Preliator 2012 Survey: Results and analysis

Earlier today, I closed the polls on the month-long Preliator 2012 Survey, the third iteration of my yearly reader census. Here are the results, including replies to personal comments and suggestions. I received a total of 19 responses, not enough to form an ideal decent sample pool, but still more than I’ve gotten in previous years, so I’m definitely not complaining. :)

As before, I’d like to reiterate that all the responses I received were completely anonymous, with the only information I could see being the respondents’ individual timestamps and the answers they chose. So you can sleep soundly tonight, free from any worry of waking up to find subscriptions to Brony Magazine in your inbox. (Unless you’d like that.)

(Note: Some of the “Other” answer choices are marked as such because they were left blank.)

1) Readers’ age

The Preliator 2012 Survey is now closed

It’s been an awesome month, but alas, today marks the end of the Preliator 2012 Survey. I’ve closed the poll, removed the link at the top of the page, and will be going over the results tomorrow. A cool 19 of you (a new record!) have chosen to share a little about yourselves, for which I thank y’all grandly. Nothing beats confirming that people actually do read this little online journal of mine, and that some may even do it willingly. (IKR?)

Tags: Preliator 2012 Survey

Preliator turns 3! (So take the Preliator 2012 Survey!)

I feel old, and not only because this little repository of snark and meandering is now 1/6.66^th my age (a sign?). I actually managed to skip right past this here blog’s third anniversary last Wednesday the 25^th. That’s right – I’m so antiquated, I can’t even remember when my blog was born (despite having written it on my calendar eons ago). Egads.

Compensation is thus in order! Every year (previously around February/March), I launch the Preliator Survey, a simple little questionnaire intended to give me a halfway decent idea of just what kinds of people frequent this particular hole in the virtual world. I decided that this year’s would be offered on Preliator’s blogiversary, and I’d also be moving to the simpler Google Docs platform, which doesn’t limit my question and answer choices (unlike some people). The result will doubtlessly be a bit less shiny and neat, but at least I can now ask all the queries I’ve got in mind. (I’m nosy that way.)

And so, without further ado (and because the darn thing was too wide to embed here, dagnabbit):

[The Preliator 2012 Survey is now closed. Big thanks to all who participated.]

All answers are completely anonymous, and unlike previous years, all questions are optional and most of them include free answer choices (under “Other”), so don’t feel obligated to reply to all questions if you feel some are too personal. Just answer what you can! Any information is just fine.

The Survey will end exactly one month from now (er, from last Wednesday, rather) on August 25. I will keep a reminder at the top of the blog for those who miss this post until then.

Please note that this survey is intended for readers who are at least generally well acquainted with this zone, so I would like for newcomers to please familiarize themselves with the blog and its content before responding, if they wish. I know I have no way of enforcing this, so I simply leave this humble request. Thank you.

Now … who’s up for that cake?

Four? Cats are the WORST at counting.

It’s been a fun ride so far, and despite the present lull in content-making (Paint Week goes on!), it ain’t over yet, baby.

Tags: Preliator 2012 Survey • blogiversaries

In which I am vaguely threatened with a bogus copyright claim

Davy Vara [source]

I’m a nobody. I’m talking in the grand scheme of things – or even as specifically as in the Canadian atheistic blogosphere. There’s no shame to it; it just is. This here blog gets just over a hundred individual visitors (or 200 pageviews) per day on average, which may sound minimally impressive until one realizes that even moderately popular bloggers like Hemant Mehta or Ed Brayton rack up as much traffic in less than an hour (and let’s not even mention the juggernaut that is PZ Myers). Frankly, I consider myself fortuitous that enough people even notice this place to validate its inclusion in Google’s database.

So, all things considered, you can imagine my surprise when I received this email earlier today:

Personally identifying information uncensored because he doesn’t deserve the courtesy or effort.

Feedback: Evolutionists vs. Creationists and the same old arguments

Pictured: Typical Creationist [full size (400×400)]

Readers of this blog who have stuck around since close to its very inception might remember one early post from September of ’09 where I took a detailed look at an article from Telegraph that listed the top five arguments for and against Evolutionary Theory and Creationism. As expected, the arguments in defense of Creationism were piss-poor, filled with illogic and falsehoods, but even the arguments in favor of Evolution weren’t all that great, either (though at least they didn’t make my brain bleed).

I shared my thoughts regarding each argument and left it there, and since that time, that post has gotten a steady trickle of traffic until it finally received its first comment by “kk” earlier today. Sadly, it’s an incongruous melange of distorted thinking that comes from someone who claims to believe in evolution, and yet seems to possess a very fractured idea of what evolution actually is and does, all the while spouting the sort of garbled faith-talk and “testing is unreliable” nonsense that would make any old Creationist proud:

What evolutionists fail to understand is the concept of FAITH.^[1] I agree that Creationists should not use the "WHY?" question when debating Creationism vs. Evolution. Evolutionists do not care about the WHY.^[2] I believe that yes, the universe was created by GOD - AND I believe that evolution has certainly happened within species (not across species)^[3]. Carbon dating and other methods of dating can't be totally reliable unless these methods were available for the past billion years.^[4] Remember, people thought the world was flat not too long ago. It's impossible to say that we have all the answers today.^[5] Every day there are new technologies and ways of finding the truth.

Missing the point regarding the use of the term “nigger”

If only, indeed [source: To Miss with Love]

Firstly, if you’re offended by my use of the full term in the title as opposed to the silly “N-word” euphemism, then this post is for you, so please read it through before firing off any angry and quickly-ignored (or happily mocked) tirades.

Exactly a month ago this Wednesday (ie. August 15), I wrote a post titled “On Dr. Laura, societal oversensitivity and political correctness” where I put down some of my thoughts regarding the then-fuming scandal about Dr. Laura’s on-air racially charged rant. I elaborated on two points: that racial oversensitivity in our society was becoming symptomatic of political correctness run amok, and that there appears to be an unfair double standard regarding who had the “right” (so to speak) to use the racial smear “nigger”. My point was that if the term truly is as horrible as people make it out to be, then it shouldn’t be acceptable for anyone to say it, regardless of their skin color, and that any Black person who is outraged when a White (or other non-Black) person says it should also be equally angry whenever a Black person says it. (Depending on context, of course, which was another point made in my sorta-dissertation.)

After publishing my post, I expected some sort of hostile feedback as these sorts of posts tend to conjure, but then, I was obviously overestimating just how many people frequent this little hole-in-the-world in the first place and how many precious fewer take the time to comment. But now, nearly a full month later, I finally received a detailed comment – and it was pretty much what I feared and expected: an exercise in completely and utterly missing the point. From commenter MOORE1165: