Reflections From a Murky Pond

The internet is, to most people’s minds, a fairly new bit of technology. It’s not though. It’s just incremental advancement in technology serving the same needs and desires as its antecedents.

Yep! People Writing On Walls And Worshiping Cats

History doesn’t so much repeat itself as people repaint and reinvent the same things and call it “new and improved.” 😆

And, for those that might care, pick up a copy of  The Victorian Internet and really get laugh at how little or nothing has changed.

Tags: Blogging | Cats | Egypt | Humor | Internet | Technology

This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2012 at 9:15 am and is filed under Humor, Technology. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

In the slightly over 6 six years – yeah, it’s been that long – that Reflections From A Murky Pond has been in existence I’ve received an amazing amount of hate, both in the blog’s comments and via my contact form. The blog and forum posts referencing Reflections From A Murky Pond and their comments have been even more hate filled and vitriolic. Death threats and threats of lesser violence are common as well.

Liberals, Progressives, Angry Black Nationalists and their ethnoguiltist enablers, Islamists and their Dhimmi shills, queers, and now pedophiles, rapists, and the filth who support them really, really think that I’m evil.

It’s great to know that I’m doing the right thing and positive reinforcement is wonderful and I love the image that comes to my mind whenever I get these messages or see one of the enemies posts about me and this site.

Jonolan’s So Evil! He Makes Me Sooooooo Angry!

Of course, sadly, the above image is pure fantasy. I’m not good enough to cause Mankind’s enemies to suicide or die from some acute form of apoplexy. I wish it were otherwise; truly, I do but I know my limitations and that my rhetoric is not that powerful. Hellfire! It’s not even close. 😉

~*~

I do not speak truth to power. I speak truth from power, the power of one man who refuses to bow before sheep or the shepherds and wolves they’ve put in charge of their flocks.

Tags: Blacks | Blogging | Hate | Humor | Internet | Leftists | Liberals | Muslims | Pedophiles | Progressives | Queers | Rapists | Trolls

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 1st, 2012 at 9:20 am and is filed under Humor. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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.

Tags: Announcements | Blogging

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 10:56 am and is filed under Announcements. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

There’s a fair amount of discussion lately about how the internet has supplanted printed media as a news medium and how this is affecting newspapers across America.

There’s also been discussion about these newspapers moving to “paywall models” for their digital content. Whether or not such schemes will allow any individual newspaper to survive is, I believe, more upon who their target audience is than upon any other factor or or factors.

So who reads which newspapers?

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country, and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a poor job of it, thank you very much.
6. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
7. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who is running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
8. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.
9. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
10. The Seattle Times is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something to wrap it in.
11. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could find the time from indoor tanning, teeth whitening, and botox – and if they didn’t have to leave Southern California to do it.
12. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure if there is a country or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped people-of-color feminist gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy — provided of course, that they are not Republicans.

NOTE: Variants of this list / joke have been circulating since at least 2005 but this version came from Fellowship of the Minds.

So which group, if any, do you think will find paying for a digital subscription to their newspaper to be of value? The movers and shakers,the would-be movers and shakers, the Frustrati, or the prurient masses seeking enjoyment through Schadenfreude?

Personally I think the newspaper, such as it is, with by far the best chance of having a salable digital market is The National Enquirer. It has a large consumer base, none of which want to be seen purchasing it! 😉

Tags: Blogging | Humor | Internet | Jokes | Journalism | Marketing | Media | Newspapers | Society | Technology

This entry was posted on Friday, March 18th, 2011 at 8:17 am and is filed under Humor, Society, Technology. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Since this is the beginning of a new year – per the Gregorian calendar – I decided it would be interesting to see what were the most common search terms that brought readers to Reflections From A Murky Pond over the course of 2010.

In many ways I’d have to say that the results, while somewhat expected, were rather discouraging.

The Top 25 search terms used during 2010 by people to reach this blog during 2010 were:

This matches up well statistically with the fact that the top 2 posts – Support The Arts (NSFW) and Denying Atzlan (NSFW) – respectively accounted for 18,484 and 11,714 of the 152,089 page views that Reflections From A Murky Pond got last year. The blog’s home page accounted for another 28,430 views.

Oh well. I suppose it doesn’t really matter what brings the readers here. What matters is that they read what they find.

Tags: Announcements | Blogging | Internet | Search Terms

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 4th, 2011 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Announcements. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.