Cheers,
Tom

Dear editor known as Theresa
please let me now give you a piece o'
advice: ego-google
is selfish but frugal
and saves you on PayPal and Visa

I bring this up because I've gotten snickery neener-neeners myself, when I've alluded to using Google Alert or Technorati to track responses to Electrolite.

Maybe I'm totally off base, but it seems to me quite reasonable to want to know about public reactions to one's own writing. Indeed, to my mind, someone who wants to know what the rest of the world is thinking is definitely preferable to another type found in abundance online, the person for whom others aren't really real.

Now everyone can hasten explain that they didn't mean it that way, or I'm misreading, and all the other predictable online gambits. But whether anyone admits it or not, that imputation is in fact present in several of these comments, and it's wrong.

I certainly "didn't mean it that way." I eagerly analyze my web statistics, and pay careful attention to what my readers email me, and thus my domain, in its 8th year, achieves over 1,000,000 hits per month. I experiment, and see what works. "The customer is always right."

Many times my readers have suggested a feature, and I've added it. That feeback, that interactivity, characterizes the old-fashioned web. You know more than I about running a blog, but I'm sure that the same principle applies.

My co-author Richard Feynman published an autobiographical book called "What do you care what other people think?" but, though he won a Nobel Prize in Physics, his equations do not apply to adjusting your presentation on the Web.

I presume that, besides being a brilliant editor in touch with brilliant authors, your editorial and anthological prowess is augmented by paying attention to some things that the critics have said of your work. Maybe I mis-spoke in the effort to make a limerick work, and force a rhyme. Please keep up the good work.

(p.s. I didn't even realize that Theresa used the haiku form until the commenters did the same. I just thought it was just a very pared down post.)

Scott, Technorati is a site that keeps track of which weblogs have linked to yours. That's fairly benign. What makes Technorati a vice is the fact that it keeps track of how many weblogs total link to you; and when it tells you that some other weblog has linked to you, it tells you how many weblogs total link to them. Camping on Technorati, waiting to see who's linked to you, is the weblogger equivalent of authors who camp on Amazon or JungleScan.com, checking the sales ranks of their books.

I went to a gathering of webloggers a while back. When a fellow weblogger told me about yet another weblog rating site, one I'd never visited, the first words out of my mouth were "What? Another vice? Do I want to know about this?"

(I have so few vices left)

*pauses, considering the possibility that there are people who /don't/ do vanity searches, and then bumbles off, stunned* :)

Newbie writer sighs
Three hundred link to T's blog
and three link to his

Catie: I love vanity searches. According to Google, I'm a real-estate agent, a race-car driver, a doctor of surgery, a recent convert to Islam, a former vice-president at Sierra Interactive, a playwright, and a minor pro hockey player.

I also found that a piece of my mystical writing was all over the web, in corrupted copies. That was more annoying than gratifying.

I always look at who Technorati says links to us, but I also take it with a grain of salt because it says that we only link to seven sites (last I checked) even though there's a few dozen on our blogroll. I'm guessing that it may be a Blogrolling-related issue.

We're adding more servers
to help one find websites
serendipitously
linked back to thee

Blogospherically
adding nine thousand to
one point two million
every day

Improves your chances of
getting that egoboo.
New infra structure will
keep you au fait

Fine and good. But those are simply raw numbers. And I would think that the true test of a blog's popularity and worthiness lies in receiving intelligent, lengthy and (perhaps) numerous comments from its readers.

In that regard, Patrick and Teresa are doing extraordinarily well.

(Not *koff* having an ego, I don't have to worry about egoscanning. Not being a blogger, I don't have to concern myself with links.) (Although I have been mulling over the idea of reviving UNDULANT FEVER as a blog. Another time sink; just what I need....)

I'm always a little amazed that Technorati works at all, given the stats in its upper-left-hand corner. As of this moment:

1,230,035 weblogs watched
60,710,834 active links.
101,890,870 links tracked

Bruce, it says right there at the top of my page that my readers are the best thing about this weblog.

mind of god
obviates

technorati

I'll have to give Technorati a try...

:)

'Blog Authority' is incoming link count - it's not holy writ. Even BoingBoing has under 3,000 of these, out of 1.2 million blogs.

As comment spam eats away at the utility of comment tools like this, comments on anotehr blog may be more resilient.

Ralph 4CR looked around in astonishment. "You mean... there are invisible beams all around us, carrying information to all parts of the globe, even as we speak?"

The Master of Communications turned towards him solemnly. "Yes," he asseverated, "and the information is not carried whole, but is broken up into a myriad of infinitesimal packets, to be reassembled without fail when they reach their destination."

"You astonish me," breathed Ralph. "And this information is accessible to all?"

"It is," nodded the Master. "The issues of the day are debated by all citizens, no matter where they may be located, and communication no longer waits on tides or weather."

"And what are the great issues so decided?"

