Second iSteve.com Panhandling Drive!

Second iSteve.com Panhandling Drive!

The Internet Age is a reader's dream, but it can also be a writer's nightmare because it is so hard to get paid in an age when everybody expects "content" to magically appear for free. Moreover, my blogging and more formal articles are never going to support a lucrative amount of advertising since my natural audience is quite elite. (As Fry explained on Futurama, the economics of mass media are: "Clever things make people feel stupid and unexpected things make them feel scared.") Nor are the big money boys enthusiastic about supporting an independent thinker who isn't a team player.

I don't just provide opinionizing. Over the last year, I broke the following stories that required extensive statistical analysis:

- Despite all the talk about how smart John F. Kerry was, he scored slightly worse on his military officer qualification exam than did George W. Bush, whose no brainiac himself.

- The enormously popular table showing that Kerry-voting blue states have much higher IQs than Bush-voting red states was a hoax.

- That the exit poll claiming that Bush won 44% of the Hispanic vote was wrong.

That the Hispanic vote totaled only 6.0%, not the 9% that Michael Barone speculated it would be, and that ten times more of Bush's incremental votes came from whites than from Hispanics.

- That the engine underlying why red states are red and blues states are blue is affordable family formation.

- That the most celebrated theory in the big bestseller Freakonomics -- that abortion cut crime -- didn't come close to meeting the burden of proof.

As well, there are book reviews that go far deeper than what you'll see anywhere else, film reviews different from anyone else's, and a lively blog.

So, I'm coming to you, my friends, hat in hand. Please don't make me have to get another real job! Corporate America might not survive a second go-round with me.

The Amazon donation buttons above provide you with an instant opportunity to become a patron of the arts and letters (a.k.a., to give me money). Donating to this pixel stained wretch is fast and easy. Your credit card is secure, and your privacy is protected at Amazon.com -- i.e., your name doesn't appear on donations that go through Amazon. [So I won't be be able to thank you personally.) Foreign currencies are accepted.

I'll add a Paypal button later.

Or you can E-mail me, and I'll give you my address, and then you can send me a check or cash.

You might be interested in how big a cut Amazon takes. It's quite reasonable: 2.9% of the total and a 30 cents fixed fee per donation. This has some implications that are fascinating (well, to me). For example, if you donate $1.00, then Amazon keeps almost one-third of it, or 32.9 cents. I only get 67.1 cents. Well, that would be pretty pointless, wouldn't it? I mean, you aren't feeling generous toward Amazon, now are you? Yet, if you kick in only a buck, they keep a hulking third of it.

A much more efficient solution is to (drumroll, please) give me more money. If, for instance, you donate $50.00, then I get to keep a full $48.25. That's a lot better!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer