In my latest attempt to make blogging pay well enough to afford new camera equipment, I've started displaying Chitika search-targeted advertising. The cool thing about this is that all of you who read my blog regularly won't be seeing any additional ads because of it.

When somebody out there clicks on a link to Windypundit in the result set from a search engine like Google, their browser sends the URL of the search page in the Referer header line of the HTTP request. The Chitika system parses each Referer URL and, if it's from a search engine rather than a link from a fellow blogger, extracts the search terms and uses them to select a banner ad.

On the other hand, those of you who visit my page from your browser favorites or feed reader won't have to see the ads. Neither will people who get here via a blogroll link or a link from a web post.

According to Chitika, studies have shown that regular visitors to a site are annoyed by intrusive ads and are far less likely to click on them than people who stumble across the site in a search engine. So limiting the ads this way should allow me to use much more blatant and intrusive ads to snare search visitors without degrading the experience of my beloved regular readers.

It will be cool if it works.

In the coming weeks and months, I'm planning to try to dilute some of the legal blogging on Windypundit with a little blogging about the healthcare crisis in this country.

I should admit right here at the start that I'm woefully ignorant of how the healthcare industry works. It's the biggest industry in the world, and it will only become more important as I get older, so it seems I ought to start learning more about it. Blogging seems like one way to do that.

I plan to investigate several questions, such as

• Where can I get good information about our healthcare system?
• Is there a healthcare crisis?
• What's wrong with our healthcare system?
• Who or what is responsible for the problem?
• Can it be fixed?
• How do we fix it?
• Would a single-payer system be better?

I'm not entirely sure where to start. Ideally, I'd like to just buy a good book about our healthcare system and build from there using online resources, but this is such a contentious issue that there's a lot of biased information out there, and I don't know how to separate the good from the bad.

I'll probably just tear off a piece of the problem I understand and work out from there.

By the way, I'm posting this in the Disclosures department because one of the supposed problems with our current healthcare system is the large amount of money spent on bureaucracy, and my readers should therefore be told that a large share of my income is derived from helping companies stay on top of the paperwork for their employees' healthcare benefits.

Wish me luck.

Want to help me out at no cost to you? Read on.

I buy most of my photographic equipment from Adorama Camera.

Their site is well-organized and easy to search. For example, check out this page on 35mm & Digital SLR lenses (the link might be broken if you're looking at this article in my archives). As I type this, it shows 708 lenses.

You can choose to filter the lenses by manufacturer, digital/film, focal length, and style of lens mount. The filter choices are pretty flexible, in that you don't just drill down by manufacture; instead, you select as many manufactures as you want to see. You can also select from several different filter categories at the same time. For example, you can choose to see all macro or fisheye lenses made by Sigma and Tamron for the Nikon lens mount. The query finds 8 of them.

The adorama site has a good checkout process and provides detailed tracking information. They also have excellent customer service if you have questions about an order.

I mention all this because I just signed up for the Adorama affiliates program. If you click the Adorama banner at the top of this article or any other Adorama banner on this page (there's one in the left-hand column right now) I get a piece of the action if you buy something from following that link.

(It's a tiny percentage, but if only a few people decide to buy a Linhof Kardan Master GTL 4x5 view camera, Windypundit will cover its hosting costs for the year!)

So, check out Adorama and see if you can find what you want. Shop around. Compare prices. If you like what you see at Adorama, click through to them from my site and place your order.

I'd certainly appreciate it. Thanks.

Nick Gillespie sent me a free copy of Choice: The Best of Reason, edited by Nick Gillespie, Reason's Editor-in-Chief. I'll be posting reviews of anything I find that's interesting.

I use 2MHost for this blog. I like the service I get, and I recommend them. If you follow the link in the bar on the left, I'll make money if you sign up. Thought you should know.

I've joined the Amazon.com affiliate program. If you follow a link from here to Amazon and order something, I make money.