t take me long to figure out that if I didn’t pay particular attention to the sponsorship and training aspect of this marketing thing, and incorporate into my routines a set amount of time and effort to helping my people in my downlines replicate what I was doing, that soon I would not have a downline to Worry about…

It also didn’t take me long to figure out that I better be pretty darn sure I was with a good company marketing good products… hard to put a value on our time but not so hard to realize when we are wasting it after it’s gone…

No matter what you do for a living – whether you are a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, a secretary, housewife or construction worker – do you find yourself thinking, “There must be a better way, a less complicated way, a smoother road”

The opportunity to run your own Internet business can be the answer for you too!

If you are serious about exiting the box forever, retiring with dignity, relaxing by the pool, camping and trail riding as a vocation instead of a vacation, staying home and raising your kids instead of farming them out to a stranger to raise.

The more I progressed the more the internet changed. The Internet has come of age.

New technology has been developed and new opportunities have been created with this technology that you probably haven’t heard off yet.

I have two slogans I use. “The More You Learn, the More You Earn” and “No networker is Left Behind”

I can teach you how to be successful in this business but the 2nd step now is yours! I’ve told you my story take the tour of my business and let’s you and I talk personally.

As it is getting harder these days to earn an income online, Nutronix International decided to create this business to enable everyone to earn over the internet from the comfort of their own home and to have the possibility of gaining a source of steady earnings.

We do not offer millions within a week or a complete financial independence. We do believe though, that with people helping people a very nice source of income will be generated. If you put a lot of effort into this, you can reach the goals that you set for yourself.

More next time….

Keywords and site content

Competitive keywords and interesting content are a must for any site to succeed. In fact both keywords and site content go hand in hand. Our team of professionals will analyze your market and come up with a list of keywords that are competitive. They will then utilize them in the appropriate density to create content that is unique. Once this unique content is uploaded onto your website, you will find that its ranking has improved automatically as search engines favor new content.

Social networking, article marketing and URL submissions

Social networking sites are one of the best ways to optimize your site. In addition to this we also recommend article marketing and URL Submission. To begin with our team will make sure that your website is listed with all the major search engines. Once this is done, we start submitting articles with new content to article directories. These articles will contain back links that lead to your site. In addition to this we will also submit your articles to social networking sites as they can play a significant role in traffic increase as well.

Building a phenomenal web site is only half of the picture. You have to use your marketing abilities to bring traffic to that web site and this is where search engine optimization services come into play.

SEO Services Incorporate:

* Detailed Keyword research
* Creation of relevant Meta tags & other html tags
* SEO content copy writing with optimizing of site text and creating additional text as needed
* Creation of Sub Domain
* Site navigation & control flow optimization
* Developing theme based site architecture
* Link Building services
* Dynamic Search Engine optimization
* Detailed Competition Analysis and report
* Search engine submissions directories.
* Ongoing optimization

What are Search Engine Optimization Services?

Search engine promotion services are designed to promote improved rankings for web sites. Basically, the term refers to a wide-range of activities which are combined for the sole purpose of securing top spots at major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing and boosting the size of your web site’s traffic.

These services typically include researching keywords extensively so that the best are chosen for your site. The development of SEO content, including tags, and link building are also important aspects of search engine promotion services.

Why Use Search Engine Optimization Services?

Using Search engine optimization services is important for one because of all the new technologies being incorporated by leading search engines. For example, Google is now using a process called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to help calculate the page rankings. This technique involves the use of language and the relationships between words. The purpose is to weed out sites that are merely fluff content wrapped around keywords.

SEO Specialist Online has now begun incorporating this same technology into our search engine promotion services to ensure continued high rankings for our clients.

LSI is only one example. The search engines are constantly changing their ranking methods in order to create the best possible experience for users so using professional search engine promotion services is the only one way to keep up with those changes without losing your ranking.

Choosing Search Engine Optimization Services

If you decide to use search engine promotion services, be sure to find out what is included in these services. SEO Specialist Online can help you through every step of the process: researching keywords, writing the content, even updating the optimization periodically. This is the type of service you want so that you can sit back and put your web site’s future on the search engines in the hands of trusted, experienced professionals who will generate the results you want.

