Friday when Nicholas Clifford reported an ad on my post below (Obama between a Rock and a Hard Place), which offered a gorgeous Filipina single or at least a picture of one, I chuckled, and went on praying for the salvation of Bender. Saturday morning catching up on the latest comments on an earlier post "51st: Federal Largess," I had an ad asking me if I wanted to learn more about Jews!!! Wow! I thought. How do they know?Clicking through I find that dotCommonweal is connected to Google ads. If you click through enough, you get to a page that tells you that the ads appearing in your browser are based on your interests as expressed in your browsing history. Google seems to let you edit categories and gives you the multiple digit number of the cookie it has on your machine. You can bow out somehow, or so it appears. I can only hope that Commonweal is making tons of money on this....Apropos of Nicholas's report, I just got this ad.Commonweal: Is this such a good idea?

Margaret O’Brien Steinfels is a former editor of Commonweal. 

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