Kate:
During current voting for best Canadian website, I believe you've solicited votes rather agressively, like the career-minded, manipulative politicians many of your readers (myself among them) dislike. Now, to return a "favor", you are urging your readers to vote for a European website in a similar election, seemingly without regard to whether or not the reader has ever visited the site. I think you should reconsider your approach to dialogue. The best, most persuasive stance in the long run is that of patient, non-combative seeker of truth. If you became a power seeker addicted to applause, that outcome would be a sad undoing of your potential.

Potential for what, exactly?

"without regard to whether or not the reader has ever visited the site".

My readers are adults. What they do with any recommendation I make is their business.

And as I have known and read the well-regarded Pieter Dorsman (Peaktalk) for years, I'm confortable in recommending any site he's associated with to my readers. Unfortunately, I didn't know about it until it was too late to make a difference.

Kate:
You did not simply recommend that your readers visit a site that you respect. You recommended that they vote for him in a popularity poll, just as you sought votes for yourself. The question I'm putting to you is, why are you so concerned about winning these elections?

I'd like to vote for SDA today but I can't until later this evening, when the 24 hour wait, since my last vote, is over. It seems that even though the voting will end today before that, no allowance will be made: one less vote for SDA. (I think on the last day, if the voting ends before midnight, an allowance should be made for voters like me. Next year, I'll be sure to vote early in the day.)

Robert, lighten up. This is a weblog contest, not a government election! (And, even then, it's perfectly legitimate to share opinions with people we trust.) E.g., When voting for union positions, most of the time, one has not a clue WHO the candidates are: a tip from a trusted source does no harm. One can disregard it or maybe take part in promoting a worthy candidate. So, what's your problem?

Then you say, "The best, most persuasive stance in the long run is that of patient, non-combative seeker of truth." Are you talking religious messiah/follower or blog owner? In the political world, of which SDA is no small part, in order to FIND the truth and expose where it's not being told, verbal combat's often necessary. If that's not your thing, Robert, there are lots of meditation sites that would suit your, apparently, irenic nature. Why don't you go there?

I criticize the Saskatchewan Roughriders for soliciting victory rather aggressively, deviously planning to attack and manipulate opposing teams. I think they should reconsider their approach to football. Sports is about having fun, not "winning" or "losing".

The best way to play football is to share feelings, offer support, and have fun. If you become an athlete addicted to winning, that outcome would be a sad undoing of your potential.

It would seem that congratulations are in order. You would appear to have won this contest with 46.9 percent of the vote.

http://www.dailywav.com/0701/promqueen.wav

lookout:
I think a "patient, non-combative" approach is most effective in just about ANY situation short of war. If your position is sound enough, it (not you) will prevail.
As to whether I've taken this web contest too seriously ("Robert, lighten up"), you might have a point. If you did, I'd probably be the last to realize it. However, I have noticed on this blog an unhealthy (in my view) tendency among some to regard Kate as a "leader", and her solicitation of votes seemed to stoke that tendency. But perhaps I've misread matters. It won't be the first time I've done so.

Andrew:
If you're playing football, by all means fight hard. If you're at war, if it comes to war, then by all means win. In most other cases, however, truth is best served by quiet diligence.

Hard to believe Raymitheminx finished 2nd.

Kate congratulations!

Anyone know any more of this?

From Sask Votes:

"Meadow Lake Mistake
By Lara Fominoff
Updated November 8, 2007 - 11:12am

As it turns out, the constituents of Meadow Lake...aren't really too sure WHO their MLA is.

Last night, results from the returning office showed NDP incumbent, Maynard Sonntag defeating Jeremy Harrison of the Saskatchewan Party by 111 votes.

Sonntag reacted to winning...and Harrison accepted the fact that he lost.

Bu since then we're finding out there was "an error" in the counting, and new figures show Harrison with a 17 vote advantage.

Elections Saskatchewan is not commenting at this point.

There are still about 120 absentee ballots and hospital ballots to come in. The Meadow Lake returning office says it will not receive them until November 19th."

Robert,
This weblog award is a form of competition. Competition is not a bad thing. Competition promotes excellence. Winning a competition increases ones stature. So this blog's reputation is enhanced by such a recognition. Therefore more people may visit and may be swayed by the discussions to turn away from progressive ideals like socialism, social engineering, Kyoto, and that competition is a bad thing.

Oh, and congrats Kate. When I log in, the first blog I visit is SDA. So proud too, that you live in a small town just a few kms from me (Saskatoon). How cool is that? :)

Lighten up Robert Pujat. Nothing wrong with Kate soliciting votes. I think SDA has the most traffic of any Canadian blog, so it is not a huge surprise that she has lots of ppl who would vote for her.

