The traditional approach to Google Adwords is to set a bid price for each keyword. This is known as Cost Per Click (CPC). Google then then uses the bid prices in conjunction with a secret formula (the quality score) to decide how high to rank your ad in the Adwords results. If you bid more, your ad will appear higher and typically get more clicks, but your cost per click will increase. So setting an optimal bid price is important. Bid too little and you won't rank high enough to get a decent number of clickthroughs. Bid too much and you will potentially end paying more to Google than you recoup in sales. An alternative approach is to tell Google Adwords how much you are prepared to pay for a particular action, e.g. a sign-up, download or sale. This is known as Cost Per Action (CPA) or Conversion Optimizer. Google will then automatically calculate your bid prices and attempt not to exceed the CPA you set (although this isn't guaranteed). CPA sounds great. I can stay in bed

If you take budgeting seriously, people sometimes think you are a curmudgeon. When I was at the Congressional Budget Office, for example, we were once denounced as anti-housing because we concluded that increasing subsidies for low-income housing wasn't free. CBO reached that conclusion using an advanced tool known as "arithmetic," but some advocates tried to portray it as an anti-housing policy statement.

Much ink, both physical and electronic, has recently been spilled on the question of whether the United States should undertake a second stimulus. To which there is only one possible answer: we already did a second stimulus.

Today's Washington Post has a story about some research done at Carnegie Mellon University on the possibility of guessing a person's Social Security number. The researchers, Alessandro Aquisti and Ralph Gross, found that, by using this information and an individual's place and date of birth, they could get a good start on discovering someone's SSN.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published their weekly analysis of influenza activity for the week of 7-13 June 2009. They conclude that "influenza activity decreased in the United States, however, there were still higher levels of influenza-like illness than is normal for this time of year." The numbers raise at least two questions. First, the seasonal H3N2 and H1N1 strains are clearly disappearing. Is this because it is the end of the influenza season in the northern hemisphere, a time when influenza typically drops to very low levels? Or is it because the older viruses are being forced out' by the new pandemic strain?

Mickey Kaus writes about the threat by Sarah Palin's attorney to sue anyone defaming her, and also those who republish such defamation. He's astonished to learn that Section 230 could shield him and other bloggers. I don't want to be harsh about Kaus -- Section 230 is a little obscure -- but I think any blogger, and especially one who's a lawyer, should have some familiarity with it.

Pope Benedict XVI has called for a new financial order, a new way of understanding business enterprise, that respects the dignity of workers and looks out for the common good by prioritizing ethics and social responsibility over dividend returns, according to a report by the Associated Press.

That's not just my opinion, it's the opinion of Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who is an expert on the economics of the Great Depression: "O.K., Thursday's jobs report settles it. We're going to need a bigger stimulus."

Reuters is reporting that Chinese officials have confidence that the U.S. Dollar will remain the worlds reserve currency. I believe it is significant that the Chinese are deliberately talking up the dollar in advance of the G8 summit.

I am baffled by the fact that people are so disengaged from the food that they eat. It has been my goal for some time now, almost two decades, to grow as much of my own food as possible. I have achieved this by growing more, and eating less.

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