And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me. ~Lee Greenwood

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost. As a US Navy Veteran myself I thought I would switch gears a little today and talk about something that is very near and dear to my heart.

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is also evidence that organized woman’s groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War:

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war).

It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 – 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis’ birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.

In 1915, inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields,”
Moina Michael replied with her own poem:

We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.

She then conceived of an idea to wear red poppies on Memorial day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers with the money going to benefit servicemen in need.

Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day.

At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.

To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the “National Moment of Remembrance” resolution was passed on Dec 2000 which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans “To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to ‘Taps.”

The Moment of Remembrance is a step in the right direction to returning the meaning back to the day. What is needed is a full return to the original day of observance. Set aside one day out of the year for the nation to get together to remember, reflect and honor those who have given their all in service to their country.

As a Veteran, I hope you will join us and saying, Dear Heavenly Father,

As we remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, we think of how they have followed in the footsteps of your son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Please hold our service men and women in your strong arms. Cover them with your sheltering grace and presence as they stand in the gap for our protection.

We also remember the families of our troops, and ask for your unique blessings to fill their homes and your peace, provision and strength to fill their lives.

May the members of our armed forces be filled with courage to face each day and may they trust in the Lord’s mighty power to accomplish each task. Let our military brothers and sisters feel our love and support.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Social networking companies don’t have it easy. Advertisers covet their users’ data, and in a niche that often seems to lack a clear business model, selling (or otherwise leveraging) that data is a tremendously tempting opportunity. But most users simply don’t want to share as much information with marketers or other “partners” as corporations would like them to. So it’s no surprise that some companies try to have it both ways.
Monday evening, after an exasperating few days trying to make sense of Facebook’s bizzare new “opt-out” procedures, we asked folks on Twitter and Facebook a question:

The world needs a simple word or term that means “the act of creating deliberately confusing jargon and user-interfaces which trick your users into sharing more info about themselves than they really want to.” Suggestions?

And the suggestions rolled in! Our favorites include “bait-and-click”, “bait-and-phish”, “dot-comfidence games”, and “confuser-interface-design.”

Although we didn’t specifically mention Facebook in our question, by far the most popular suggestions were variations on this one from @heisenthought on Twitter:

How about “zuck”? As in: “That user-interface totally zuckered me into sharing 50 wedding photos. That kinda zucks.”

Other suggestions included “Zuckermining”, “Infozuckering”, “Zuckerpunch” and plenty of other variations on the name of Facebook’s Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Others suggested words like “Facebooking,” “Facebaiting,” and “Facebunk.”

It’s clear why folks would associate this kind of deceptive practice with Zuckerberg. Although Zuckerberg told users back in 2007 that privacy controls are “the vector around which Facebook operates,” by January 2010 he had changed his tune, saying that he wouldn’t include privacy controls if he were to restart Facebook from scratch. And just a few days ago, a New York Times reporter quoted a Facebook employee as saying Zuckerberg “doesn’t believe in privacy.”

Despite this, we’d rather not use Zuckerberg’s name as a synonym for deceptive practices. Although the popularity of the suggestion shows how personal the need for privacy has become for many Facebook users, we’d prefer to find a term that’s less personal and more self-explanatory.

No, our favorite idea came from Twitter user @volt4ire, who suggested we use the phrase “Evil Interfaces.” The name refers to a talk by West Point Professor Greg Conti at the 2008 Hackers On Planet Earth conference.

Here’s Conti explaining Evil Interfaces to a puppet named Weena:

As Conti describes it, a good interface is meant to help users achieve their goals as easily as possible. But an “evil” interface is meant to trick users into doing things they don’t want to. Conti’s examples include aggressive pop-up ads, malware that masquerades as anti-virus software, and pre-checked checkboxes for unwanted “special offers.”