The Master cast a glance at the poll on his screen: Which Jedi Knight Are You? He looked severe. "I fear our issues would mean nothing to you across the great gulf of time you have traversed. You should go now and refresh yourself. We will speak later. You have much to learn. Vanna, show our young guest to his room."

A lissome blonde appeared from behind a curtain and beckoned...

Or perhaps I should say that I'm lucky.

I love this blog, and electrolite as well. I check them often, but self-righteousness and hypocrisy are my two favorite traits. (In myself, of course. In other people they are unforgivable)

I personally would only mock someones stat check immediately after being flush with pride or shame directly after a check on my own site stats.

I didn't mind (I was sort of flattered) but I was curious as to how he had come by it.

Sadly he did not respond to my query, so I shall, probably, never know.

But that is probably the nicest piece of ego-boo I've ever enjoyed.

Terry K.

And I think there's a difference between being "an enemy of the Catholic Church" and being anti-Catholic. The latter implies prejudice against people of that religion. There are people who are Catholic by religion who are quite against the Church itself.

I don't think I'm anti-Catholic in the sense above. But I'm definitely an enemy of the Church, which has declared itself to be my enemy.

The premier issue of a new magazine, Notorious, features an article by Sean Bosker that describes his experience of "going to confession" at four New York-area Catholic Churches. In his piece, "I Confess: Gettin92 Off Easy," Bosker instructs non-Catholics how to engage in a mock confession. Himself a non-Catholic, Bosker details what it was like for him to confess to various sins97all of which involved sex97and then receive "penance" for his transgressions. He advises readers to "Remember that priests are probably as grateful for some discussion of T and A in the afternoon as anyone."

Bosker "went to confession" at New York92s St. Brigid92s and St. Patrick92s Cathedral, as well as Blessed Sacrament in Staten Island and Our Lady of Sorrows in New Jersey.

William Donohue had a few words to say about this issue:

"David Anthony, the publisher of Notorious, says that his magazine was conceived as a cross between GQ and Playboy on the one hand, and Cosmopolitan and Vogue on the other. He failed: it is more like a cross between the Star and a Jack Chick publication.

"What Bosker did puts the lie to the notion that there is a strong inverse relationship between education and prejudice. While it is true that those with high degrees of formal education tend to be less racist and less anti-Semitic than others, history shows that when anti-Catholicism is measured, those who are the doyens of the culture tend also to be the most bigoted. Notorious is only the latest expression of that verity, demonstrating once again why anti-Catholicism has been labeled 91the last respectable bias.92"

I don't see why anything you did justifies their accusation. Certainly you were disrespectful of the Sacrament of Penance. But those churches are open to the public, and they don't have the right to expect everyone who walks into them to be Catholic, or behave as a Catholic would.

There was one point where I wanted, for reasons involving a fictional treatment I was working on, to find out what an RC priest does when he receives a confession of things that he outright does not believe are possible. I ultimately rejected the idea of making false confessions, because I did not wish to be disrespectful. But 'disrespectful' is not the same as 'a bigot'.

In truth, it seems like very much a thing a writer would do.

I don't think non-writers appreciate just how ever-present the wicked, observant little homunculus is that perches on the writer's shoulder, and needs the answers to questions just like that....

-l.

He's big on demanding that pro-choice catholic politicians resign. Pro-death penalty, not so much. Anti-living wage and human dignity - what are you, a catholic hater?

(and for the record, insofar as I'm anything, I'm catholic)

Just out of curiosity, is there any particular reason you just didn't ask a priest what they would do in such a situation?

I can understand why some people would consider what I did to be anti-Catholic, although I'm not anti-Catholic, I just disagree with some church views on some issues.

Every morning I thank God I'm a Catholic because it makes sex so dirty.

Guess it's just different ways of thinking. I don't see that as anti-Catholic, just impolite.

My all time favorite 'Fresh Air with Terry Gross' interview was with John Waters. The one where he said, "The new drugs sound horrible to me. Who would want to take ecstasy and love everybody? Sounds like hell to me."

Even if they wouldn't intentionally lie (and I'm willing to believe they wouldn't), their response might be different than they'd expect.

Now I am curious to know whether they cover things like that in the seminary, and whether a priest would, in fact, be prepared to deal with such a situation.

I'd bet the Jesuits and the Paulists might be, since I think they're the most predominant on college campuses.

For an example of this second-order egoscanning, I just yesterday put on the web:

"My Teachers' Teachers' Teachers"

http://www.magicdragon.com/JVPteachers.html

Anyone else out there in the chain of descent from Einstein, Ezra Pound, Andres Segovia, and Sarah Bernhardt? This is Friendster with a time machine...

Unfortunately, it's strictly limited to graphing the PhD advisor/candidate relationship among mathematicians, and so not terribly useful for the sort of thing you're doing, but it's still interesting to pick a mathematician and follow their genealogy back through various pioneers of the field.

Thanks for the reminder on Mathematics Genealogy Project at http://www.genealogy.ams.org/

I'd bookmarked and forgotten!

I do know how my Erdos Number is 5, though.