Category: Blogging

Keith Burgess-Jackson's new blog.

. . . and best wishes for the New Year.  This arrived last night from a liberal reader:

I've read your blog daily for six years now because I want a rational conservative voice in my life to challenge my own (very opposite) beliefs. You've provided that in spades, and I'm grateful for it.

Would that all liberals were as good-natured and open to challenge. We might then be able to hope for a lessening of tensions in the coming year. But I am no pollyanna: 2018, I predict, will be a year of acrimony to rival the worst years of the '60s.

Some Posts and Ghosts of Christmas Past

'Merry Xmas'

Egyptian Muslims Serve as Human Shields at Coptic Christmas Mass

Socializing as Self-Denial

Merry Scroogemas!

Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Limits of Doxastic Voluntarism

In the Interests of Prandial Harmony

Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality

Of Christograms and Political Correctness

I sometimes think that it is not, but then I get a comment like the following:

Your blog is much more instructive than most of my formal education. Thank you for that.

Numerous comments like this, for which I am grateful, convince me that it is a good use of time.

Yesterday and the day before this site received the same number of page views, 1,559.   That's never happened before. Deep Meaning or mere coincidence? I reckon the latter. (Total page views since Halloween, 2008: 4.3 million.)

In any case, I thank you all for your patronage. Any complaints? Double your money back if not completely satisfied.

I’m burned out and will take a break from blogging. Don’t expect to hear much from me before September. Basically, I’m up against total irrationality, and I think it’s worthless to engage in rational argument.

Agreed, liberals and leftists are beyond the reach of rational argument. They need defeat not debate. Let's hope it can be achieved by political means. Nevertheless, there are reasons to continue writing political posts. One is to develop one's ideas. Another is to support and inspire fellow conservatives. A third is to persuade the open-minded and undecided.

I look forward to tomorrow and the start of Year 14.  Operations commenced on 4 May 2004. 

Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these thirteen years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.'  Blogging for me is like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and playing the guitar and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to.  Some of us are just natural-born scribblers.  We were always scribbling, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals daily maintained.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all of that. 

Except that now I conduct my education in public.  This has some disadvantages, but  they are vastly outweighed by the advantages.  I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, some in the flesh.  You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't snag some interesting fish.  The occasional scum sucker and bottom feeder are no counterargument.

I thank you all for your patronage, sincerely, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. I have a big fat file of treasured fan mail that more than compensates me for my efforts.

I am proud to have inspired a number of you Internet quill-drivers.  Some of you saw my offerings and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

And now some thoughts on this thing we call blogging.

1.  In the early days of the blogosphere, over 15 years ago now, weblogs were mainly just 'filters' that sorted through the WWW's embarrassment of riches and provided links to sites the proprietor of the filter thought interesting and of reasonable quality.  So in the early days one could garner traffic by being a linker as opposed to a thinker.  Glenn Reynold's Instapundit, begun in August 2001, is a wildly successful blog that consists mainly of links.  But there are plenty of linkage blogs now and no need for more, unless you carve out  a special  niche for yourself. 

2.   What I find interesting, and what I aim to provide, is a blend of original content and linkage delivered on a daily basis.  As the old Latin saying has it, Nulla dies sine linea, "No day without a line."  Adapted to this newfangled medium: "No day without a post."  Weblogs are by definition frequently updated.  So if you are not posting, say, at least once a week, you are not blogging.  Actually, I find I need to restrain myself by limiting myself to two or three posts per day: otherwise good content scrolls into archival oblivion too quickly. Self-restraint, here as elsewhere, is difficult.

Here is my definition of 'weblog':  A weblog is a frequently updated website consisting of posts or entries, usually short and succinct, arranged in reverse-chronological order, containing internal and off-site hyperlinks, and a utility allowing readers to comment on some if not all posts.

'Blog' is a contraction of 'weblog.'  Therefore, to refer to a blog post as a blog is a mindless misuse of the term on a par with referring to an inning of a baseball game as a game, a chapter of a book as a book, an entry in a ledger as a ledger, etc.  And while I'm on my terminological high horse: a comment on a post is not a post but a comment, and one who makes a comment is a commenter, not a commentator.  A blogger is (typically) a commentator; his commenters are — commenters.

There are group blogs and individual blogs.  Group blogs typically don't last long and for obvious reasons, an example being Left2Right.  (Of interest: The Curious Demise of Left2Right.) Please don't refer to an individual blog as a 'personal' blog.  Individual blogs can be as impersonal as you like. 

3. I am surprised at how much traffic I get given the idiosyncratic blend I serve. This, the Typepad version of MavPhil, commenced on Halloween 2008.  Since then the site has garnered 4.2 million page views which averages to 1,352 page views per day.  In recent months, readership is around 1,300-1,700 page-views per diem with various spikes some up to 4,000 in a day.   Total posts: 7,486.  Total comments: 10,159.

4. How did I get my site noticed?  By being patient and providing fairly good content on a regular basis.  I don't pander: I write what interests me whether or not it interests anyone else.  Even so, patience pays off in the long run. I don't solicit links or do much to promote the site. 

Blogging is like physical exercise.  If you are serious about it, it becomes a daily commitment and after a while  it becomes unthinkable that one should stop until one is stopped by some form of physical or mental debilitation.

Would allowing comments on all posts increase readership?  Probably, but having tried every option, I have decided the best set-up is the present one: allow comments on only some posts, and don't allow comments to appear until they have been moderated. 

. . . you'll like my blog. If you don't like to think, you need my blog.

I like this guy. Here he questions the weird obsession with Russia.  He also doesn't much cotton to 'climate change' alarmism.

The crazier hate-consumed lefties become, the saner we conservatives appear.  We should thank the loons for the contrast effect.

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