Blogging & My Ego

The question of the day is; What the heck is wrong with me?

I have been blogging now for about 8 months, and I pretty much know what my readership is.  I get roughly the same amount of hits every day.  (Except Saturday & Sunday, nobody visits then.  I do good to get 10 hits on those days.)

So here’s why I wonder what is wrong with me.  I check my stats like 3 times a day.  Why do I do that?  Am I just the world’s biggest narcissist, or is it normal?  I remember when I wrote my first post I quoted Scott Adams and said that starting a blog is tantamount to saying that what the world needs is more of me.  So maybe all bloggers are narcissists.

I definitely don’t judge myself by the amount of friends I have on Facebook, (65 btw) or Myspace.  In general I don’t care about being popular, but I sure do look at my blog stats.

I have some friends who are bloggers, maybe they can weigh in and tell me if they do the same thing.  In fact, do me a favor and give them some hits today.  Help out their numbers by clicking the links below just in case they are all as concerned about their stats as I am.

Adam Reed

John McLamb

Scott & Briana Underhill

Chuck Poe

Tim Schindler

Best Web Junk (September 26)

Best warning sign ever.

This is a headline you probably thought you’d never see.

The best fail of the week

I cant stand the Yankees, but I have to admit to being a bit sad about Yankee Stadium closing.  This is so cool.

This is pretty neat

Portal is one of the few games that I have played through more than once.  It’s fun funny and clever, and it has the best ending of all time.  This is a fan video of the song “Alive” from the closing credits.

The cake is a lie

Another post about politics

Please be sure to read the * at the bottom for my disclaimer.

Last Tuesday I wrote a post complaining about, among other things, covering elections by polls. Then I promptly went out last Wednesday and read this Zogby poll.  It is very telling.

Today I want to post about politics again, but this time from a different angle. Before I begin I want to say that I am certain that no hope for this world, or for our country is found in politics, but only in the gospel of Jesus. (You can read more of my thoughts on this subject here, in what I consider my best post ever.)   It does, however, matter how we vote.

So how should responsible Christians think about politics? There are those who would say that there is nothing to think about; we are Republicans, right? Then there are those others who would say that the Republican party is too ungodly they don’t care about the environment and they are only concerned about money so we are to be Democrats. My pastor says look at the party platforms and see which you are. (Here are links to the Democratic and Republican platforms 2008 version.) I must admit that at 123 pages I did not read both platforms.  I did, however, skim them both, and my conclusion is that although the two sides are in opposition on most major issues, there is plenty covered by both parties that I can disagree with.  (I disagreed with a lot more in one than in the other)

How are we, as responsible Christians, to vote?  It seems that it comes down to issues and how a particular candidate feels about those issues.  Let’s imagine that there are only a handful of issues, even though in reality there are more like hundreds,  those issues include:

• The economy (it’s the economy, stupid) or see here
• The war on terror, including the Iraq war
• Technology issues, such as net neutrality
• Sanctity of human life issues
• Defining Marriage
• Healthcare
• Immigration
• Energy policy, including climate change policy
• Social security
• Issues of privacy vs. security
• Crime control

Here is where it becomes more difficult, it is not  as simple as merely dividing up the candidates by their positions, seeing who is on my side more often, and selecting that candidate.  The fact is, these issues do not all weigh the same.  If I am in agreement with one candidate in his view of net neutrality and another candidate in his view of the sanctity of human life, (which, in fact, I am) those are not equal issues.  Both are important, but it is more important to protect human life than to protect the internet from the greed of the telecoms.

For quite a long time evangelicals have been considered a two issue group. However, lately there is this notion in the media that evangelicals are no longer interested in the same issues.  This is largely brought on by Rick Warren’s movement to assist with AIDS in Africa and the recent statements by evangelicals on global warming. In response I will quote Dr. Daniel Akin, who said his [SEBTS] presidential forum last week, “We’re not looking for a different moral/social agenda, but we are looking for an expanded agenda.”

I would agree with that statement totally.  What I am saying is that Christians should still be committed to the issue of the sanctity of human life in all its forms, from the youngest to the oldest. Christians should still be concerned about defining marriage legally the same way that it is defined biblically. Those, however, should not be the entire list. We should be concerned about the poor in our nation and around the world.  We should be concerned about those in war-torn parts of the world.  We should be concerned about the AIDS epidemic both in Africa and in America, and we should be concerned about the way we care for our planet.

I guess, 700 words into this post, it’s time to reach some conclusions.  So let’s ask the question again; How should a responsible Christian vote?  At the very least a Christian should be educated about the candidates, know their views on the issues, and vote according to his or her beliefs.