The new Facebook is full of similarly deceptive interfaces. A classic is the “Show Friend List to everyone” checkbox. You may remember that when Facebook announced it would begin treating friend-lists as “publicly available information” last December, the change was met with user protests and government investigation. The objections were so strong that Facebook felt the need to take action in response. Just one problem: Facebook didn’t actually want to give up any of the rights it had granted itself. The result was the obscure and impotent checkbox pictured here. It’s designed to be hard to find — it’s located in an unlikely area of the User Profile page, instead of in the Privacy Settings page. And it’s worded to be as weak as possible — notice that the language lets a user set their friend-list’s “visibility”, but not whether Facebook has the right to use that information elsewhere.

A more recent example is the process introduced last week for opting out of Instant Personalization. This new feature allows select Facebook partner websites to collect and log all of your “publicly available” Facebook information any time you visit their websites. We’ve already documented the labyrinthine process Facebook requires users to take to protect their data, so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice to say that sharing your data requires radically less work than protecting it.

Of course, Facebook is far from the only social networking company to use this kind of trick. Memorably, users of GMail were surprised last February by the introduction of Google Buzz, which threatened to move private GMail recipients into a public “frequent contacts” list. As we noted at the time, Buzz’s needlessly complex “opt-out” user-interface was a big part of the problem.

OK, perhaps the word “evil” is a little strong. There’s no doubt that bad user-interfaces can come from good intentions. Design is difficult, and accidents do happen. But when an accident coincidentally bolsters a company’s business model at the expense of its users’ rights, it begins to look suspicious. And when similar accidents happen over and over again in the same company, around the same issues, it’s more than just coincidence. It’s a sign something’s seriously wrong.

Source: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebooks-evil-interfaces. Reprinted by permission.

“Here we are folks — the multimillion-channel TV,” said Google project director Rishi Chandra during a two-hour keynote. With the addition of the new and recently improved “Android” operating system, users can now access all of their favorite websites via Google Chrome along with viewing their favorite TV shows.

This announcement revolutionizes the entertaiment industry by bringing the internet in your living room. Users can now view their favorite pictures on their TV in the form of a slideshow, play their favorite video game, or even listen to their favorite music. With Google TV, your content is always a click or search away.

Since Google TV was built on open source platforms such as Google Chrome and Android, Google issued a challenge to application developers to optimize websites and develop applications for Google TV. Google has also announced a partnership between Sony and Logitech to provide content rich applications. The video below gives an overview of Google TV and all of the amazing features it provides.

SEO Specialist Online is proud to be part of the Google TV experience and we are excitied to what the “future of television” may hold!

Subscribe to our “SEO News” updates to get the latest information on Google TV

There is nothing more desirable than to make money online working from home. And everything is possible because of the many affiliate programs you can find on the internet. You get to manage your time as you want – work when you want, have fun when you feel like and still be able to earn money from home. And there are many ways to earn money once you’ve found the best affiliate marketing program!

But there are so many affiliate programs to choose from that it’s really hard to find the best affiliate marketing program, so how do you know you’ve made the right choice and you are going to find easy ways to earn money?

If you want to make money online working several hours a day, you may start by reading as much as possible about all the affiliate programs and about people who are making money with some of the best affiliate marketing programs.

Everybody can earn money from home, but if you want to earn your living on the internet you will have to spend a lot of time learning the best methods to do that.

The spiraling cost of learning materials is what makes many people wonder if they would ever be able to make money online working at home.

But it is an achievable goal and the trick seems to be to be able to learn from other people’s mistakes.

What many people do not tell you in the beginning, is that usually to become a successful marketing business online, you definitely need to have more than a working knowledge of Internet marketing principles and applications.

This may take years to master before you see a reward for their efforts. This is one of the main reasons why the vast majority of new online business owners give up in there 1st year.

The best ways to make money online are usually the simplest but most people don’t understand that fact. A lot of people think that they have to work for another company or sign-up underneath another website in order to be able to make profits.

The fact of the matter is that the Internet is nothing but a type of marketplace where you sell your goods or services for a profit.

A full-time income and more is out there but it takes legitimate Affiliate Marketing Training. Leverage the power of numbers with the support of a 11 Year Old, Debt Free Company guide you.

A wealthy affiliate does not make ridiculous claims of getting rich overnight and making money with no effort whatsoever. It’s a real business that requires real work to make real money. It all depends on your desires and the time/effort you want to put in to it.

