WordPress versus Blogger

A few months ago it seemed that half the blogs in my blogroll were switching from Blogger to WordPress.

I could understand why, because when I switched to the much-hyped Blogger Beta, lots of features no longer worked. Nine months after it was announced that the "new" Blogger was introduced, and that it was now "fully-featured", most of the features that didn't work in the Beta version still don't work, and a few more have got broken along the way.

As a result of that, I started an experimental WordPress blog, called Khanya, back in February, and now for the first time, it has passed this blog in the number of people reading it in a day.

Yesterday Khanya had 64 readers, and Notes from Underground had 47. Khanya was ranked 145 on Amatomu, while Notes from Underground was 167. That may just be a temporary thing, of course -- Notes from Underground still has far more links to it from other blogs (according to Technorati), and so perhaps it wouldn't be a good idea to move this blog to WordPress because it would break those links.

They also seem to have different sets of readers, according to StatCounter:

Khanya readers:

	Num	Perc.	Country Name
	197	43.20%	United States
	144	31.58%	South Africa
	33	7.24%	United Kingdom
	18	3.95%	Australia
	14	3.07%	Netherlands
	12	2.63%	Canada
	7	1.54%	Philippines
	6	1.32%	New Zealand
	5	1.10%	Mauritius
	3	0.66%	Greece
	2	0.44%	Cyprus
	2	0.44%	Unknown	-
	2	0.44%	Malaysia
	2	0.44%	France
	1	0.22%	Finland
	1	0.22%	Iceland
	1	0.22%	Namibia
	1	0.22%	Spain
	1	0.22%	Albania
	1	0.22%	Romania
	1	0.22%	Suriname
	1	0.22%	Chile
	1	0.22%	Turkey

Notes from Underground readers:

	Num	Perc.	Country Name
	157	33.76%	South Africa
	150	32.26%	United States
	39	8.39%	Canada
	26	5.59%	United Kingdom
	12	2.58%	Thailand
	11	2.37%	Germany
	9	1.94%	Australia
	7	1.51%	France
	7	1.51%	India
	5	1.08%	Netherlands
	4	0.86%	Philippines
	4	0.86%	Mauritius
	3	0.65%	Barbados
	3	0.65%	Malaysia
	3	0.65%	Unknown	-
	3	0.65%	Greece
	2	0.43%	Switzerland
	2	0.43%	Austria
	2	0.43%	Russian Federation
	1	0.22%	Suriname
	1	0.22%	Puerto Rico
	1	0.22%	Togo
	1	0.22%	Poland
	1	0.22%	Slovenia
	1	0.22%	Lebanon
	1	0.22%	Algeria
	1	0.22%	Hungary
	1	0.22%	Mexico
	1	0.22%	Chile
	1	0.22%	United Arab Emirates
	1	0.22%	Argentina
	1	0.22%	Malta
	1	0.22%	New Zealand
	1	0.22%	Nigeria
	1	0.22%	Ireland

So perhaps the time has come to move this blog to WordPress, as so many others have done.

I'm still not sure though. Most of the features of Blogger that no longer work were never part of WordPress anyway. And the Blogger template is still easier to edit than WordPress.

Blogger features I miss most:

1. Blog this!
2. Search all blogs
3. Click on interests, books, movies in user profile to find those with similar interests

Annoyances:

When you're at the Dashboard, you can click "Dashboard" to get there when you're already there, but when yuou're at the blog, you have to click "Customise" to get a place where you can click to get to the Dashboard. This not only wastes time, it wastes bandwidth, having to load another page unnecessarily.

When you click "Link to this post", the "Edit HTML" no longer works -- you have to save the page and then edit it, loading two more pages in the process -- wasing more time and bandwidth.

So I'm still in two minds about whether to switch. Perhaps when the next thing breaks in Blogger.

Descent into hell -- Coinherence and substitution

This is a traditional blog post, mainly to link together some blog postings on a similar theme, and one I wrote myself, so it is literally a web log, a log of web sites seen.

They are linked by Charles Williams's notions of coinherence and substitution in his novel Descent into hell, some aspects of which are echoed in C.S. Lewis's novel That hideous strength.

In Losing my religion Father Stephen Freeman posts about how many small choices can hasten our descent into hell.

Iambic Admonit posts a review of Descent into hell.