It is also imperative that Christians know which issues are most important.  In the Zogby poll I mentioned earlier, the number one issue by a landslide was the economy, and that was before the disastrous events of last week.  I submit to you two things.  First, the president actually has very little control over the economy.  The current issues have arisen from corporate debt, and the next collapse is coming because of personal debt.  Second, don’t sacrifice morality for money.  What I’m saying is; it’s not the economy, stupid.

A final word. Vote! Don’t ignore your local elections. In all reality, your mayor, or governor or city councilman will have much more effect on your life than the president. Voting for president is important, but don’t ignore your local elections.

* Although I am a staff member of LaGrange Park Baptist Church, the views and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and not that of the church.  They may not be construed as an endorsement or attack on any candidate or party on behalf of the church.  They are my views as an individual.

A Very Weird Day of Fishing

Last Friday I went fishing, just as I do most Fridays, at the largest lake on Fort Bragg, Mott lake.
It was a very strange day so I thought I’d simply share a story of what made it weird.

For starters, the night before, the weatherman said it would be very windy, and he was very much right.  When we first got to the lake it was about 60° and the wind blew consistently the entire time.  I was freezing at first, no jacket and shorts on.  By late morning it had warmed up, but it was seriously cold at first.  It doesn’t make any sense to fish in crazy high winds because, for one, it becomes impossible to keep the boat where you want it to be, so you either work yourself to death on the trolling motor or you have to anchor all the time, and that’s just impractical.  We fish out of a 10 foot johnboat and at the levee end of the lake the water was actually whitecapping by early afternoon.  It made fishing in the main part of the lake nearly impossible.  The wind was directly out of the northeast. Last time I was home and went fishing with my dad he had this little rhyme.  This is not it exactly but it’s close:

Wind from the West, fish bite the best.
Wind from the East, fish bite the least.
Wind from the North, do not go forth.
Wind from the South blows bait in their mouth

So anyone want to guess how fishing was on this day?   Which brings me to the second odd thing about the day…Tiny fish

It is not unusual [for me] to go fishing and get totally shut-out.  But it is unusual to go fishing and catch baby versions of what you are fishing for.  I’m pretty certain it is a healthy lake, but all we caught were these tiny jacks and bass.  By tiny I mean 6 inches or less.  Seriously we caught 5-6 apiece but they were all tiny.

I said at the outset that we were fishing on Ft Bragg.  It is not unusual on Ft Bragg to hear the rumbling and booming of artillery in the distance.  But on this day it was a non-stop cacophony of booms and machine gun fire from the nearby ranges.  The nearest impact zone to the lake is at least 3 miles away, but there were 3 booms in particular that made me flinch.  They were so loud and abrupt that it seemed like we should duck.

Another first for me on this day was the presence of a drone aircraft.  I have never seen one of these flying before but there were 3-4 flights overhead during the short trip.  It was a strange looking aircraft and made an unmistakable sound.  (It looked like the one in this pic the best I could tell.)  I tried to take a video of it with my camera, but it was too hard to find in the window with the boat moving the way it was.  So you’ll just have to take my word for it, it was a strange-looking loud contraption.

Edit-  Here’s a vid where you can catch a glimpse of it.  You can certainly hear how loud it is and also hear the wind -Edit

There were other strange things that day, there was a man there with an RC boat, which one time broke down and he had to swim after it, we also fished out 2 tennis balls.  I just thought I’d share my adventures with the readers of my blog

Best Web Junk (September 19)

If you are a  Simpsons fan, this map is amazing

a new monster

A duck scared of water?  Maybe because it’s a Chicken in disguise

The best of GraphJam this week

A very difficult game (at least for me)

Since my other post was about politics this week, here’s a high quality rant from Craig Ferguson

Before & After

I hoped that my spike from “What’s the baby using?” would translate in to more readers of my blog on a regular basis.  You remember this image from before:

Before the spike

What I hoped was that a few people would read more of my blog than just the one post and maybe stick around.  “What’s the Baby using?” is by far my most popular post ever, and I really improved my numbers, but it is well & truly over now.  I thought I would share my new stat graph before the spike disappears forever.

After the spike

The trend is not completely over, I still have never had a day when that particular post got 0 hits, even though my blog has fallen to 8th place in a google search for “what’s the baby using?”  Tom Merritt mentioned it on Buzz Out Loud about a week ago (and Jason didn’t know what he was talking about), and Len, the man who created the meme, himself commented on this post, and put an update on his site.

And there’s this

Thanks to all of you who visited.

The Political State of Affairs

This post on politics will probably not be what you expect.  That post is coming either tomorrow or Thursday.  But since this is my first ever post about politics, please go to the * and read my disclaimer.

