Perri Nelson's Website 

Delusions of adequacy

I don't know about the rest of you, but I know that in the grand scheme of things my blog isn't very important. I try to write as though it is, but I know it's not.

My blog sees very little traffic. The average weekly traffic varies from about 40 hits per day to 90 hits per day. That's not a lot of readers, especially when you consider that about 20% of the hits are from repeat visitors. The vast majority of the hits to my site are people that come in from a search engine, and never visit again.

I have a lot of inbound links to my blog. If you skip the trackbacks to my regular open trackback posts and the inbound links from the blogrolls I participate in though you'll probably find that I actually have very few links to my regular content.

I don't know for certain, but I'd bet that the same holds true for most of the blogosphere.

Even so, we hear a lot, at least on blogs, about the powerful influence of the "new media". Bloggers write about having their site linked on major news media sites, as though it's a recognition of their importance. There are national bloggers conventions. A few of the larger sites actually hold their own conventions.

Somehow I think that we all have inflated opinions of ourselves and the importance and worth of our blogs. There are literally tens or even hundreds of millions of blogs out there. The Internet and the advent of multiple free blogging platforms gives everyone the opportunity to publish their opinions and to play at journalism.

The world population hovers somewhere around six billion.  So based upon a rather optimistic estimate of my weekly traffic I'm reaching somewhere around 0.00000135% of the worlds population on a daily basis. That's a statistically insignificant sampling.

To think otherwise speaks to delusions of adequacy. Even so, a journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step, so I'm going to keep writing.

It was "big news" in Seattle the last couple of days. Well, maybe not "big" news. The city has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions to 8% below 1990 levels. Of course the Seattle PI asks "is it enough". Naturally I ask enough for what?

Even if all of the nations that signed the Kyoto Protocol (including the U.S.) were to fully implement it, it would only reduce the projected rate of warming by 0.07 Celsius in the next 50 years. Of course Seattle's reduction "isn't enough".

Sometimes I think that the "greens" suffer from a combination of delusions of grandeur — "mankind is destroying the planet", and delusions of adequacy (Hey, we beat Kyoto by 8%, aren't we great).

It's just a drop in the bucket folks. It's more feel-good politics that ignores the greenhouse contributions of our "elites" and of China.

Someday soon we've got to get over ourselves.

This linkfest is for the 31th of October, 2007. That's All-Saints or All-Hallows Eve folks. You know the day. The one we call Halloween. Link up, just please don't send me candy.

If you have something interesting you'd like to share, feel free to link it here and leave a trackback.

Just remember the trackback policy.

For the best exposure, go to the blogger's oasis and use the linkfest chooser to choose the posts you'd like to hook up with.

Trackback URI for this post: http://perrinelson.com/track.aspx?postid=1049
Permalink URI for this post: http://perrinelson.com/2007/10/30/1049.aspx

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Angel responded with:

hi there Perri!..thanks for the honest assessment but make no mistake the bigger dogs out there in the Conservative bl'sphere DO make a difference and all our collective efforts and phone calls must help in some way!..I sure hope so!

Perri Nelson responded with:

Oh, I think we all make a difference. If we can convince one person at a time, it still helps.

The interesting thing though is if you look at SiteMeter's "top sites", very rarely do you find a conservative site there. Daily KOS and Huffington Post are usually near the top of the list.

Ned Tyson responded with: Delusions

Hi Perry, I read your post and pretty much agree. I've been doing this since the end of July and pretty heavily in September and october. I get about the somewhat less traffic than you and get some links but no one seeking to be added to my blogroll and no comments. I am not the "citizen journalist" type that will get a lot of original news but more of a commentator...maybe that's why.

Oh well. Feel free to trackback any time and leave a comment or join the blogroll.

Thanks

Rosemary responded with:

Hi Perri. I have you blogrolled on my site, so there! lol. That is, I posted it on my blogger site.

I know how you feel sometimes. I used to put my heart and soul into researching everything as much as possible before it went to print. Then I noticed that I was only getting 4 hits! (I had about 8 sites, and I am speaking about one or three of them.)

Still, I continue. Why? For the same reason I started in the first place. Because I want to. ;)

If someone likes what I've written, then that's just an added plus. If the don't like it and say so, I try to learn from this person. I have turned a few trolls into rather nice people this way. LOL. Have a wonderful day.

