The sitemeter here at SDA crossed the 1.5 million visit mark on Dec.31, 2005. In the past 365 days, there have been over 2.5 million more.
A big thank you to all who have supported the site with your donations, advertising, links, recommendations, media mentions, endorsements, votes, news tips, inside scoops, and lively commentary.
Thanks especially to the guest bloggers who so generously fill in when I’m on the road – Kathy Shaidle, Stephen Taylor, Steve Janke, Sean McCormick , Candace of Planet X, Paul of Cjunk and Damian Brooks.
On that note – you may have noticed Kevin Jaeger has been posting here on occasion. A pioneer of the Canadian blogosphere, Kevin walked away from Trudeaupia about 18 months ago. While there is no danger of SDA being converted to group blog, I offered a standing invitation to Kevin to post here whenever he gets the itch.
We don’t pretend to be all things to all people here – but it’s good to know the readership continues to grow, and with it, the expansion of ideas and discussion. Sometimes insightful, sometimes silly and sometimes offensive – I remind readers there’s a dead gopher at the top of the page for a reason.
On occasion friends ask me why I leave a comment up, or don’t rebut a post made elsewhere that attacks something I’ve written – the premise being, that I may somehow “suffer” if I don’t. My response to that can best be summed up in this way – “I don’t care. I have no ambitions beyond blogging. I’m not running for anything.“.
In the first incarnation of “small dead animals” (a fringe humour page originally hosted on my Katewerk.com website), a short exerpt from Mark Helprin’s “A Soldier Of The Great War” was featured at the top. In a way, it explains the purpose of SDA even better than the “yelling back at the radio” statement on the sidebar.
[Alessandro and Nicolo have just been spotted by the convoy]
“No matter what they say, don’t answer,” Allesandro told Nicolo under his breath, “and don’t move.”
“Why? What for?” Nicolo protested.
“To enrich their folklore.”
One of the women began to wail. Soon it was a chorus. The truck that had left the line quickly returned, and the farmers drive away, crossing themselves.
“In a thousand years,” Alessandro said, “this incident will be remembered. By then, of course, we will have become angels, devils, or a dragon that breathes fire — but we have given this rock a story that will be passed on.”
“What good is that?”
“It isn’t to our advantage, if that’s what you mean. However, it’s pleasurable to cast a line into the future, no matter how tenuously. You never know, the line may be unbroken all the way to the last judgment…. Nicolo, mischief is important….”
Vitruvius: “I would like to invite all my interlocutors to view this classic parody of our exercise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xpNj9nhoH4“
I really must protest. To compare what goes on here to philosophy is a gross insult to philosophy!
Let me clarify: The video is parodying philosophy. In saying that the video parodies “our exercise” vitruvius implies that what goes on here is philosophy.
Happy New Year to Focus (Kate too) and the whole SDA gang!
One of the things I appreciate about SDA is the way it has hooked up Canadian conservatives. I can’t think of another venue that would have been as effective for circumventing the regular routes of interchange and letting us all know that we are fundamentally on the same page.
I doubt that there has ever been a time when Canadians and Americans have been assured of as much solidarity as we have because of our conversations up here.
North America is much better off.
Note to exile: conservatism is about local control, not federal control or corporate control.
That should have been ‘Canadian and American conservatives.’
“Note to exile: conservatism is about local control, not federal control or corporate control.”
Yes, of course I know that’s how you put it to yourselves.
Kinsella’s comment may just prompt me to do a post comparing 1006 traffic patterns at the top 10 blogs with 2006 circulation figures of the top 10 newpapers….
“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home”
Ken Olsen – Founder and CEO of Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) – 1977
DEC was bought out by Compaq in 1998.
ET wrote – “And please, don’t go into politics.”
All I can say in response is this – “ask not what your country can do for you – ask if you would still be able to link to bonsaikitten.com”.
Happy New Year, Kate and everyone else here. Thank-you once again for hosting this site of sanity. I am forever grateful to you and your posters for so thoroughly trashing the CWB. My Dad died two years ago without living to see the demise of the one institution he most hated and berated (swore at or about at least once a week) -you achieved with a pen what he would have loved to do with a bulldozer. I am sure he knows so I’m saying Thank-you for him too.
Hak mir nisht ken tshaynik, Exile.
exile. Your comment on the post:
Greg in Dallas: “Note to exile: conservatism is about local control, not federal control or corporate control.”
Exile: “Yes, of course I know that’s how you put it to yourselves.”
Your comment is smug and patronizing. Greg in Dallas is writing the truth; that isn’t a subjective personal definition.
Oh, and the analysis of different political systems IS a philosophical analysis. Ever read Plato or Aristotle? Again, don’t be so smug and patronizing.
And no, capitalism doesn’t make people sheep; it does the opposite – it values their work and innovation. Communism, however, does indeed insist on the reduction of humans to sheep; that’s why it doesn’t work. People, you see, aren’t sheep.
Just so, ET. Indeed, that is why, I think, my hot-stove friends like the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xpNj9nhoH4 sketch so much.
Exile reminds me of the substitution of Marx by Deutschland, in the sketch, with only two minutes remaining in the match. The announcer asks the question, “Let’s see if he can put some life into this German attack,” and moments later observes, “Evidently not.”
But it is the disputations of team Deutschland after Socrates’s great goal off Archimedes that I find funniest (at the 3 minute 8 second mark of the video). And note that for almost all of the match, nothing important happens. All these things sound to me like the exercise of our philosophising on blogs: that’s why I selected that sketch for my New Year’s message this year.
Yes, Vitruvius – anything by Monty Python (and Fawlty Towers)… I liked the ‘Marx’…’Evidently Not’. Ahh, that sums up the results of Marxism perfectly.
Does Marxism produce a robust society? “Evidently not”.
As for Exile – what has he accomplished by way of debate and explanation on this blog? “Evidently nothing”. You could tell him: ‘gai feifen ahfen yam’.
Gai feifen ahfen yam was indeed what I was thinking, ET, but in the spirit of the season I thought that hak mir nisht ken tshaynik was friendlier.
“Bloggers will continue to believe they are supplanting the mainstream media, when – in fact – the data will show that the growth and influence of blogs is waning;” .. Warren Kinsella, one of his “predictions” for 2007.
And yet Kinsella himself blamed the CPC for not stopping the “well-organized” Blogging Tories from bashing the poor CBC during the last election. – – Political Staples
Pul-leeze!!! What side of his mouth will he be talking from next?
But, you must admit, axiologically speaking, the nice thing about Mr. Kinsella is that he’s so cute when he’s angry.
Kinsella fails to produce a reference that indicates that any meaningful number of leading bloggers have claimed any such thing.
As usual.
Please accept my belated wishes to all (left, right and center) for a Happy New Year in 2007. Thank you Kate for this forum…keep up the good work.