Six Years

by

Uneventfully, last week marked the sixth anniversary of when I started this blog. Since then,  a lot has happened.

  • The Boston Bombers killed 4 and maimed scores in another “faith based initiative”, were discovered, one was killed and the other captured, and (finally) read his Miranda rights.
  • Congress failed to pass a weakened version of a bill designed to require people to get background checks when they buy a gun, despite overwhelming popular support.
  • A fertilizer plant in Texas, that had not been inspected in decades, blew up, killing scores (we think – it’s so bad, it’s hard to count the bodies).
  • Related to the last one, Texas legislators that voted against federal support for Hurricane Sandy relief came begging for federal support for West, Texas.
  • Anonymous hacked The Facebook page of the Westboro Baptist Church, and have been running it quite successfully, and humorously, since then.
  • Ricin-laced letters were apparently sent to President Obama and another US Senator.
  • Multiple countries are legalizing same-sex marriage. New Zealand and, it looks like, France are the latest.
  • A Pennsylvania couple, previously convicted of allowing their child to die by refusing medical care in favor of the power of prayer, apparently did it again.
  • The poor are still getting poorer; the rich, richer.

All in one week!

In the past six years, I’ve written over 500 posts, welcomed over 10,000 comments, and have racked up almost 500,000 visits to the site (I’m less than 1000 visits shy). On my best day, I had over 7,000 visits.

I feel like I’ve slowed down a bit. I spend more time commenting on other sites, and on Facebook and other social media, than I do writing posts here. In looking at the stats, I’m getting only about 1 post a month in, when I used to write  about 15.  Part of that slow down I attribute to actually feeling like I shot my wad, I’ve said everything I wanted to say. Fortunately, there always is something to write about.  Just referring to last weeks news, for instance:

  • When will the world wake up to the fact that,  in the words of  Steven Weinberg “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” The surviving Boston Bomber has already indicated that his religious fervor drove him to kill.
  • On the really modest proposal concerning background checks for those purchasing guns, is it so hard to comprehend that when someone sets off a bomb that kills 3 people and injures many more, it’s not considered that big a deal to completely shut down a major city to find him, yet it IS considered a big deal that someone has to fill out a form before they buy a gun?
  • Republicans keep touting “small government”. Part of their philosophy is that the least regulated is best for the country, that deregulation of business i.e. no governmental oversight, will bring the most benefits to the people of this country, at the least cost. Try telling that to the people of West, Texas.
  • On the same topic, can you spell HYPOCRISY? Apparently, Republicans can’t. The gall it must have taken to plead, hat in hand, for federal assistance in Texas when they turned their backs on NJ and NY, is simply…hypocritical.
  • and on…and on.

But it’s still fun writing these posts, so as long as that continues, I’ll continue. There’s always Ted Nugent to fire up the crowd.

3 thoughts on “Six Years”

  1. I don’t feel particularly inspired to post anymore. I also don’t bother commenting too many places much either. It becomes tiresome to engage in the same arguments because people and things really don’t change much. People are not rational. They prefer escapism and self-delusion. It doesn’t have to be religion. That’s a big lesson I learned from engaging in these theist arguments. Good thing is that years of such engagements, slicing through fallacious arguments and outright bullshit by these people has fine tuned my abilities to do the same with others on subjects far beyond religion. So if nothing else, the experience has given me that. 🙂

    I do like the hypocrisy of allowing a city to be shut down but not to force a background check for buying a gun. Don’t forget most of these same people have had no problem with being either groped or x-ray scanned at airports, too. Many also don’t care about all the other invasions of privacy like wiretapping and CISPA but don’t you dare impose on my right to have a gun RIGHT NOW!

    And as for companies regulating themselves, don’t they teach The Jungle in schools anymore? Oh right, Corporate backed Republicans consistently cut education funding.

Comments are closed.