The Inklings has a relevant excerpt from Descent into hell (and it's a blog well worth visiting for other Inklings stuff).

All these within the last few days.

In many ways Charles Williams has been the forgotten Inkling, not nearly as popular as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, but suddenly lots of people are talking about him.

Evo is coming - more meaningless hype

I was web surfing on Amatomu this morning and came across a site that claimed "Evo is coming the first social networking with substance!"

The trouble is that there was no substance at all -- just hype, hype, and more hype. And the site that it led you to was much the same -- no information, just hype. And on the original site comments are closed, so you can't even ask for information about what it is, or what it does.

It's a great opportunity, don't miss it!

Opportunity for what?

Only eight days left!

Eight days left for what?

You will make lots of money!

Make money from what, doing what?

It's a great opportunity! Don't miss it!

Why can't people just describe simply and clearly what it is and what it is supposed to do, instead of making exaggerated claims that are quite meaningless?

What we have here is a failure in communication.

So can anyone at all tell me what Evo is, what it does, what is the substance and what are the things that I "do on a daily basis" that it will help me to do better?

Or is it just snake oil?

Web 2.0

Everybody seems to be talking about Web 2.0, but what is Web 2.0, and how does it differ from the WWW? What hardware and software will we need to access it? What protocols will it use? Will it still cater for HTML, or will it use something completely different?

Will my present browser (Firefox 2.x) still work, or will it need something completely different -- perhaps not a browser at all? Will it be touchy, feely, smelly?

And when is it going to be released?

The Scrivener: The Elephant in the Ivory Tower

The Scrivener: The Elephant in the Ivory Tower blogs about literary criticism, postmodernity, Mikhail Bakhtin, Christianity and literature, and a few other things.

It would be superfluous of me to try to add anything -- if you are interested in any of those things, just read it. I wonder if the Graham Pechey he refers to was the one who was at university with me.

Traditional healers, Western medicine and HIV/Aids

About 8 months ago I attended a conference on HIV/Aids (see Notes from underground: HIV, Aids etc). It was organised by the South African HIV Clinicians Society for religious leaders, and there were people from various religious backgrounds there -- Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, neopagan, paleopagan (the last also represented by a bloke who was trained in both traditional and Western medicine).

One of the problems mentioned by the speakers at the conference was that people with HIV/Aids sometimes consult religious healers who tell them that they have been cured. They do feel better, so they stop taking antiretroviral drugs, and then they begin to feel worse again. The speakers emphasised the point that doing this diminishes the effectiveness of antiretroviral drugs, not only for that patient, but for others as well, as the HI virus builds up resistance to the drugs.

But now other things amanzi: madness has posted on another aspect of the relationship between HIV and religious healers that was not mentioned at the conference -- the belief, propagated by some sangomas (witchdoctors) that sexual intercourse with a virgin will cure Aids, and notes that there seems to be a conspiracy of silence about this belief.

Courageous COWARDism: What would you do...?

Courageous COWARDism: What would you do...? discusses a common hypothetical moral dilemma that militarists pose to pacifists, or proponents of non-violence:

Those of us “pacifists” who have gone the conscientious objection route have heard all too much of the familiar question: “What would you do if…?” For those of you who are in the dark, let me reconstruct the argument used to challenge the nonviolence as a viable means of conflict resolution.

The accuser begins by placing you in a hypothetical situation in which you a faced with a choice of killing an aggressor that threatens the life of a loved one. You, the subject, hold the power to decide between one life and another. For example; your grandmother, sister, niece, or mother is held captive, a gun to her head (it seems arrogantly patriarchal that the victim consistently is portrayed by a feminine figure…), and you have the power to prevent the crime. Many accusers also insert the stipulation that death is the only thing that will stay the attackers hand. The great responsibility of choosing the moral necessity of killing the attacker rests upon you. What would you do?

The argument typifies so much of what seems wrong with the Western mindset from an Orthodox point of view. I'm not concerned to analyse the argument and discuss all its flaws -- the original blogger whom I've quoted does that quite well, and also points out some of the flaws in the assumptions on which the argument is based. The main assumption, of course, is that moral principles should always be sacrificed to self-interest. It is the idea of the just war writ small -- the just homicide. And there lies the core of the problem -- Western theology is obsessed with justification: not merely justifying sinners, but justifying war, and homicide. It is the same kind of argument that is used to justify the killing of doctors and nurses at abortion clinics -- think of all the babies one is saving.

