I noticed with some dismay that Google adSense served a banner ad for the Church of Scientology earlier today. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t offer tools to filter contextual ads, so I am unable to prevent these ads from showing up on the site.

For the record: I consider Scientology and its membership to be fucking lunatics - a filthy pseudo-religious cult populated by thugs, idiots, and con-artists. And those are their good points.

I understand this is not a unique position, but I want to make absolutely certain that everyone understands that we do not approve of these ads, or the organization they represent. Likewise, if you see any ads promoting political candidates or religious organizations, these are likewise an unfortunate side-effect of our adSense based advertising system.

As a matter of full disclosure, I (meaning me personally, not Yellow Menace) do support several atheist / secular humanist organizations, including the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and the Council for Secular Humanism. I refrain from running ads for these organizations, however, as I don’t believe they have any relevance to the subject matter of our website. So if you do see banner ads for these, or similar, organizations adSense will once again be the culprit.

Sorry for the mid-morning rant…

I just noticed that a ‘McCain For President’ banner was running at the top of the site, and wanted y’all to know that we (and by ‘we’, I mean ‘Yellow Menace’) don’t officially support anyone in the upcoming election. We use Google AdSense throughout the site, and have no control over what ads are served on the pages. So - if you see political ads, we are collectively apolitical and did not take money from any party to display them.