I just upgraded my website to Wordpress 2.5. The administrative area is a lot nicer, though not much changes for my readers. The Printable View links aren’t working; let me know if you spot any other problems. Update: print versions are back, as the creator of the WP-Print module has updated for the changes in Wordpress. I added my modifications again; it’s the same as before except with an improvement: if I link to a URI twice, it’s only displayed in the endnotes once and referenced with the same number in the text, saving ink.

Also, I’ve added more advertising to help my adventure to become profitable; there are Google link ads in the sidebar, footer, and above the list of comments for each entry. If you read my donations page, you know how unsuccessful I am at solvency, so hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

The profit police are as old as eternity, but insidious as the devil. They threaten to steal our happiness, to sour us with envy, hatred, and guilt. Their orthodoxy is codified in institutional policies all over the world. They kill everyone. They are us.

Profit is not just money. Profit is also prestige, notoriety, and mere exposure. The profit police take keeping up with the Joneses to the extreme. They tell us that promoting our names or starting a business is selfish, greedy, and wrong. They are responsible for the professionalization of jobs that have no business being bureaucratized. They create sad terms like vanity press, as though not having a book approved by a committee makes the author an egotistical lunatic. Their influence starts with us, at the micro level.

The Junior Anti-Profit League is alive and well on the forums of the Internet. Well-meaning adults persist with policies of “no advertising, no self-promotion, no links to your website, no ‘commercialism.’” They cry foul at affiliate links, for no reason further than to stifle the success of their users (my photography articles are proudly littered with them). Brilliant computer-programmers publish free software with the clause, “no commercial use,” as if every dollar earned with the help of their applications comes straight from their wallets. As if profit is bad. As if the very act of seeking prosperity—called the American Dream by many—is the bane of humanity. Run the phrase,