My popularity has, I'm sorry to say, returned to the normal 30ish hits per day. I wonder how intelligent that is... Like, is it counting search bots like Google and MSN? It says it doesn't count me, so I'm assuming it checks to see if my IP is signed in and nullifies the entries. I'm not exactly sure how many of those hits are actual people, but the statistics does manage to turn up where people come from (usually direct and from good ol' blah.richardpratt.net), what they read and what links they click on. Based on those, I would say that maybe 10 to 15 people show up... Eh, whatever. I'm content with the notion that I can stir up the Internet with my "hairbrained" ideas. In fact, I got some random guy commenting on my Gaffes post. Pretty cool.
That being said... I wanted to let you know that the "Interesting Articles" thing to the right of my blog is NOT an automated feed reader. That's my Google Reader Shared Items Page that it's reading... In other words, the articles that show up there are articles that I've read and found interesting. They're not automatic, so don't think it's just a NewsBusters feed. The only reason they show up so often is because I think they're the most interesting! In fact, at this moment, I have a Slashdot article on there about the Large Hadron Collider. That thing scientists are going to fire up in September to see how things worked during the Big Bang. Talk about a colossal waste of money, though I'm sure they'll find some interesting things during their experiments, they're assuming it'll prove Big Bang or something. I predict they'll generate a black hole that'll suck the planet away from the inside. Or maybe a portal to Xen through which the Combine and Headcrabs and Vortigaunts will pour through and ravage our planet. Man, forget catastrophic global warming... We need to worry about the Seven Hour War.
Anyway, back on track... The reason I thought of this is because I put up so many NewsBusters articles. I thought, for an instant, that I SHOULD just use an automatic feed, but then it wouldn't really be personal... It wouldn't be ME showing you articles, it would just be some brainless bot throwing up things you could find yourself. Not that anyone I know online would bother looking at a dastardly conservative news source. (Even though they have sources upon sources of articles and figures and all manner of undeniable proof to back up their claims, ohhh no. They're conservative... Can't be a trustworthy source. Yeah, yeah. I can hear you all already.) So I've decided to stick with my Interesting Articles widget instead. That way, you can be absolutely sure that I've read and put my stamp of approval on the Interesting Value of the articles. Of course, I make no guarantees that what you'll read will be... Shall we say, family friendly? I mean, NewsBusters has the standards of any public media and cleverly censors the more colorful language that they might be reporting, but the articles about gaming can sometimes be outright vulgar and distasteful. I don't always link to those, even if the game they're announcing is a good title, but if I miss something and link to it anyway, you have my apologies in advance.
You know... Profanity in the media is just something I don't get. At all. I can understand when someone's angry and lets loose with an uncontrollable burst (though that does definitely speak a lot of that person's character), but I can't understand why Kotaku and Destructoid and all the other gaming blogs think it's hip to fill their posts with bad language and perverse themes... Not even in the process of reporting, but just because that's "gamer talk" and they have to speak on our level or something. I think it speaks wonders for this generation if people think they have to swear to "connect" with us. I don't think I've sworn on this blog once... Not ONCE. Well, I did relay that amazing story of Obama's (former) preacher calling on God to damn America, I admit. (Oops, and there's the word again.) But I have not once used bad language on my site anywhere, period. I think that if you have to use profanity to form any coherent sentence, then you're just... I don't know... Sad? Incompetent? Unable to professionally articulate a point?
This is the reason that I don't link to other blogs. It's usually understood that the content on another site is out of my control, but I don't want it to seem that I'm... What's the word... Endorsing? I don't want it to seem like I'm endorsing the blogs of other people by providing links, and when you click on them, they're full of bad language. Most of the people I would link to have a habit of using profanity... Which I guess is okay. I mean, it IS their blog. It's their private space on the Internet and they can say what they want. But that still doesn't change the fact that I'm not going to link to those sites. I don't think profanity is morally right, so I don't want to seem to be encouraging it or overlooking it because I DON'T. That's why I'm apologizing in advance for articles that I might link to that contain profanity... Now, comments are easy to avoid and are notorious for being filthy, so I'm not even going to touch on them. I'm just worried about the articles themselves. I do, however, monitor my comments and block the ones that aren't acceptable for family consumption... They're not acceptable for me, either. If it's a decent comment with a lot of points that I think I might want to address, then I'll filter it on my own. If it's just baseless bashing like so many of the 4chan comments were, then I'm just going to pitch them.
For the record, this is the reason I don't link to any blogs, period. I used to link to a few blogs that I "approved" of... The ones that were worth reading and known to be clean. But then I decided to get rid of them because I didn't want to have to explain to everyone else why I wasn't linking to them. But, you know, now that I've actually written a pretty impressive post on the subject (once again reaching the NaNoWriMo daily quota), I might just start linking to acceptable blogs again. If someone asks why they're not linked, then I'll simply refer them here, or tell them that their blog didn't meet certain criteria! But... I really only have two sites to link to right now, and neither are very active, so there's no problem right now.
But there you have it... The Interesting Articles widget is comprised of articles that I, personally, perused and NOT automatically sorted, so I encourage you to click that little "Read more..." link at the bottom and check out what I think are interesting articles! You won't be disappointing.