{"id":78877,"date":"2024-12-09T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2024-12-09T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=78877"},"modified":"2024-12-06T15:45:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T20:45:37","slug":"monday-miscellany-12-9-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Miscellany, 12\/9\/24"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/h4>\n

Our national debt in light years.\u00a0 Google\u2019s woes. And Bible sales are up 22%.<\/p>\n

Our National Debt in Light Years<\/h4>\n

Our national debt is now $37 trillion.\u00a0 That\u2019s one trillion more than it was in July.\u00a0 That comes to $107,494.78 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.\u00a0 The share for every taxpayer is $218,181.82.<\/p>\n

David Hebert<\/a> of the American Institute for Economic Research has more fun facts about how much money we owe.\u00a0 He informs us that each bill of our paper currency is 2.61 inches wide, 6.14 inches long, and 0.0043 inches thick.<\/p>\n

\n

So if we were to stack up what we owe in $100 bills, each of which is only 0.0043 inches thick, the stack would be 24,431.8 miles high.\u00a0 The circumference of the earth is 24,901 miles.\u00a0 So if we could lay the stack down, it would almost go around the earth.\u00a0 And at the present rate, we will achieve this milestone in April.<\/p>\n

If we were to use $1 bills to pay off our debt and lay them end to end, since each of them in 6.14 inches long, 37 trillion of them would go on for 3.5 billion miles.<\/p>\n

A beam of light, the fastest entity in the universe, would take 5 hours and 6 minutes to go from one end to the other.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Hey, but according to the AI search engine Perplexity<\/a>, that\u2019s only 0.0005817933 light years.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t sound so bad!<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

HT: Dominic Pino<\/a><\/p>\n

Google\u2019s Woes<\/h4>\n

Mighty Google, which stands astride the internet like a colossus, is facing problems, not only from legal attempts to break it up for being a monopoly.\u00a0 But because searching on the internet is changing.<\/p>\n

So reports Christopher Mims<\/a> of the Wall Street Journal<\/em>.\u00a0 Google makes most of its money from advertising, but other players are soaking up that revenue.\u00a0 When users search for a product to buy, they are increasingly by-passing the Google search engine to go straight to Amazon, which seemingly stocks everything they might need and whose revenues are soaring.\u00a0 Young people in particular are clicking links on TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s integration of AI, which gives a summary of the information searched for before listing specific websites, means that fewer users are scrolling down to the websites themselves.\u00a0 Or to the ads and sponsored links that appear after the long summaries.\u00a0 Google is also facing competition from search engines that are all AI (such as Perplexity<\/a>, mentioned above, which gave me the answer I needed after I could make no sense of the \u201cLight Year Calculator\u201d Google sent me to).\u00a0 Mims quotes NYU business professor Melissa Schilling:\u00a0 \u201cAI is to search what e-commerce was to\u00a0Walmart.\u201d\u00a0 Not that AI is all-powerful.\u00a0 AI\u2019s weaknesses are also a problem for Google.\u00a0 AI is generating so many hallucinations, fake sites, and so much content based on other AI content, that the quality of all internet searches has gone down.\u00a0 (I\u2019ve found that Google\u2019s summaries and Perplexity answers are not always reliable.)<\/p>\n

Here are some details cited by Mims:<\/p>\n

\n

The rate at which people clicked on ads that appear in search results was down 8% compared with a year ago, according to data<\/a>\u00a0from advertising platform Skai. It\u2019s not clear why this is happening, but one logical conclusion is that it\u2019s the result of Google\u2019s own AI-based summaries, which eliminate the need to click on sponsored links or scroll down to where the ads are.<\/p>\n

One study from January by search-engine-optimization software company Authoritas found that Google\u2019s AI answers in its search results could\u00a0upend rankings and traffic to existing websites<\/a>. And ad sales firm Raptive has projected that the full rollout of this change to search could\u00a0erase $2 billion in revenue for publishers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Few will shed tears for Google, though its plight shows the weakness of regulators\u2019 claim that it is a monopoly and demonstrates once again that worldly power never lasts.<\/p>\n

