I used to fly United a lot (when I lived near the San Francisco airport), so I've been on a lot of United flights. In almost every flight, there's at least one cranky United stewardess. :)

Granted this was during some sort of a paycheck reduction / protest time period, so maybe they had changed since then.

PotatoCouch is right that at present time, the percentage of people who adblock aren't significant enough to make a big difference.

But I'm interested in the fundamental moral/ethical (if you can call it that) question of ad blocking.

@Steohawk: branding is a big part of advertising. So even if you don't click on a banner ad, the actual display of the ad itself is enough for the advertiser. These ads pay on a per impression basis (or CPM, in contrast to other types of ad that pay on a per click or CPC basis).

If you never and won't click a CPC ad and you block the ads, then the web owner isn't out any money. But that's not the case for a CPM ad. Granted each pageview is miniscule in monetary terms, but those are micropayments to the blog owner that you're denying him or her. Isn't that theft?

@thegiantsnail: It's truly up to you :) I prefer our readers to be happy (and presumably then tell their family and friends) and won't force anyone to unblock Neatorama. And I thank you for saying that we're a nice site!

Overall, I'm ambivalent about ad blocking - I can see both perspectives. So that's why I'm interested in your views.

The funniest set of guesses, EVAR! You guys are awesome :)

Congrats to ad, who got it right first: it's a banker's hammer to mark canceled checks.

This happened about a year ago. We went on a family vacation to Paris and got a great deal with American Airlines.

Things went wrong almost immediately: American Airlines lost our luggage when we arrived in Paris. This would be an inconvenience for any traveler, but it's a MAJOR inconvenience for a family traveling with a baby (We packed our baby food in the luggage).

When they finally delivered our bags, they didn't give us any receipt proving that they lost our luggage. When we said to them we'd need some sort of paperwork so we can claim our expenses to our travel insurance, they simply couldn't be bothered.

When we arrived in Boston for our return trip, our connecting flight to Los Angeles was canceled and we had to stay overnight in Boston. (We had ran out of baby food at this time, but it was easily available in supermarkets in the States).

And that leg was canceled permanently - we had to fly to Chicago and then to Los Angeles. Fine. So we did. And when we arrived at Chicago - our flight to LA was ... you guessed it - canceled!

After hundreds of people scrambled to rebook their flights, the flight was un-canceled! Those people who ran to the front and got on another flight couldn't get back on this one!

For all of our troubles, AA sent us a $100 voucher, which I promptly just throw away. I like the people in AA (they're much nicer than United, which has surly stewardesses - oh except in France, they're all rude), but AA's planes are just too old.

The joke, of course, is "banana oil."

I suppose the complaint "talking to you is like talking to a brick wall" is actually valid in this instance.

Thanks vup - I really hate it when people linkjack stuff. grrr! (Plenty of Neatorama's articles have been linkjacked, so I know how it feels!)

Whoa! Impressive. Great find, Miss C!

@empty-minded: that looks like spam to me, so it's deleted.

Um, just the name, folks....

The phone is ringing? Is it 3 AM?

Yes, that's awkward, wasn't it? Thanks for noticing, Nastia - I've fixed the sentence (I think!)

Maybe it's because I learned English by watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. :) Jen is right, English isn't my first language.

I learned English in high school - right at the end of the brain plasticity period for learning languages. I learned Spanish a couple of years later and Japanese afterwards, but they don't stick - the window had closed by then.

So if I make a gaffe every now and then, please forgive me.

Didn't the word "awesome" mean something else entirely before it meant "inspiring awe"? Isn't the root "awe" also mean "fear" (like the word awful used to mean "filled with awe"?)

We did - but don't worry, there's a built in mechanism to discount frequent but nonsensical comments. :)

Excellent find on both the OP and fanmode links, jstruan!