Congratulations, Kate, on a well-deserved win. I voted about 8 times, twice for Kathy. And the rest for SDA.

Kathy has a tremendous blog, but of course disallows comments and so lacks a dimension that SDA possesses.

I fully understand how Kathy can't have commentators. She would create flame wars that would require fire departments to put out. The spite and venom that would be generated would simply be beyond the scope of a human being to handle.

Robert Pujat, Kate is a professional dog breeder and commercial artist. Small Dead Animals is not the profit center of her operation. She only mentions her two professional passions from time to time, and I think most of us enjoy hearing about the dogs.

The point is that SDA really defies the tendency of the human mind to begin to see institutionalization when something reaches popularity.

Kate does this blog for the fun of it, to yell back at the media, and present topics that are of interest to her.

I would say the biggest threat relative to SDA would simply be if she stopped having fun with it or started to think that she had to present topics or opinions for some reason other than her own interest.

If she ever got tired of it, she would just say the hell with it and busy herself with her very productive life.

*
"andrew said... best way to play football is to share feelings,
offer support, and have fun"

it's the fuzzy, bunny circle of friends leftbot mentality at its
low expectation-having best.

hugs and smiles... good.

competition... bad.

lord love a duck.

*

Robert says, "The question I'm putting to you is, why are you so concerned about winning these elections?"

I don't know if you took a peek at the 2nd place contestant's blog, but she also wanted to win.

What's wrong with wanting to win?

Nothing.

What's wrong with putting in a plug for someone in another category?

Nothing.

Congrates to Kate.
Another outcome of these contests is you get a chance to visit other sites that otherwise you may have never heard of. I had to see who was in the running with SDA and had a very good laugh at second place. I won't go there again.

Today I checked out the site that was winning in the Best Blog section. Postsecret.com is a very interesting place. Drop on by and who knows maybe you will send in one of your secrets. Check out the vid section. Cheers

I think both Brad Wall and Lorne wanted to win yesterday. Loved Brad's prediction for the game
Roughriders 38, Calgary 21, no recounts.

Having been 'patient and observant' and still managing to vote daily for SDA, congrats Kate for another well deserved win!

Looks like another win Kate! You can plug you site to me for a vote any day! This is the best site, that why some, that I won't mention visit too!
Keep up the great job!

Robert Pujat, Kate is a professional dog breeder and commercial artist. Small Dead Animals is not the profit center of her operation....Kate does this blog for the fun of it, to yell back at the media, and present topics that are of interest to her....If she ever got tired of it, she would just say the hell with it and busy herself with her very productive life.

Well said, Greg in Dallas. Kate has lots of interesting posts every day and even still manages the odd post (along with her guest bloggers) while she is on one of her numerous long grueling road trips to dog shows (Euros--look at a map of Canada and US please). I don't where she gets the energy (like Michelle Malkin in the US) but I admire it.

*
wow... this is the person in second place...
with 30 percent of the vote?

i don't get it.

"i no longer take zoloft. i weaned myself off of it cos i think it made me fat that's the word on the street about that drug. it's suppose to take a year to be out of yer system completely. so now i am not on any anti-depressants and i feel good i can't tell if there is a huge difference cos i was drinking all the time whilst on them anyway boring. thank you for reading my update bye."

she's gotta have plenty of neurotic,
estranged, 20-something disciples

*

Congratulations on the Best Of. (Where's Albatross? I'll have to get together with him on a conspiracy to unseat you next year. We can be Albatross and Werebasset, the SDA-slayers. Yahoo! Then we'll slay the Roughriders...) Good of you to get behind Climate Audit. He was behind Bad Astronomy before you got the vote out, if I recall correctly. Nice work.

Congratulations!

Please keep up the aggressiveness, and the winning!!

Cuz passiveness and losing are for the Leftards and their patsies!

It looks as if Bad Astronomy has won by a very small margin. Too bad.

At closing time Climate Audit was in the lead.

Somehow the totals keep growing for the second place blog.

Somethign strange is going on in the Science poll. Others have noticed the votes kept coming in after the cutoff as well.

More - just checked the forums and the admins are aware of the phenomenon.

Doh! ray mi is big, but SDA is Biggar.

Sean Gleeson
Administrator

member is online

Joined: Nov 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 29
Location: Oklahoma City
Karma: 3 Re: A poll continues to climb after closing?
« Reply #14 on Today at 10:09pm »

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The announcement will be tonight, at the expo in Vegas. In just about an hour, in fact.

