Happy birthday to us

By David McElroy · May 13, 2012

At 9:27 a.m. a year ago today, I made a brief announcement on Facebook that my new website was open. The result wasn’t especially promising. I had a grand total of 35 visitors from three countries that day.

Although the numbers climbed — very slowly — it wasn’t until late July that things really took off. On July 25, I had more than 30,000 visitors to the site — in one day — which created problems with the server crashing from the overload, but it was a great problem to have. Things have settled down to somewhere far lower than the peak, but far higher than the meager beginning. For instance, in the past week, the site has had 6,233 visitors.

Where are all those people coming from? Well, I’ve had visitors from all 50 U.S. states and 163 countries. I still haven’t figured out why people in some of those places come — much less come back — but I’ve watched with gratitude as it’s continued to happen.

The list of most active countries for sending visitors has been led by English-speaking countries, which seems natural, but six of the top 10 are not primarily English-speaking: In order, the most visitors have come from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Germany, Spain, India, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden.

The top 10 U.S. states in sending visitors have been Texas, California, Alabama, New York, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, Washington and Pennsylvania. The only surprise on the list is Alabama, but that’s certainly because of people here who happen to know me.

If you’re curious what operating systems people use to get here, here’s the breakdown. I had thought Windows would dominate more strongly, but I guess it’s a sign of change in the computer world that it “only” sends 70 percent of the visitors: Windows, 70 percent; Macintosh, 16 percent; iPhone, 5 percent; iPad, 4 percent; Android, 3 percent; and other (mostly Linux, iPod, BlackBerry, Symbian) 2 percent. The biggest surprise is how strongly the Mac does with my audience, but the second biggest surprise is that slightly more than 10 percent of visits are coming from mobile devices.

When I started a year ago, I had no idea what to expect. I’ve done better than I expected in some ways, but I’m disappointed in other ways that I haven’t made more progress. When I look back at the writing from a year ago, I’m surprised at how bad some of it is. Although I’d been writing for a living for many years, I had been out of the discipline of having to write every single day for an audience. It took awhile to get back in the swing of that, and there are still days when the work isn’t up to my standards.

I badly need a copy editor. With rare exceptions, nobody reads anything before it’s published. (I’m really picky about letting anybody touch my writing anyway, so there are few people I’d even allow to copyedit it, which is a problem.) I have to admit that I frequently don’t even have time to read what I’ve written myself to make sure it’s what I meant to say. I just don’t have enough time — since the bulk of my time has to go to pursuits that bring in money.

The biggest pleasure has been building relationships with some of the readers, some just through the public comments but through email with a number of you. It’s been great to get to know you and listen to the diversity of thought and expectation out there. Readers have left 3,358 comments on articles over the year, and that engagement from you is very important to me.

I’m still trying to figure out how to do a podcast to go along with the site, but I don’t want to launch anything that I don’t think will entertain you enough to make it worth the investment of time — for both of us. It’s a lot of work to make something entertaining and worth the time to listen to, so I’m thinking and talking to others a lot about how to do this. The broadcast professionals who I’ve asked for opinions have been encouraging, so it’s something I expect to happen in time.

When I started, I promised myself I’d give it at least a year. If I could see progress toward something worth the investment of time, I’d give it another year to see what it could become. I would have never predicted a year ago today all the changes that have come about (and all the people I’ve met) because of this site. I’m eager to see what the next year brings. I have a feeling it’ll be more than I can imagine.

Thanks for being a part of this first year. The truth of the matter is that you’re the most important element. If you weren’t here reading, none of it would be worth doing. So I’m grateful to all of you. I hope you’ll keep coming back. I’ll be trying to dream up ways to make it worth your time.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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