You could work at your business to make an extra $500 a month or build it up to $1000 a day for a $350,000/yr income. It is also entirely possible you may not make a thing. In fact the majority of people who try affiliate marketing give up before ever making a dollar. Whether its their training or their effort I can’t say but you need to be aware of that.

My future is looking bright….Is yours???

I am convinced  that if you want to be your own boss, with a financially successful business, then sit back relax and watch this presentation. You’ll be glad you did!

Want to know more? Then take the FREE TOUR! and see how the Rich get Richer

Did you know that 16,000 + people per day are starting a Home based business in the United States.

Most marketers just want to sign you up. Hope you do well so they can make more money on your efforts.

Most people will NOT sign up with you.  Probably 99%. Why?

Did they know you care about them?

Did they try to get to know you?

Was there a RELATIONSHIP established for TRUST?

I’m tired of this …

That’s right!  I’m tired of watching good people; hard working people struggle to make it online and Truly find financial freedom .

There are many choices…

However very few SOLUTIONS!

I want to build your TRUST

Feel at ease, I do not believe in “hype” and much less in false promises. Any claims I make have been proven and validated.  Therefore, be assured that you are in good hands.

I’m a professional Internet marketer, Mentor~Trainer and SEO Specialist and Strategist and Accredited Veretekk™ Trainer.

I would like to take YOU by the hand and show you what I’m doing to make my business successful for myself, and teach you how to use it too.

But I first want to build your trust! I would like to Get to know you!  I would like to talk to you either by email or in person.

Want to know more?

=> Then take the FREE TOUR!  <=

I promise I won’t be wasting your time.

Best Regards,

Jim Gras
Melbourne, FL USA
Senior SEO Strategist
Skype: jamiboy
800-897-6458 US

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Throughout the centuries and into today, silver in various forms has been used to benefit mankind. Some cultures added powdered silver to a newborn’s first bath as protection against a harsh world. Milk farmers used to use a silver pail to collect milk. The raw milk could remain unrefrigerated for hours without spoiling.

Similarly, our early settlers would often throw silver dollars into their wells or water barrels to kill bacteria and keep the water potable. During plagues in Europe, wealthy families gave their children silver spoons to suck on, hence the saying born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Numerous tests at major universities and commercial labs like Kansas State, UC Davis, Brigham Young University have proven the effectiveness of the product.

Reports about the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been largely underestimated, according to commentators, including Paul Noel, a Software Engineer for the U.S. Army at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. He believes that the pocket of oil that’s been hit is so powerful and under so much pressure that it may be virtually impossible to contain it. And Noel is not the only person questioning the scope of this disaster.

A recent story from the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) reports that many independent scientists believe the leak is spewing far more than the 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, per day being reported by most media sources. They believe the leak could be discharging up to 25,000 barrels (more than one million gallons) of crude oil a day right now.

The riser pipe that was bent and crimped after the oil rig sank is restricting some of the flow from the tapped oil pocket, but as the leaking oil rushes into the well’s riser, it is forcing sand with it at very high speeds and “sand blasting” the pipe (which is quickly eroding its structural integrity).

According to a leaked National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration memo obtained by an Alabama newspaper, if the riser erodes any further and creates more leaks, up to 50,000 barrels, or 2.1 million gallons, per day of crude oil could begin flooding Gulf waters every day.

When this disaster first occurred, the media downplayed it. BP spokespersons were quick to claim that the leakage was minimal and that crews would eventually be able to contain it. But as time went on, it became clear that things were not under control and that the spill was far more serious than we were originally told. (Gee, sound familiar? Remember Katrina?)

Yet some of the media reports still seem more like press releases than actual reporting because they continue to repeat what the public relations cleanup crews (pun intended) would like the public to believe rather than what’s actually happening. Reality, it seems, has a nasty habit of interfering with corporate spin.

Cap and trade becomes “cap and pray”

The New York Times yesterday reported that BP is working on a large containment dome that is intended to cap the leak and catch the escaping oil so that it can be safely pumped to the surface. Meanwhile, crews are said to be working on fixing the broken blow-out preventer valve that should have stopped the leak from happening in the first place, but they have been unsuccessful thus far.