The technology category has been giving us fits, and we might not announce a winner in that one, until certain issues are resolved. But whether we announce a winner tonight or not, the winner will be the real winner, with the most real votes before the polls closed. You can be sure of that.

Congratulations on the win, Kate. Well deserved.

posted at Bad Astronomy...

"# Mikeon 08 Nov 2007 at 11:04 pm
The site administrator said that they did not program the site to stop counting votes after the polls closed but that the votes that came in after 2 PM Vegas time would be corrected back. CA won according to the media outlet at the convention where the results were announced live."

Robert, This weblog award is a form of competition. Competition is not a bad thing. Competition promotes excellence. Winning a competition increases ones stature. So this blog's reputation is enhanced by such a recognition. Therefore more people may visit and may be swayed by the discussions to turn away from progressive ideals like socialism, social engineering, Kyoto, and that competition is a bad thing.

O, and readers can make up their own minds who they want to vote for. If Kate endorses someone that doesn't automatically mean that her readers follow suit. Instead they may leave a comment in which they disagree with her.

Kate: I'd like to thank you - again - for your support. We finished second, but it was an exciting race (almost as exciting at the best science blog).

Hey - I don't have a blog, but why should that stop people from voting for me? Why am I not being treated fairly, it's not my fault that I don't have a blog.

I declare this blog voting thing a biased and nonbloggerOphobic event. If you voted then you are a bigot, AGW denier, and should be sent to the CHRC for investigation.

You did not simply recommend that your readers visit a site that you respect. You recommended that they vote for him in a popularity poll, just as you sought votes for yourself. The question I'm putting to you is, why are you so concerned about winning these elections?
Posted by: Robert Pujat

This reminds me of where rabble was telling people to vote in the "worst canadian" contest then got upset when they lost getting upset because places on the right did the exact same thing.

re the science poll one wonders if it's the same guys who send out spam voting for them.

Congratulations Kate. You put a lot of effort into this site and the applause is well deserved.

dave

wow your readers are irritating, good work, three cheers and all of that.

[deleted. Smarten up Andrew. That was uncalled for. - ED]

congrates Kate.

well deserved , another trophy for the left side of the page, but not a trophy for the left side of the politics.

Kate: I think in order to make it fair you should consider redistributing your votes so all bloggers finish with the equal amount of votes... :)

Congratulations Kate well deserved!

1) Congratulations, Kate.
2) Let me join the chorus of the puzzled on raymitheminx. I hadn't heard of the site until I saw it on the list of nominees, but I just don't get it. It my be my advancing years, but I just can't understand the unpunctuated, uncapitalized, free-form meanderings, and why she seems to think that this is something that other people might be interested in.

There was a guy on TVO last night:

Andrew Keen | The Demise of Authority and Truth.
Killing our culture: How is Web 2.0 undermining professionalism, knowledge and authority?
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779059&ts=2007-11-08%2020:00:15.0

A critic of teh interwebs, he was maybe a little harsh on amateur bloggers, and defended 'authority' a bit too strongly, but I think raymitheminx was the kind of thing he had in mind. Navel-gazing twenty-somethings talking to an ever-shrinking circle of other navel-gazing twenty-somethings, until it is one person as both performer and audience.

imethisguy, I'm in total agreement. Raymi's blog is a prime example of "self-referential", a disturbing quality which is epidemic among the young in this society. It is definitely a result of the loss of authority.

As a teacher, I see it all the time. If one is on hall or stair duty, the vast majority of kids walk by as if you aren't there. A few will acknowledge your presence by looking at you. (A tiny minority might even smile!) Most act as if you're invisible. Some will even brush up against you or even bump you and ignore your presence—not mine though: I speak up at that point! There seems to be a "glass ceiling" where adults are concerned. The kids know you're there, but ignore you.

The smug "nothingness" we see at Raymi's blog is all too typical. And, yes, it's fitting, I guess, that her blog was in the same competition as SDA. At school, competition between responsible adults—most teachers (I'm not sure about administrators)—and self-referential, full of themselves kids with mush for thoughts, goes on all the time. And, when push comes to shove, ’guess who often wins?

Scary.

(What many felt here, when it looked like Raymi might "win", is what teachers experience every day. A nasty picture, indeed.)

No comment. Dough sent.

Throw me into the "How on earth did Raymi get nominated" crowd. When I saw the mid-poll results, and noticed the high number of votes for Raymi, I was excited that I'd found another outstanding Canadian blog.

