I have a question, one which may seem obvious to everyone but to me seems rather perplexing: Why did various television stations and websites remove their advertising or other revenue-gainers on September 11 as a "tribute to the spirit of America"? Doesn't it seem contradictory that, as an act of solidarity against a common enemy who is opposed to our capitalistic society, we would choose to go the anti-capitalist route for a day?

Of the more absurd "tributes", the site with which my fantasy football team is registered decided not to charge people to access the site between the hours of 9:30AM-1:30PM and 5:30PM-9:30PM, a ludicrous practice that is in effect every other day. I appreciate having 24 hour access to the site, but I would hardly call that act "patriotic".

CNN.com, often a source of funny news stories that I link to here, showed their American spirit by replacing all of their banner ads with a candle image linking to a charity site. This gesture made me realize one important fact: CNN has a hell of a lot of ads. In their normal state I don't really notice them anymore, but when they are all replaced by a black background and a candle it's quite easy to see the sheer amount of space on their website that is normally taken up by "hit the monkey and win!" ads.