Blogging, Statistics and Making a Buck

It is easy to be seduced by statistics. I know several friends who have websites and blogs and are rather obsessed with their web statistics. They are always checking to see how many hits the site gets or what pages or posts are most popular or what search terms are being used to find them. Social media has encouraged this with Likes and Retweets and Reposts. Our smartphones love to send us notifications that someone has engaged with some piece of our content.

For example, I got an alert about this blog:

Your page is trending up

Your page clicks increased by more than 1,000% over the usual daily average of less than 1 click.

https://poetsonline.blogspot.com/2010/12/moving-into-winter-solstice-poems.html

Possible explanations for this trend could be:

• Modifications you did to your page's content.
• Increased interest in a trending topic covered by the page.

Of course, I am happy that people found this post from 2010 and are still reading it and hopefully enjoying it. Google's "possible explanations" for this are both correct, as I did update the page that month and the topic of the Winter Solstice was probably trending across the web as we slipped into winter.

I do glance at my websites' analytics occasionally. I have ten sites and blogs that I do, so it can't be a very regular thing. I do like to look every few months to see what has been happening. I also have a half dozen clients that I do websites for and they are always interested in their stats. But I'm going to write about these origins here whether or not it gets lots of hits. It's not my "job" - though it's nice if someone clicks on an Amazon link that I use and buys a book or something and a few pennies drop into my account.

Speaking of that - I was browsing Amazon to find a book for a friend who wanted to try to start a blog that would make money. I certainly don't have a secret formula for that, but I did find a bunch of people who have written about blogging as a job. The idea of having "passive income" is very appealing - and probably quite difficult to do in any meaningful way. Still, give it a try. If you find the secret formula, let me know - then write the book.

   

Draconian

Draco the Lawgiver carving in the library of
the United States Supreme Court (Wikimedia)

Recently, I have been seeing "Draconian" used in the news to describe things like the measures being taken in Italy and other countries due to the coronavirus (COVID-19). The adjective is used when laws or their application are considered excessively harsh and severe.

Is there a Draco that makes things Draconian? My sons might say is it for Draco Malfoy, a character in the Harry Potter series of books and movies? No. Is it connected to Draco, a constellation in the northern part of the sky or the dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way? No and no, but there is a connection for all of them and that connection is the man Draco who lived in the 7th century BC.

He was also called Drako or Drakon and was the first recorded legislator of Athens in Ancient Greece. He replaced the prevailing system of oral law and blood feud with a written code to be enforced only by a court of law.

But Draco established laws characterized by their harshness and since the 19th century "draconian" became an adjective referring to similarly unforgiving rules or laws.

Murphy's Law

You probably have heard of Murphy's Law and it's likely that you have used the phrase or at least have encountered a situation where this adage (short statement expressing a general truth) or epigram (a brief saying or remark expressing an idea in a clever and amusing way) was used or should have been used.

"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

The origin of the phrase is totally unknown and it's likely that people were saying this is something close to it long before anyone attached a name to it. So the question here is whether there actually was a Murphy and if so why the name became attached to the adage?

According to one version, the origin stems from an attempt to use new measurement devices developed by Edward Murphy, an American aerospace engineer who worked on safety-critical systems. The phrase was coined in adverse reaction to something Murphy said when his devices failed to perform.

According to the book, A History of Murphy's Law by Nick Spark, this common bit of philosophy does have a military origin. But the "facts" still seem to be a bit hazy.

Murphy worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on high-speed rocket sled experiments and that's supposed to be where and when the coining of Murphy's law happened.

Reportedly, Murphy was not happy with the commonplace interpretation of his law which he saw as more serious. Murphy regarded his law as an important principle of defensive design - one should always assume worst-case scenarios.

Though Murphy may have been serious, the law that carries his name has been used in many less-than-serious situations.