I laughed when I followed the link to discover. . . Well, you've all seen it. Not much to say.

Congratulations on the win Kate, but it must be a bit embarrassing to have a blog like that give you so much competition. Ahh, such is the reality of a web poll.

i do not have mush for brains, my blog is dumbed down for a reason, you boomers are way more navel-gazy than my generation and hey thanks for killing the planet too.

I went over to raymi's blog, and here are my reactions.

1. I feel pretty old.
2. Raymi's not very cerebral, but she has a lot of energy.
3. She has a picture of somebody wearing a Dick Cheney Hunt Club tee-shirt (couldn't quite see the lettering). I think that's pretty neat. The idea that Dick Cheney is regarded as such an outrageous symbol. Maybe Dick can become the new Che Guevera.
4. The semi-nude picture didn't get past me. "Thanks, raymi. Old guys need love too."
5. In the shadow of my discontent I realize I would not go over big on raymi's site. Ruminations about Paul Tillich, Mercea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell are not going to excite most of her readers. (And I don't think my advice about how to gun somebody down in the dark will go over big.)
6. I don't think ET would be popular there either.
7. WL Mackenzie Redux is not going to be popular there.
8. The phantom might do all right. (phantom, if you make out, let me know.)
9. I looked at raymi's interview on the radio and see that she is a distant relative of Jack Kerouac. (A lot of us tried to follow that model, not a good idea.)
10. Raymi, I think it's quite an accomplishment coming in second to Kate's blog. You've got a lot of really seasoned, experienced, and educated people on Small Dead Animals, and to be able to come in second with an energetic expression of popular culture is not easy. Good luck, and stay on the meds.

Congratulation Kate
Fantastic site!

raymi:
Not all of us here are "boomers" thank you very much.
...and the whole "no we're not - YOU are!" argument does not help convince "boomers" of healthy brain activity in young adults.
I would hazard a guess that your one of the youth consumed with consuming all the toys (dig cameras, computers, ipods, readily available pharmaceuticals, etc.) those "boomers" have created/invented/produced.
Perhaps it is those consumers who demand these disposable goods (wants not needs) who should bare the majority of responsibility of your so called "killing the planet".

my $0.02

Congratulations again Kate

you've only got me half-pegged, i'm pretty different from my own "kind" and i'm "justsaying" back at you guys who are fly-by passing judgement upon me w/o actually putting some effort into these conclusions. my computer is ancient and missing 6 keys and that is me in the dick cheney shirt, and fuck that monster. all walks read my blog actually, doesn't mean i don't rip on them though. blogging is business, i have been at it since i was 17 and i hate people my age, that's why i hang with fogeys. bye.

I think it would be a pretty tough job keeping a blog going. Let alone attracting an audience.

Raymi is 24. She's done well coming in 2nd.

She obviously attracts others around her age. They get the content and that's why they come back.

Having said that, congratulations to Kate.

It's not just the winning. It's the tearing apart.

raymi, if you come back:

To quote some women of my acquaintance:
"It's not you, it's me"

It is I who can't figure out what you are trying to say. It is I who am so unhip as to look for punctuation when a thought ends. It is I who am uncomfortable at exposing myself, and at watching other people exposing themselves as you do.
Yes, I am a boomer. Yes, some of my cohort are navel-gazers, too.

"Can we be just friends?"

dick cheney shirt and fuck that monster
but not ahmadinejad not bin laden not al zawahiri not assad not hamas not hezbollah not islamic jihad not the women-hating mullahs of iran who hang teenage girls from cranes for loving boys...
but glad u hate people your own age that redeems u
no the deflaut bogeymancheney whos tryin to save your sorry a**
your sorry a** should say its sorry ...

Well done, Kate! Congratulations.

Congratulations, Kate. Regrets for not having voted more frequently, but all I got was an empty ballot flash image when I went to the vote-for-best-Canadian page. The choices didn't seem to load.

Thankfully, this inconvenience didn't keep you from the win.

Congratulations Kate! I had not known that you've won 4 years in a row. I did know about last year's though.

My feelings are mixed on the Best Science award. It clearly looked to me that Climate Audit had it won at closing, and it appears that sininster forces were at work helping Bad Astronomy.

From reading both blogs, the bloggers themselves were pretty classy about it, but a certain lesser contender lost my respect.

"Raymi is 24. She's done well coming in 2nd.

She obviously attracts others around her age. They get the content and that's why they come back."

