Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Celebrating One Year of Narcissism

Perhaps the best way to celebrate a year of thinking about myself and my thoughts would be to examine what I have blogged about.

To be clear, I do not have a clear, consistent tagging strategy, so take the following with a grain of salt. 



I have posted 1114 times on these and other topics

Pop culture 148
Afghanistan 143
Academia 98
Ethnic Conflict 54
Civil-Military Relations 52
Television 48
Sports 48
Obama 48
Travel 36
Lost 35
Media 34
CA 29
Terrorism 27
Iraq 27
Internet 26
NATO 24
Canadian Forces 22
Technology 21
US foreign policy 18
US defence policy 18
Pop social science 15
Quebec 14
Zombies 11



So, what does this tell us?  First, my subtitle is more or less on target--IR, Ethnic Conflict, Civ-Mil, Politics in General, and Selected Silliness.  Perhaps the selected silliness ought to go first, given its ranking here.  But given that Afghanistan is my current research focus (what others are doing there), then I think I have actually focused more or less on what I promised a year ago.  There is much double coding.  If I dropped all of the Lost stuff (no!! don't!!), much of the TV and Pop Culture would also drop off.  Not all of it, but a chunk.  So after the middle of May, we should see probably fewer pop culture posts as Lost fades.  On the other hand, summer is movie season for the Spew Clan, so we may just see some substitution. 

Quebec is actually only in 14 of my posts, but if we again remove Lost from the pool, all of my highest commented posts except for one are Quebec-related.  I guess my passion/frustration provokes more folks, and perhaps more folks who read this have opinions about Quebec.  The post of race and a swimming pool near my old home outside Philadephia got the most comments for a non-Lost post.  Again, race, like Quebec nationalism/language politics is quite emotional.  I suppose if I lived in the US and posted about racial politics and religious conflict (especially if I still lived in the south with a southern readership), then I would get more comments on such stuff.

The Ask the Reader posts tend not to get much in the way of responses.  Oh well.

My readership has increased over the course of the year from the mid 30's per day to the mid 50's to 60's.  Not a widely read blog by any stretch of the imagination, but I was mostly into this to express myself, whether anyone was reading it or not.  Of course, my ego cannot help but seek more attention (always the Leo, always the youngest child).  More on trends in viewers tomorrow.

So, to the loyal readers, I ask: any thoughts on changes, continuity, new topics, fewer posts on x or y, more on q or p?  Not that I will necessarily listen.  Listening is one of my weakest skills, as I try to be aware of my limitations.  So, speak up.  Speaking of which, limitations was a theme I was going to pursue but didn't.  Perhaps in the next year of blogging. 

Thanks for an interesting year of comments on and off the net.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh no, does this mean I have to continue reading this blog after Lost ends? J/K!!!!!

Chris C. said...

Keeping up with a blog consistently for a whole year is definitely an accomplishment. I especially enjoyed your reports from Australia and it was neat to see "fieldwork" in progress.

If I had to suggest a change, I would like to see more discussion of interesting new academic papers you happen to come across. News stories are fine, but I think you have a comparative advantage on most other outlets when it comes to pointing out and analyzing significant academic articles.

Steve Saideman said...

Chris, you raise a good point. However, I tend to face a tradeoff between reading what I need for my research/writing versus reading widely in the profession. And, well, I choose the former. I am very behind on my journals. I do read a bunch of stuff when I am reviewing for journals, but commenting on that stuff would be inappropriate. Not that anyone would accuse me of being always appropriate.