The Orthodox understanding is somewhat different. It is not so wedded to sets of moral principles, which one is obliged to apply with instant omniscient wisdom when someone has decided to murder one's grandmother. Christos Yannaras wrote about The freedom of morality, which includes the freedom from the necessity to justify. One may, perhaps, kill the would-be murderer of one's grandmother, and thereby save her. But one would not attempt to justify the deed. No, if one killed such a person, far from attempting to justify it, one would repent, and confess the killing as a sin.

Orthodoxy has had both those who have fought in wars and those who have refused to fight, and honours as saints some among the first and likewise some among the second. In this world, wars happen. But they are never just.

Social blogrolling - controversy on MyBlogLog

There's been a bit of a tempest in a tea cup over a new feature of MyBlogLog -- the ability to send messages to all one's community members.

Some, like Meg in Australia, have complained that it is spam, but it seems that those who are complaining have joined hundreds of communities that they have no real interest in.

And I disagree. I think being able to send a message to all one's community members (provided it is not overdone) is a good thing. Perhaps some will abuse the facility by sending spam, but then the answer is simple -- leave their community. But a message once a quarter or even once a month should not be a problem.

I think "community" means that one desires to interact with others in the community. If people join communities on MyBlogLog and similar social networking sites, they ought to be interested in the topics of the community and in interaction with the members. If they do not want to communicate, they should not have joined the community in the first place.

In my blogs I have tried to make it clear what I am interested in and what I blog about, and I do that in MyBlogLog too. I hope that people who are interested in similar things will read my blogs and comment, and join my communities in MyBlogLog so we can keep in touch, and so I will be reminded to look at their blogs occasionally.

But some people seem to join communities just to see how many they can collect. I have difficulty in understanding the motivation for joining a community where one has no interest in anything the community is about. If you join a football club, and have no interest in football, why did you join? If you then object to receiving the club newsletter, don't complain to the post office about the club sending you the newsletter, just resign from the club.

I have the same problem with people on social networking sites like MySpace, whom I've never heard of, saying "I want to be your friend". If they've read and commented on my blog, or we've discussed things in a newsgroup, or exchanged e-mail or snail mail, or communicated in some other way, fine. But just to be a "friend" with no discernable common interest with me makes no sense.

One of the problems of electronic networking is that it can lead to communication without community. But the sudden demand from people on MyBlogLog for community without communication is far more difficult to understand.

The Book Inscription Project

While blog surfing I came across the Book Inscription Project.

Yes, they collect book insctriptions. Thanks to I feel pithy for the link.

Crime victims compensation fund

I see that, at last, there is public discussion of the possibility of having a crime victims compensation fund.

But people are asking how such a thing would be funded.

Surely the answer is obvious -- the assets forfeiture unit should transfer the proceeds of crime from the criminals to the victims.

Syncretism

Over the last couple of weeks I have seen quite a number of blog posts that have referred to an Episopalian minister in the USA who has said she is both Christian and Muslim. Most of posts I have seen that have come from Christian bloggers have been very uninformative and moralistic. They have either simply condemned the minister concerned, without saying why, or they have held it up as an example: see, everything you have been told about the Episcopalians is true.

We all tend to moralise at times. In my own blogs I have tended to moralise about warmongers like Bush and Blair and Clinton, and that has its dangers (Grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother). But their actions have taken place in public view and in democratic societies are exposed to public debate.

In the case of the Episcopalian minister who claims to be both Christian and Muslim, however, there have been a couple of media reports, which have been, in the nature of such things, rather shallow. And in neither the media reports nor most of the blog postings I have read has there been any serious attempt to get to grips with the real issues.

One exception is this post by The Imugi on Religious Syncretism. The Imugi is not a Christian, but a religious syncretist practising a mixture of Taoism and Buddhism (a kind of syncretism that is quite common in East Asia), yet displays a far better grasp of the issues than most Christian blogs I have read on the topic.

A few months ago we had a synchroblog on Syncretism (you can see my contribution, with links to the others, here: Notes from underground: Syncretism in Western Christianity. I nominate the Imugi's post for honorary, though belated inclusion.