This is an election year.  For me it’s a year to vote for governor and US Senator as well as another office you may have heard of, President of the United States.  One of the interesting phenomenons that is a part of the election process is the coverage in the media. 

I am not writing this post to simply complain about the coverage, although I am not happy. I already know the situation. In college I was a political science major. Part of studying poly sci in this age (even though I was in college last century) is studying politics in the mass media. Although there is a new form of mass media since I was in college, these lessons are still useful.

The first lesson about politics in mass media is about the practice of negative campaigning. (The Willie Horton ad is the most famous attack ad of all time.)  The short summary of negative campaigning is this – it works – very well. And refuting the messages in attack ads does not work – at all. So how do you combat negative ads?  With negative ads, of course. People all say that they hate them, but they work, so they are not going anywhere.  Get used to them.  BTW, now you can recognize an attack ad before it begins because the “I’m ___ ____, and I approved this message” is at the beginning rather than at the end as a way of separating the candidate’s name from the negative ad.

Here’s the second thing to learn about politics in mass media, the news only covers the election as a horse race. For example, if one candidate comes out with a huge policy statement, lets say he is rolling out his policy on terrorism. Here’s is the coverage you will get on the news on every level. A brief summary of the plan, nothing that would ever take longer than 15 seconds, maybe some bullet points, and quite a lot of discussion of how the plan will affect the candidates standings in the polls. The closer the election gets, the less talk of anything substantive. The coverage becomes only stories of new polls and how a particular candidates latest move will affect their standings.  After a debate, the number 1 question will always be; “who won?” Nobody covers what they actually said, unless it was incredibly stupid. Watch and see as we get closer to November.

The world we now live in is slightly different than when I was in college. Now we have the internet. (We had the internet when I was in college, but it was video free and blog free.  It was a very different web.)  A quick perusal of digg on any day, (Go there now, I’d bet there are at least 3 of the top 10 stories on politics (and probably negative about McCain/Palin)) or the top technorati tags or wordpress tags will show you what is popular. And politics is very popular. The problem with the internet is that so much of what we see and is popular is what is called an echo chamber. It’s people blogging about something somebody else already blogged. Then, rumors and half-truths become so popular that nobody can tell them from the truth. I still know people who believe the Obama is a Muslim who refuses to say the pledge of allegiance, and Palin’s youngest child is actually her grandchild. Nobody believes it because of any proof or reason, but because they heard it so often. That is the major problem with the internet as a news source, so much of it is just a giant echo chamber. Over half my posts are just linking to videos or other stuff. And my blog is an actual blog with original content a couple of times a week. Of the thousands & thousands of typepad, wordpress and blogger blogs, I would love to see what percentage contain original content as opposed to reposts of links of stuff from around the web. (BTW – That is why there will always be a need for professional journalists, Their form may just change from newspapers to the web.)

Finally I believe there is a greater influence of celebrity now than there has been in the past. Celebrities have always been involved with politics, but it seems like now there is either much more news about them, or somehow they get much more attention. In just the last week, Matt Damon, Pamela Anderson, and Lindsay Lohan have all publicly bashed Sarah Palin. Every time it makes headlines, and people seem to care.

* Although I am a staff member of LaGrange Park Baptist Church, the views and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and not that of the church.  They may not be construed as an endorsement or attack on any candidate or party on behalf of the church.  They are my views as an individual.

A New Post is Coming

I’m working on a post about politics, but I just saw this video on myextralife.com and it’s too good to wait til Friday to share it.

It’s even a little bit scary when he gets close

Best Web Junk (September 12)

First, this is the best thing I have read all week

Is there anyone who doesn’t want to wake up to the smell of bacon?

You’ve always wanted to know, now here’s the chance to pull of the heist of the century and learn one of the world’s most valuable secrets

Here’s another awesome link from engadget

My favorite link of the week – http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

And a very interesting vid from Adam of the Mythbusters to make up for last week’s disappointing link involving the mythbusters – via myextralife

An Observation

I have lived in North Carolina for 5.5 years and all along I have heard jar flies.  But whenever I talk about them nobody knows what I am talking about.

Shells from jar flies

So today I was mowing the yard and I saw the shell of one on a fencepost.  I decided since I have this blog to just ask my readers. I picked up this whole batch without even looking hard to find it.  There are the shells from dozens of them in my back yard.

Do you have jar flies where you come from?  do you call them something else?  Technically they are called cicadas, but the only ones I ever hear called cicadas are the 13 year variety.  If you had ever seen [or heard] the 13 year variety of cicadas you’d remember it.

By the way, it’s really funny to take one (the full grown kind with wings) that fell out of a tree and put it on somebody’s back.  When they touch it, it’ll make that buzzing sound they make, and the person will make a screaming sound.  Really it’s quite hilarious.