Almost every report says that BP is doing everything it can to contain the spill and stop the leak, even though the company claims it is not technically at fault. According to an article from the U.K. Daily Mail, BP’s CEO Tony Hayward recently responded to the cleanup efforts by explaining, “This is not our accident but it is our responsibility to deal with it.”

Swiss-based Transocean is the company that actually owned and operated the sunken rig. It manned the rig with its own crew and BP just leased it from Transocean (which makes you wonder why BP is so willing to take full responsibility for everything).

BP says that it’s working on a relief well, but that it could take up to three months to complete. Until then, the company is trying several different approaches to at least slow the leak and hopefully stop it altogether.

Mind you, almost all of the information about the spill from day one has come directly from BP which obviously has every incentive to downplay the true environmental destruction that could be caused by this oil spill.

Even the word “spill” is incorrect. This isn’t some ship of oil that spilled into the ocean — it’s a “volcano” of oil spewing from the belly of Mother Earth herself. It’s under extremely high pressure, it’s spewing a huge volume of oil directly into the ocean, and there so far seems to be no human-engineered way of stopping it (short of setting off an underground nuclear bomb near the well site).

Addressing the unanswered questions

According to the CSM article, environmental risk models are normally performed for pollutants like crude oil, yet not one model has yet been released for this incident by BP or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Many are wondering why this crucial information has not been made public. Could it be because the results of the model might seem too catastrophic?

Neither has there been an adequate explanation given for exactly why the oil rig exploded… twice! Some reports indicate that the crews responsible for properly cementing the well casing didn’t do it right. Others suggest that the oil deposit was just too large and under too much pressure for the equipment to handle it. (Be careful where you poke around the planet if you can’t handle what comes out, right?)

It’s also important to note that, according to a recent New York Times article, Halliburton was actually the company responsible for all the cementing work on the rig, which brings a third party into the picture.

BP’s federal permits allowed the company to drill up to 20,000 feet deep, but according to one of the workers who was onboard the rig during the explosion, drilling in excess of 22,000 feet had been taking place. This same worker is said to handle company records for BP, but BP has denied these allegations.

BP has declined to comment, however, on other allegations that the spill happened because it chose not to install necessary deep-water valves which would have acted as a last resort seal of protection in the event of an emergency.

Several other allegations include suspicions that the crews allowed gas to build up in the well bore and that the rig operator tried to detach too quickly from the well, causing a disruption.

BP, Halliburton and Transocean have all indicated that they are continuing to investigate the situation. When companies investigate themselves, however, the truth rarely comes out.

The possibility of an extinction event?

It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on in the Gulf right now, especially because there are so many conflicting reports and unanswered questions. But one thing’s for sure: if the situation is actually much worse than we’re being led to believe, there could be worldwide catastrophic consequences.

If it’s true that millions upon millions of gallons of crude oil are flooding the Gulf with no end in sight, the massive oil slicks being created could make their way into the Gulf Stream currents, which would carry them not only up the East Coast but around the world where they could absolutely destroy the global fishing industries.

Already these slicks are making their way into Gulf wetlands and beaches where they are destroying birds, fish, and even oyster beds. This is disastrous for both the seafood industry and the people whose livelihoods depend on it. It’s also devastating to the local wildlife which could begin to die off from petroleum toxicity. Various ecosystems around the world could be heavily impacted by this spill in ways that we don’t even yet realize.

There’s no telling where this continuous stream of oil will end up and what damage it might cause. Theoretically, we could be looking at modern man’s final act of destruction on planet Earth, because this one oil rig blowout could set in motion a global extinction wave that begins with the oceans and then whiplashes back onto human beings themselves.

We cannot live without life in the oceans. Man is arrogant to drill so deeply into the belly of Mother Earth, and through this arrogance, we may have just set in motion events that will ultimately destroy us. In the future, we may in fact talk about life on Earth as “pre-spill” versus “post-spill.” Because a post-spill world may be drowned in oil, devoid of much ocean life, and suffering a global extinction event that will crash the human population by 90 percent or more.

We may have just done to ourselves, in other words, what a giant meteorite did to the dinosaurs.