I don't understand her blog, but she has previously won 3 Weblog Awards (2006) so some people must like it.

Previous wins and a good 2nd place showing this uear are also to be congratulated.

Me no dhimmi,

Most people are seeded by the constant din of the MSM. To make matters worse, the unquestioned memes become socially viral.

Unfortunately, few investigate factual history and creed like you have.

Hey, I have questions about Bush, Cheney. But I'm not losing the plot.

If Raymi is smart, she'll start.

Raymi might dig ghost of a flea.

i lived in new york during 9/11, i heard the first plane hit and i saw the towers crumble, and i suffer from post-traumatic stress now because of it. i spend as little time as possible thinking and talking about "those guys" because i do not enjoy arguing in circles and to be honest, i'm petrified of them.

A tie is declared for the best science blog ... whatever that means.

Who are "those guys?"

1. The Skull and Bones Bush regime?

2. Saudi funded, Mohammad inspired, Islam?

3. The Zionist/Mason, Rothschild controlled, Illuminati?

It's kinda fitting that we have a political solution to the "Best Science" blog.

"blogging is business, i have been at it since i was 17 and i hate people my age"

Well, congratulations there, Raymi.

At 24, I was in my 6th year of running my own business.

Had it not been for the Weblog contest, I never would have known about Pharyngula. Now THAT is something to behold. I wasted a couple of hours following one thread (that's like confessing to watching porn) and I've never seen anything quite like it on the web.

PZ Meyers describes himself as "an associate professor at a small liberal arts college" but his idea of repartee is to tell visitors to "f_ck off". His lobotomized cheering section is even worse.

For a really good look at what warmists are all about, check out this thread, which had 687 posts when I last looked. Then, try to post the link on other blogs so that as many rational people as possible can see the really ugly face of the apocalyptic warmist religion.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/hello_stan_palmer.php

Some here have expressed incredulity at how Raymitheminx could be SDA's closest competition. Underlying this incredulity is an assumption that SDA offers interesting and insightful content, while Raymitheminx does not. This assumption may be flawed.

Congratulations to Kate on your win. Too bad her goal of surpassing 53.8% of votes cast was denied by someone who's entire blog is devoted to documenting and musing upon the minutiae of her daily life. That sort of self-indulgent and irrelevant navel-gazing is, as others have noted above, an unfortunate and wasteful pathology of today's youth -- nothing like the self-indulgent and irrelevant echo-chambering that SDA readers prefer to engage in.

Z,
not exactly.

An overwhelming portion of SDA readers are politically active and vote.

We are engaged seriously in issues that affect North America on the levels of our contributions, our civic participation, fielding and supporting candidates, and grassroots activism.

So many of these subjects are not academic to us; they are serious matters that we engage with our life energy, our money, and our participation.

And on a personal note, as a Vietnam vet, I can assure you that I would have loved to know that there were blogs like Kates supporting us when we were in harm's way. I presume that a lot of active-duty military in Canada and the US appreciate her efforts.

I don't have anything against raymi's blog. Many of us have kids and grandkids her age, and I'm sure we're as bemused by her as our parents were by us. The one thing I would point out to her age group in respect to us is that we are not the World War II generation. We are the generation that actively confronted the civil rights era and bought Mick Jagger records.

The best way to curb global warming is to curd all that HOT AIR comming from the mouths of various eco-wackos like GREENPEACE,ENVIROMENTAL DEFENSE FUND,SIERRA CLUB and the others and especialy AL GORE the king of hot air and wild imagination

Greg in Dallas: An overwhelming portion of SDA readers are politically active and vote. We are engaged seriously in issues that affect North America on the levels of our contributions, our civic participation, fielding and supporting candidates, and grassroots activism. So many of these subjects are not academic to us; they are serious matters that we engage with our life energy, our money, and our participation.

In her real life, Raymitheminx could likewise be politically active, engaged in civic participation, involved in grassroots activism, etc. This would all be worthy of praise, but it wouldn't take away from the fact that her blog is self-referential and indulgent. Hence, navel-gazing.

In similar fashion, it may indeed be true that the majority of SDA readers are deeply engaged with serious issues in their own lives, but insofar as this engagement happens, it happens outside of SDA. On this blog, in the comments section, there is seldom any genuine political dialogue or debate; instead, there is typically only agreement, partisanship, and insults. Hence, echo chamber.

(I had an invitation, but better things to spend my money on, unfortunately.)

Ack! Worst reason ever. Please. Just ask, then insist, then demand, and your readers will respond. Tell us how much is needed and keep us posted. There's next year to plan for.