Yesterday I spent some time on hold on the phone and browsed through my "rarely read" sources, only to find that this week has some great material that's gone largely unnoticed. Let's begin with a field that barely gets mentioned at SEOmoz: Politics.

• FactCheck.org
  I've been referred to this site in the past, but had forgotten how impressive this resource can be. The basic premise is a group of media researchers and fact-checkers who run, line-by-line, through controversial statements made in the political sphere (sadly, at this time it's just for the US). Recently, they've touched on the Clinton interview on Fox News and the body armor controversy. I love the complete lack of bias and purity of content - they simply confirm or refute points based on evidence and treat unknowns honestly and directly.
  
  I wish there was a fact check for tech news and the search space. With so much incorrect media, misleading statements and deceptive promotions, it's no wonder we find collaborations between Mike Grehan & Edel Garcia trying to provide accurate reporting. I'm thinking this sort of content deserves its own categorization in the realm of linkbait - the blogosphere loves to dispel myths in the mainstream press (and among their own).
• Incompetent People Have No Clue
  This interesting bit of sociology caught me off-guard and is almost certainly of interest to anyone who regularly works with frustrating incompetence in their personal or professional lives. From the article:
  
  "People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well...

  ...One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence."
  
  One could make the assessment that arrogance = incompetence while humility = excellence. In my own experience marketing professional services, I would make the same connection. Those who tout their skills the loudest often earn the disdain, rather than respect of their colleagues and clients.

• Selling Technology to Small Business
  This article made a few good points about the components required to market effectively over the web. Personally, I liked:
  
  Psychographics vs. Demographics:  Traditional approaches to segmenting customers based on demographics is not as effective as doing so by psychographics.
  
  and
  
  All Roads Lead To The Website:  When Constant Contact does its own marketing, it makes sure that all of its “calls to action” ultimately lead to the website.  From there, the focus is on converting these leads to customers.  By ensuring that they have a consistent “path” from their various marketing channels to a single point of entry (their website), they can keep their customer acquisition costs down.
  
  Also note the embedded Reddit button atop the piece. I've never seen one of those before, but it's a terrific idea. I've mentioned it in the past, but it bears repeating - the quality of traffic that Reddit sends is far higher than Digg, even if the numbers are only 1/10th the size.

• Optimizing Your Content Pages
  My friend Jon Mendez has a terrific article based on his presentation from OMMA New York - When Every Page is a Landing Page. He's got the entire presentation embedded via Slideshare (which made a splash this week) as well as screenshots and crisp explanations of how to convert visitors into customers.

• Degree of Difficulty
  One of my favorite authors (me and everyone else in business), Malcolm Gladwell, had a terrific, emotional post on how hard it is to be an expert in a given field. His point - that folks outside an industry often find it hard to comprehend the skill and talent required to do their job - is something I've been mulling over in my head ever since I read it.
  
  I remember watching Phil Mickelson at the PGA (or was it the U.S Open?). He was in the rough, just off the green, and chipped within a few feet of the hole. Ho-hum, I thought. He bogeyed the hole. But the color man was incredulous. Mickelson, he pointed out, had taken a FULL swing at a ball in an impossible lie and sent it 20 feet, to within an easy putt of the hole. I've never played golf, so I had no idea how hard that was, or why that was anything special. The announcer, though, had a completely different perspective.
  
  It made me think that when I approach folks outside my own sphere, it would be wise to take note of how much expertise is required to accomplish what they've done.

• Acquiring Poker Sites
  In the world of SEO affiliates, Greg Boser wrote about how the loss of gambling affiliate programs in the US has been seized upon as an opportunity by an ex-client. If you're abandoning the poker affiliate space and are seeking an exit strategy, this might be right up your alley. I know a lot of people are royally irked about the loss of income and opportunity thanks to the congressional ban.

Any offbeat stories you think are worth a mention?