The Florida Masochist responded with:

I been blogging a little over two years. My daily traffic average- 409 visitors a day. Last month was my best month for visitors ever- 15,661 or a little 500 daily. I had three big days because of the Andrea Eichhorn story.

Comments at my blog are pitiful. If I get more than 3 on a day, that's alot. So I honestly ask myself often if I want to keep blogging. In the last few months I've had health issues and slowed down or stopped altogether for a few stretches.

I've sometimes done Open Trackbacks at TFM's alternate site. Generally they bring links but little or no readers. I have to admit to being guilty of doing the same.

Do I make a difference? Who knows.(Once I was mentioned in a South Florida newspaper) I'd like to inform people about the immigration travesty called the widow penalty, but most people don't care about the 80 or so women whose only crime is their US citizen husbands died before their immigration paperwork was done. Our lovely government want to deport them. Who cares, their immigrants after all is the basic attitude. Don't know what wants to make me puke more, our government or the anti-illegal crowd much of whom are bigots and xenophobes who think the widow penalty is all right or don't give a damn.

Blog if you want, don't expect much or anything to happen because of it.

Cheers,

Bill

MK responded with:

Yeah it can be depressing sometimes, like you're having a conversation in the woods with yourself, but keep banging away and look up other sites and blogs, you might run into folks that share the same views.

ablur responded with:

I blog because I need an outlet for things that really bug me. I average a little better than one new piece a week for almost two years. In that period of time I have had three of my writings go national. The rest are read by a few and seem to only have meaning to me.
I have had several contacts for business consulting and have often followed them up with a topical blog entry so others can learn important business principals and how to apply them.

The bottom line is, I do it for me. I have helped a few and changed the opinions of a few but I have found satisfaction in putting my thoughts in print.

I read a lot of other blogs. There is a lot of untapped wisdom out there. Take a tour and read, if you like what you find leave a comment. If you don't like what you find, move on.

Perri Nelson responded with: Misunderstanding?

Please don't misunderstand. I am in no way depressed or saddened by the state of things on my blog. I blog because I enjoy it. I blog to share my thoughts and opinions.

I'm not doing it to find support, or to listen to an echo chamber. I'm really interested in the things I write. I'm gratified that some other people read what I write and find it interesting.

I just don't want to ever give anyone the impression that I'm more important than I am, which is not very much. I also don't want to take the attitude that I'm the font of all wisdom, because I'm not.

Ultimately, that's why I have comments enabled on the blog, to allow people to agree or disagree and say so, and hopefully carry on an actual conversation.

Perri Nelson responded with:

TFM,

I'm very anti-illegal immigration. The "widow penalty" is not something I've really looked at, but I would think that these women arrived here legally and are being mistreated by a bureaucracy that focuses on the "easy prey" while completely ignoring the real problem under its nose.

The Florida Masochist responded with:

Perri,

Here's a post I wrote about the widow penalty

http://thefloridamasochist.blogspot.com/2007/05/ending-widow-penalty.html

Follow the link within that post to another post on the story of Dahianna Heard. Her husband Jeffrey, a former special forces soldier, was a contractor in Iraq when he got killed. Two months or so before Dahianna would ave gotten permanent resident status. Now Mrs. Heard(Who has a son through her marriage to Jeffrey) faces deportation. People are challenging Immigration in court, our spineless judges are letting them deport these women. Carla Freeman can't come back to this country. Its sickening.

Here's a website with more.

http://www.ssad.org/

Maybe I relate to these women's story, because of my own experiences. I met my wife Leonita while serving in the Navy 19 years ago. We married in 1989, then I did the immigrant relative petition for her. In Dec 1989 Leonita arrived in the US.

If I had died between Dec 89 and Dec 91, Leonita would have found herself in the same situation as Mrs. Heard. Thanks be to God, that didn't happen, but this travesty shouldn't be allowed to continue.

BTW immigrant spouses of serving military killed in action, are exempt from the Widow Penalty. That didn't come about till a executive order signed by Pres. Bush in either 01 or 02. The original precedent for the WP involved the wife of a Navy sailor who died. I forget the name of the case, but it happened in 1969 or 1970. She was deported of course.

How any of this can make someone feel good is beyond me.

Cheers,

Bill

The Florida Masochist responded with:

Perri,

I could send you more links on this widow penalty, but I didn't want it looking as if I'm linking to my blog. Email me, and I'll give you a bunch.

Bill

Perri Nelson responded with:

Send my any links you have about it Bill, I'll probably write up a post about it.