CalvinDude.com

Since the stats for my website are compiled on Eastern Time, despite the fact that it is not yet 2008 here in Colorado, I have the final 2007 stats, with comparison to 2006. And since there is no point to having stats without showing them off, I shall do so now! :-)

Here are the numbers.

2006: < = 5,181 Unique Visitors.
2007: <= 23,210 Unique Visitors. (+ 18,029)

2006: 21,630 Actual Visits.
2007: 70,086 Actual Visits. (+ 48,456)

2006: 73,173 Page Views.
2007: 162,578 Page Views. (+ 89,405)

2006: 112,316 Hits.
2007: 339,350 Hits. (+ 227,034)

BTW, this does not include 245,906 page views and 248,062 hits that were deemed to be made by robots, worms, or that had special HTML codes (e.g. "partial content", "forbidden").

Most of the traffic to my site came from the United States, followed by "unknown" (isn't that wonderful--must be the Martians), then Canada, Australia, and Sweden. The most surprising: I had hits from Tunisia, Macau, Cyprus, Bahrain, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Oman, and even San Marino.

The page that was most often hit was, of course, the feed for my blog. Also interesting, my music mp3s were hit a lot too. My song Revenge had the most, at 1918 hits; followed by A Simple Song (1430) and Way I Feel (1309). The techno music folder was hit 1275 times, showing that my techno stuff was way more popular than my rock stuff (711 hits) or just the general music folder (569).

54% of people who viewed this site used Internet Explorer. Second place at 17.7% was Firefox. Amazingly, I even had 0.3% using Lynx.

77.9% of my traffic was direct address or bookmark traffic. 3.6% was search engine traffic (leading that was Google (3345 hits), Yahoo! (334 hits) and Google Images (275 hits)). Finally 18.3% of my traffic came from links. The first was from a site I'm not going to give any advertising to since they were the cause of my having to institute hotlink protection on my mp3 files back in September. Following that I actually got the most links from my friend Travis who beat out the third place traffic from Triablogue. But it was close: Travis got me 431 hits compared to 424 from the T-Blog.

The most commonly searched term for my site was (surprise, surprise) “CalvinDude.” Who woulda thought that? Second most common was actually “Gene Witmer” (I did a review of Witmer’s critique of presuppositionalism, if you recall). I have to say that one did surprise me. My favorite search engine term was tied between “rosie is an idiot” (no less than THREE PEOPLE searched for that one) and “lottery numbers prediction using islamic method” (to which I say…um, yeah). I also had two people search for “i am a sick man … i am a wicked man” (which, if you’re literate, you will recognize as the opening to Letters From the Underground). I also like the fact that two people searched for “there are four kinds of people in this world cretins fools morons and lunatics” (which is a line taken from Uberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum). Although why I got “ford explorer making loud humming noise” is beyond me, and I honestly cannot answer “why did the people allow the pharaoh to have so much power?” (I assume that one is because of Global Warming.) Oh yeah and as to “angus young whammy bar system” as far as I can tell based on the videos I’ve seen, he doesn’t use one; “what is platonism simply?” is an oxymoron; “what does personal interpretation mean”–you’ve been hanging around too many Catholics; “graphic of toilet seat with democrats written on it” is something I’d like to see too; “reading paragraphs with passive sentences” is annoying; “myspace proxies that work” is a null set; “how is global temperature calculated”–tequilla mixed with a healthy dose of vodka; “the incontinant moon” (do I really want to know?); “cause of death admiral yamamoto” — small pieces of lead moving at high velocity, coupled with hitting the ground at a high rate of speed while surrounded by burning wreckage; and finally “what is an argument from silence” to which I say “”.

Behold the dreaded Wrath Of Global Warming^TM, coming soon to a state near you!

That’s right. 2,000 travelers are stranded by Global Warming because I-70 has been closed due to the increased heat coming off the mountains. It is literally melting the highway in places, causing spontaneous combusions, and has resulted so far in no less than seven cases of hypoxia. Further evidence of Global Warming is found in the fact that there are no polar bears in the mountains of Colorado. Finally, we rest our case by pointing out that this is the third day in a row that the sun has risen and people have died.

I just responded to an email from one of my friends. Some of his comments sparked my thinking, so I’m going to post excerpts from my e-mail back to him. This will only be my comments, so a little bit of “reading between the lines” may be necessary for those interested in following this. The basic gist of the problem is looking at why most pastors don’t bother with such things as defending the historicity of the gospels, explaining methods of interpretation, etc. So, without further ado, here’s some of what I wrote back.

