P&D: One Million and Counting

By Rich Kozlovich

At approximately 5:57 AM EST this morning P&D went over one million hits.  The number of hits per country run as follows:

• United States, 544, 998
• Germany, 58, 423
• Russia, 52, 909
• France, 35, 420
• China ,22, 686
• Ukraine, 21,942
• Canada, 14, 863
• Bulgaria, 12, 529
• Slovenia, 10536
• Ireland, 9,817
• All other countries, 215,877

On a monthly basis the countries in the top ten change, and some not on this All Time top ten list are on the monthly, weekly or daily list.  I know this is no big deal compared to sites that get a million hits a day, but I'm pleased and based on e-mails I receive I believe I have a substantial number of what's called in the blogger world - "quality readers". 

 

Most of these numbers came in the last five years, and at this point I'm getting approximately 50,000 hits a month.  That number varies depending on how actively I post, but even when I have a bit of a hiatus and don't post at all - I don't get less than 10,000 hits a month. Not to bad for an autodidact bug man.

 

There are countries that surge based on issues, such as Bulgaria.  I ran links to a series of articles on fracking and Bulgarians started hitting P&D.   I ran a series of links on solar energy and Japan started hitting P&D, this was right after their nuke plant disaster.  China was never on the list at all and then about two years ago I started getting some hits and the number started climbing until they were number two almost overnight on the monthly list - every month for about a  year - and then the numbers crashed to almost nothing. 

 

I always had some hits from Russia, but at one point the hits started coming in hard and fast - and then crashed, and at the same time they dropped off for Ukraine.  At the beginning I got a lot of hits from the UK, that dropped over the years to the point they're not on the All Time top ten list. 

 

So why does any blog get hits?   I have no idea, except when it comes to blog sites over all nearly “80 percent read blogs because they offer news they can't find elsewhere. About 78 percent say blogs give them a better perspective, and about 66 percent say blogs provide them with news faster than other sites or media. The study found that blog readers are media hungry….”

I'm not striving to be a popularity site in that I don't do entertainment or sports, except I started posting about my Cleveland Browns a couple of years ago, but that became an emotion burden - one all Browns fans understand, and it was time consuming so I stopped and decided never to waste my time on sports or entertainment people and events unless it involved social issues.  

 

My efforts deal only with history and current events that impact our thinking and understanding.  I'm not only interested in what people should think - I'm concerned with presenting information to show people how to think. 

 

We need to understand - nothing we see on the news, what we read in the newspaper, on web sites or even the history channel, and in recent decades, what we're taught in history classes - is what it appears.  The media lies - yes Trump is right - the media lies.  Not so much outright lies of commission - although they're notorious for that - it's the lies of omission of which they're largely guilty.  That's the challenge - present the whole story without pride, prejudice or privilege. 

 

Truth is the sublime convergence of history and reality.  Everything we're told has an historical foundation and structure.  Everything we're told should bear some resemblance to reality.  If what's presented to us fails in either of these categories it's wrong!  All that's left to do is develop the intellectual response to explain why it's wrong.  That's what P&D is all about - the  truth! 

 

The truth isn't unkind - it's just the truth.