Bible Sales Are Up 22%<\/h4>\n

Comparing the first ten months of 2024 to the same time last year, Bible sales have jumped 22%.\u00a0 Regular books were up only\u00a0 1%.<\/p>\n

This follows a rising pattern.\u00a0 In 2020, 8.864 Bibles were sold; in 2021, the number rose to 11.859 million; in 2022, it stayed fairly flat 11.907 million; in 2023, that rose to 14.162 million .\u00a0 This year\u2019s Bible sales have already come close to reaching that number with 13.713 million as of October, with two months\u2013including Christmas\u2013yet to go.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal\u2019<\/em>s Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg<\/a> reports on this phenomenon, noting the irony of this Bible surge is taking place at the same time that 28% of the population is unaffiliated with any religion.\u00a0 Some of them, though, may be Bible buyers.\u00a0 Trachtenberg cites book store owners and publishers who say that many of the sales are coming from first-time buyers, college students, and other young adults in Generation Z.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our national debt in light years.\u00a0 Google’s woes. And Bible sales are up 22%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":65538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,19,44],"tags":[218,15568,938,15565,1533],"class_list":["post-78877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-economics","category-government","category-technology","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-bible-sales","tag-google","tag-internet-search-technology","tag-national-debt"],"yoast_head":"\nMonday Miscellany, 12\/9\/24<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our national debt in light years.\u00a0 Google's woes. And Bible sales are up 22%.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Monday Miscellany, 12\/9\/24\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our national debt in light years.\u00a0 Google's woes. And Bible sales are up 22%.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cranach\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-12-09T11:00:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-12-06T20:45:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/305\/2023\/03\/cranach-seal.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"250\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"276\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/\",\"name\":\"Monday Miscellany, 12\/9\/24\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-12-09T11:00:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-12-06T20:45:37+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\"},\"description\":\"Our national debt in light years.\u00a0 Google's woes. And Bible sales are up 22%.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Monday Miscellany, 12\/9\/24\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\",\"name\":\"Cranach\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\",\"name\":\"Gene Veith\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Gene Veith\"},\"description\":\"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. He has authored over 25 books on Christianity and culture, literature, classical education, and theology. Dr. Veith previously held academic and editorial roles at Concordia University Wisconsin and WORLD Magazine. A respected voice in Lutheran and classical education circles, he holds a Ph.D. in English and several honorary doctorates. He and his wife, Jackquelyn, live in St. Louis and have three children and twelve grandchildren.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\",\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gene_Edward_Veith\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/author\/geneveith\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Monday Miscellany, 12\/9\/24","description":"Our national debt in light years.\u00a0 Google's woes. And Bible sales are up 22%.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Monday Miscellany, 12\/9\/24","og_description":"Our national debt in light years.\u00a0 Google's woes. And Bible sales are up 22%.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/","og_site_name":"Cranach","article_author":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/","article_published_time":"2024-12-09T11:00:41+00:00","article_modified_time":"2024-12-06T20:45:37+00:00","og_image":[{"width":250,"height":276,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/305\/2023\/03\/cranach-seal.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Gene Veith","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Gene Veith","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/","name":"Monday Miscellany, 12\/9\/24","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website"},"datePublished":"2024-12-09T11:00:41+00:00","dateModified":"2024-12-06T20:45:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1"},"description":"Our national debt in light years.\u00a0 Google's woes. And Bible sales are up 22%.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-9-24\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Monday Miscellany, 12\/9\/24"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/","name":"Cranach","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1","name":"Gene Veith","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Gene Veith"},"description":"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. He has authored over 25 books on Christianity and culture, literature, classical education, and theology. Dr. Veith previously held academic and editorial roles at Concordia University Wisconsin and WORLD Magazine. A respected voice in Lutheran and classical education circles, he holds a Ph.D. in English and several honorary doctorates. He and his wife, Jackquelyn, live in St. Louis and have three children and twelve grandchildren.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/","https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gene_Edward_Veith"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/author\/geneveith\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}