—
My own opinion isn’t so much that there’s a problem with seminaries, but that it’s a product of our entire education system–public schools through seminaries. That is, very few people know how to actually read anymore (and I’m not talking about illiteracy). Most people don’t understand the mechanics of language, and how the meanings are conveyed, and what the importance of themes are–let alone getting into the grammatio/historical method of Biblical interpretation. Even before we get there, modern fiction already shows how horrific this has become. (Dan Brown would never have been published during the time of Dickens, for instance, because he’s a talentless hack who couldn’t write a non-cliched sentence if his life depended on it. Or, to paraphrase Chargaff’s response to Watson & Crick: “If the pygmies have a long shadow, it only illustrates how late in the day it’s become.”)

If we can’t read normal fiction well, we’re not going to be able to read commentaries, philosophical works, science essays, rhetoric, or the Bible itself very well either. And if we can’t read them very well, it makes it that much more difficult to try to present it to others too. Indeed, I’m reminded just of the comments sections on the T-Blog how difficult it is for commentors to understand anything that they read when they respond–not just by the way they constantly miss obvious satire, but by the fact that they will read a statement exactly opposite of what it says. If they do this with our arguments, written by people who are contemporary with them using cultural references that are coherent with today, it’s that much worse when it comes to Biblical texts, which use ANE references. And further, God uses satire too!

So I do agree that part of the problem could be due to a lack of imagination (not only in seminarians, but pretty much in everyone in American culture today). Is it because of the profligation of TV, video games, etc.? I don’t know. I like those things, yet obviously have no problem with literature too. I think it ultimately boils down to a statistic I once read (which is unfortunately unverifiable by me right now, but which I think might understate the problem rather than overstate it) wherein one in three Americans have attempted to write a book, yet only one in ten voluntarily read even a single book during the course of a year. If people read more so that they were not only familiar with writings in general, but actually loved what they read (because reading is addictive, IMO), I think that would solve the vast majority of the problem in American culture. If “American culture” even means anything anymore…
—

Well, I’ve now seen my seventh live Avalanche game, and the cumulative record for games I’ve seen is 3-4-0. This means that people who don’t like the Avs can buy me tickets because they’ve statistically won fewer than half of the games I’ve been to….

Yeah, I know it won’t work. But if you don’t like the Avs, you might be…shall we say “challenged”…enough to believe it.

In any case, I will point out one other strange thing that happened on the way home. For the first time in my life, I’ve been in a car that was cut off…by a police car! Yup, that’s right.

John, my brother-in-law, is a very heavy-footed driver. He also likes to drive pretty close to the car in front of him. So it makes it rather ironic that this is what happened.

As we drove from Denver back to Colorado Springs, John pretty much stuck to the fast lane. Just past Castle Rock, a lady driving a black sports car raced past in the right lane, and cut in front of John and the car in front of John. Remember how I said that John liked to travel close to the cars in front of him? Well, in this case the car only had about a foot of clearance to squeeze in between the car ahead and where John was.

Somehow, she made it in. John backed off on the gas and got another car-length of distance when a second car shot up on the right hand side and jerked over in front of him. We had just enough time to go, “Hey, what–oh, that’s the State Patrol!” when the lights went on and the lady who cut us off was dragged unceremoniously to the side of the road and beaten unconscious with a…no wait, that’s what would have happened in L.A.

Okay, so it’s not as big of deal. But it was interesting anyway. And of course I was sitting there thinking, “I wonder why the cop picked the lady who cut John off to pull over instead of…oh, say, pulling John himself over for his agressive driving.” ;-) Oh well. I doubt John realized that he was breaking the law too (because when you’re travelling at 75 mph and you only have about 10 feet between you and the car ahead of you, that’s what’s known as “Following Too Closely”), but at least the cop did decide to pull over the most dangerous driver at that particular spot.

So we survived I-25, but the Avs lost: the good and the bad.

The ugly is probably the Taco Bell we ate dinner at, but that’s not a story for children…. :-P

I got my lunch at Chipotle today. It was fun for two reasons. First, one of my coworkers hates McDonalds and I was able to tell him, “I’m eating Chipotle. Guess who owns Chipotle? That’s right: McDonalds!”

The second reason is because I got chips with their “hot” salsa. I put “hot” in quotes because…well, it ain’t hot.

