Thoroughly aware of the potential problems involved in this approach, I propose using “Marxist” to refer to subsequent developments of Marx’s thought which can be shown to deviate significantly from Marx’s own writings (taking into consideration the question of Engels vs. Marx), and “Marxian” to refer to concepts, ideas, arguments which are properly those of Marx. I am guessing that some people may already be using the terms in this way, and indeed it fits with common usage (e.g. we talk about ideas or concepts being Husserlian, or Arendtian insofar as they were espoused by those authors).

To take what may be the most obvious example, the base/superstructure distinction as formulated in the Second International would qualify as Marxist, but not Marxian, while we could speak of the Marxian distinction between absolute and relative surplus value. Again, the way the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was developed by Lenin and subsequent theorists/militants would likewise qualify as Marxian, though not Marxist.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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So why PayPal, a company who you might think would know better, would use this confusing and non-clickthrough-inspiring call to action text is beyond me.

Though the analytics of the campaign will of course be the final arbiter, I can’t imagine many people being inspired to “shop smarter now.” Not only was the email fairly unintelligible with images turned off (a big design no-no), but the call to action was so vague and un-motivating that I instantly hit “delete” when I saw the actual copy.

Thoughts such as “I already shop online,” “why would I buy anything from paypal?”, “paypal sells things now?” and “I’m at work, and don’t want to be shopping” ran immediately through my head–not the kind of things you want potential customers to be thinking.

Actually clicking on the button takes you to a really slow-loading “campaign redirect” landing page, which then takes you to another slow-loading product shopping page. No deals, no prominent explanation.

I can only hope for PayPal’s sake that they were running an A/B split, or perhaps even an A/B/C/D split, and I got the worst copy of all the offerings.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The gist of the entry was that you should probably leave your dynamic URLs as-is, because Google has no problem crawling them; re-writing them, if done improperly, can increase the difficulty of crawling your site, and is also hard to maintain.

I think Google seems to think that doing URL rewrites is more difficult than it is. I would like to think that most websites are either using a CMS that can adequately handle this (as is the case with Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla! for instance), or are being run by someone who has the technical expertise to ensure that this is done appropriately and straightforwardly.

But even if that isn’t the case, Google’s advice here runs counter to the more reasonable advice provded in Tim Berners-Lee’s W3C Style article, Cool URIs Don’t Change.

There are many reasons for using “cool URIs”, including the fact that they are easier to type, recognize and remember for people. One of the best reasons offered in this article, though, is that if you have a bunch of technology-dependent cruft in your URL, then you decide to switch the underlying technology, you’re going to end up with an entirely different URL structure, thus breaking all the bookmarks and links that have ever been made to your site.

I think the advantages of cool URIs outweigh the risks associated with mapping your dynamic URLs to static URLs, and it is kind of narrow-minded for Google to look at this only as a search engine crawling problem, rather than seeing it in a larger context.

UPDATE

There’s a good post over at SEOmoz on the same topic that lists a bunch of other reasons why, on balance, rewriting your dynamic URLs is still a good idea.

The greatest sign that the US is a nation in decline is its apparently increasing desire for joke politicians. I’m not talking about this (though seeing Joe Biden like this makes me worry a bit less about the potential for some video of me in a compromising situation to leak onto the web):

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m talking about this:

apparently she's a better shot than Cheney

I’m talking about a gun-toting potential vice-president who thinks climate change isn’t human-caused, and thinks we should teach about the “debate” bewteen creation science and evolution in public school. (I also believe in teaching the controversy.)

I’m talking about GW Bush, the Governator, Dan Quayle, Jesse Ventura, and Ronald Reagan.

For some reason, the US is the only country in the world where, in the race to become the nation’s leader, it’s a serious advantage to not seem too smart.

The good news from Palin’s selection is that the Republicans won’t be able to whine about Obama’s purported “lack of experience” any more. Not that experience is any guarantee of anything: was Bush more experienced than Obama? Perhaps, by most definitions of “experienced.” But that didn’t stop him from making stupid decision after stupid decision.