Links as online currency

In his blog, Jure Cuhalev, poses the question: "What do you think about linking? Would you agree to get payed and valued based on number of incoming links to your personal blog?"Well, first of all, my technorati rating is low… I'm not active in the blogosphere and all that… so personally I'd rather not like to get paid based on my incoming links ;), but that's besides the point…. his basic idea is interesting: incoming links may tell us something about our authorativeness.I don't think so…I don't believe that incoming links tell us something about our authorativeness. Let me start with an counter example that dismays, imho, this idea: Paris Hilton. I just linked to her. Does this mean I think she is an authority? No, personally I'd rather  consider her as the anti-authoraty… still, she is famous. For what? I don't know, I don't care, and I don't even want to know more about her. The point is: links are nothing but relations. Simply basing a…

"CBS, Ork ork ork ork, soep eet je met een..."

In Dutch, there is a small joke that people tell to children: "ork ork ork, soep eetje met een…" (which translates to: "ork ork ork, you eat soup using a…" Most children will initially say 'vork' ('fork'), but of course the right answer is 'lepel' ('spoon')… and while most children know this, most answer incorrectly. The example above is a typical example of how order of presentation can influence an answer in a questionnaire.

Not so long ago I was phoned by a representative of the Dutch bureau of statistics, CBS. It was an interview about the volunteer work and my willingness to do more. After about 6 or 8 questions, like "Do you volunteer in work for a sports society?", "Do you volunteer in work for elderly? " … etc., a question was asked whether I'd like to do more volunteer work. Well, hell yes! I was feeling guilty after having answered so many times 'no' to 'little' to each of the questions she was asking. Yes, I think everyone has a responsibi…