But First, Coffee

But First, Coffee

Reflections From A Murky Pond’s normal, eclectic mixture of topics will continue shortly. But first, coffee! 😉

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The Murky Pond In 2016

Since among bloggers it seems to be nigh on de rigueur to early January in do some sort of review, reprise, or recap of the previous year.

Well, far be it from me to go against the normative expectations. Hence, below are the 25 most popular posts other than the homepage in Reflections Of A Murky Pond over the course of 2016:

  1. Retro Pinups
  2. Dangerous Curves
  3. Bikes And Babes
  4. Beautiful Freedom (NSFW)
  5. Bikini Interlude 4
  6. Hot But Racist
  7. Molon Labe
  8. Coordination Is Key
  9. Sweater Meat
  10. Nicki’s Anaconda
  11. Seasonal Eating
  12. Olivia & Lucas’s Father
  13. Spring Fever
  14. Bikini Interlude 7
  15. The Good Underboobs
  16. Straight Outta Europe
  17. Bikini Interlude 12
  18. Female Leadership
  19. Fit For Lust?
  20. Lazy Fat Ugly Cows
  21. Cosplay Is Not Consent
  22. Wedding Night Jitters
  23. Three Women On A Plane
  24. Goodbye Kitty
  25. Such Power!
Not that I’m complaining in any way – traffic is, after all, traffic, but there’s an obvious trend appearing. 23 out of 25 of the top posts are in some way fundamentally prurient in nature and only one was primarily political, “Molon Labe.” 😆

Perhaps I should change the blog’s tagline from “The eclectic ramblings of jonolan” to “Come for the babes, stay for the social commentary and politics.” That might sum up the reality better.

Of course, one could easily argue that the prurient content is, in and of itself, a form of social commentary. This is even more true in Reflections From A Murky Pond since I quite often use sexually subjective images to further a point through example and/or depiction.

Again though, I’m not complaining. I’m just shaking my head a little at the current reality of the internet. After all, it is still likely that the most viewed posts on the internet are prurient in nature. They may not be “pornographic” depending upon any individual’s or groups’ definition of pornography, but they’re still quite prurient.

So there you have it – a break down of sorts of the popularity of Reflections From A Murky Pond over the course of 2016.

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Sorry For The Hiatus

jonolanSorry for the lack of post recently, folks. I’ve been in process of looking into rearranging my life a bit and it’s taken up a lot of the time I would normally have spent blogging.

I’ll be back at more regularly soon but possibly on for a while after that. At that latter point things will change dramatically.

So this blog may either go into a long – multi-year I’d guess – hiatus, end without notice, or become essentially a chronicle of my time with the Peshmerga. Or it may return to its normal format if I can’t put things together so that I can do right by both the world and my family…

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Complaints Dept

Not everyone likes Reflections From A Murky Pond. Indeed, some unfortunate souls actually complain about it on a regular basis.

Harley QuinnHarley Runs Our Complaints Department

That being the case, I’ve added a complaints department. Harley has promised to cut through the complaints in record time. 😉

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Millenial Post

This marks the 1000th post on Reflections From A Murky Pond during the 4 years, 1 month, and 14 days (1505 days) that this blog has been in existence at the time of this millennial post.

This is a pleasantly surprising course of events since I created Reflections From A Murky Pond primarily for the purpose of testing the WordPress blogging platform.

The first post I made here was published on June 7, 2007 at 1:56 PM EST. It was titled, Marriage: A Contract and is reprinted below:

It is my belief that a great deal of time, effort and emotion is being wasted on the controversies centering on who can marry whom. The time has long ago come where the governments – other than theocracies – must remove religious prejudices from their civil law as it regards marriage. Religion has little or no place in what is essentially a civil contract.

Secular marriage today is essentially a civil contract between individuals that enables them to function in much the same manner as a corporation would. It spells out basic financial conjoinments and allows for the signatories to function as legal proxies for each other in most activities. From a contractual perspective there should be no difference between traditional heterosexual monogamous marriages and homosexual monogamous marriages, and heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual polygamous marriages. In all cases secular marriage law would and should function in a manner similar to a partnership with right of survivorship.

Once religion is added to this all manner of prejudices are invoked. The three major western religions – or sects since they worship the same god – each have strong regulations regarding marriage. While those regulations and restrictions may well be appropriate for the worshipers of those religions, they should have no bearing on secular marriage law. Religion and Law should stay well separated.

It is easy to pass over the civil union struggle as a fringe battle for a minority of the population but you have to look at what I am saying with closer eyes. Christians like Nikki do not just look at this issue and refer to the Bible as their standard rule of law they look at EVERY ISSUE using the Bible as their rule of law. This is a flawed view. The Constitution is the correct document to refer to when speaking of secular law, NOT THE BIBLE, or the Koran, or the Torah, or any other religious text. These books help shape lives and their philosophies of love, kindness, and compassion do a lot of good in the world today. I have a deep sense of respect for religious people the world over. That being said, I am not willing to cede my rights to any faith. My rights are based on the Constitution and the powers set forth therein. Any other view is contrary to the spirit of America and exposes the real goal of the religious right. They want a theocracy.

The Bible, The Constitution, and the James Carville Experiment
by Tom Luffman
November 5, 2004

I do not in any way mean to imply that religions and their church hierarchies should be forbidden to restrict access to their wedding ceremonies and rites. Those religious ceremonies are entirely the purview of the respective religious orders and their church leadership has the express right to grant or deny access to their own rites and sacraments however they see fit. Just as religions should not dictate secular law, secular law should not dictate religious doctrine and dogma.

It’s a little odd looking back on a four year-old post but I still think it was a pretty good one. I would – and may – do it differently now though, reversing the underlying position to focus on getting politics out of religious matters, especially the sacraments, rather than getting religion out of political matters.

In any event, a thousand posts in a little over four years and still going strong with a steadily growing readership! Not bad for a project started for purely technical evaluation purposes, i.e., evaulating WordPress as a CMS for reccomendation to a client.

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