I’ve had hot before. A few years ago, I was on a mission trip to the Navajo reservation by Farmington, NM. There, the Navajos gave us a bunch of jalapeños. I was there with a bunch of high school kids, I should note. And further, I must note: if you’re older than 20, you will never win a jalapeño eating contest with a high schooler. It just ain’t gonna happen.

But I tried anyway. My mouth quickly became a raging inferno, and I gave up after about three jalapeños. Then I promptly forgot about it.

About an hour later, we held communion for the group of kids who had come. After the bread, we prayed while the grape juice (hey, there were minors present) was readied. As we prayed, I happened to reach up and brush my eye.

A few seconds later, the Navajo Nation heard a tremendous scream of pain. For you see, the jalapeño juice was still on my fingertips. And when I rubbed my eye, it quickly made its way through my tear duct.

I managed to rush outside before the pain got too severe (there are small blessings in life). The unfortunate thing about jalapeño juice is that it reacts to water, and my tear ducts were flowing copiously. So for several years (it was really a couple of minutes) I cried and sniffed and burned and screamed and swore that I’d never eat any hot food ever again.

But for some reason, I don’t think Chipotle has mild hot sauce because of that. I think it’s because most of us are wusses. But that’s just my opinion.

Tomorrow I get to see the Avs play.

Which is why today I got invited to see a screening of Expelled, Ben Stein’s new movie. And the screening is going to be at 10:00 tomorrow.

The Avs play at 1. Only problem: they play in Denver, and the screening is in Colorado Springs.

This is the first time I’m almost sad that I’ll have to go watch hockey. Then again, I’ll be able to watch Expelled when it comes out in February anyway.

But still….NO FAIR!!!!

Stupid Bush.

I thought that the dingbats were wrong…but I’ve just discovered proof that it was Bush behind the attacks.

First:

See something strange there? I’ve highlighted it here:

Still don’t see it? Let’s zoom in:

And when we clean up the pic:

PROOF!!!!

Former Pakistania P.M. Banazir Bhutto was assassinated this morning. And while the title of this blog post (who woulda seen that coming?) could refer to that, it doesn’t. Instead, it refers to the dingbat wing of our nation.

For instance, comments on this ABC blog post include such gems as:

ok, this has all the signs of crap. No matter what comes out now, AlQueada has been associated with this. Welcome back to the politics of fear. Next, we will hear how someone admitted of this plot under torture and that if we had been allowed to be more aggressive with it we might have found something out sooner.

Posted by: Louis | Dec 27, 2007 12:10:48 PM

And my personal favorite:

A perfect excuse from the White House to enter in Pakistan????? How many american kids will die now? How many troops will be send to Pakistan?? How many mothers will be crying? Please, my friends No more War…no more suffering.

Posted by: norma | Dec 27, 2007 12:24:34 PM

Yes. The segment of our country that knows only blind hatred of George W. Bush thinks that this is all a big conspiracy for us to invade Pakistan now! There is no reasoning with people such as this.

But look at the end of the above post: “Please, my friends No more War…no more suffering.”

There’s a huge problem with this mentality. If you do not go after the thugs, you will get nothing but pain and suffering. Sorry “norma”, but those of us in the real world recognize that sometimes we need to kill people who would kill us. If you don’t believe it, let’s move it to a different topic. Take the gangsters of the 1930s. Do you suppose when Bruno shook down the store owners for “protection money” that, if the owner said, “Please, my friend. No more war. No more suffering. Let’s all get along” that Bruno woulda said, “Gee, you’re right”? Of course not. Bruno would have said, “Give me the money or I’ll cap you.”

When someone is already willing to do harm to an innocent person, then you’re not going to stop him with words. The fact is, evil people exist in the world. And evil people prey on others. They do not care about your concept of non-violence. They are more than willing to blow you to bits to get their way. This is reality.

There’s a reason God instituted government with the power of the sword.

As I shivered my way in to work today, walking into the deadly icy blast of frozen arctic air, I saw little white fluffs in the air. Just those little frozen ice crystals that skiers like to slide on. No biggie, ya know….

Some day, Global Warming will, you know, actually like happen and stuff. Then I won’t have to thaw out my hands by typing blog posts such as this.

I was talking with a co-worker today and somehow got onto the topic of depression. For anyone who wants to know what it’s like, I think the best description musically that I’ve ever heard is the Darkest Days album by Stabbing Westward. In fact, when I had depression, this album was pretty much on constant repeat for me (BTW: that wasn’t a good thing; if you’re depressed, this album is about the worst thing to listen to…but if you’re not depressed and you want insight, it’s the best explanation that I know of).