After Eight Years, Looking Back At 10 Most Visited Posts Here

Rich Mauer recently referred to me in a piece on parents who are lobbying to get the legislature to fully fund public schools as

 "a writer who blogs on the Legislature,"

Technically, that is true.  Sometimes I do write about the legislature and in 2010 I spent three months in Juneau blogging about the legislature.  But I blog about a lot of other things, really a lot of other things.  The common thread is supposed to be 'ways of knowing' or getting folks to see something from a little different perspective than normal.  Sometimes that's a stretch.

But for people who think this is a serious blog on politics and government, and even ways of knowing, the statistics show something else.  Some of what I think of as 'serious' posts get a fair share of hits.  But some of the other posts keep getting hits long after they were posted.  These aren't 'unserious' posts, but they are on other topics.  The all time high now seems to be 2009 post that still gets lots of hits each day.

And since July 2014 marks the 8th anniversary of this blog's first posts, it seems appropriate to look back at some old posts.  Today, let's look at the ten most visited posts on this blog, according to Blogspot's analytics:

• Tiny Black Bugs - Fruit Flies or Fungus Gnats?
  26,954  page views -  Nov 14, 2009, 22 comments
• What does everyone seem to have in common?  Bugs.  Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Atheist, they all have to deal with insects.  Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, all become just human when they find little black bugs in their kitchens.  At least that's my interpretation of the popularity of this post.  This 2009 post is still getting lots of hits in 2014 - 17 already today.

• Life's Little Surprises
  23,379 page views,   Apr 5, 2010, 4 comments
• And people all over the world hurt their feet and want to see x-rays and foot diagrams. The x-ray is my picture, but I found the foot diagram on-line.
  
  
  
• Detailed Redistricting Maps and Post Plan Public ...
  11,342 page views,  Apr 15, 2011, 1 comment
• Not sure why this redistricting post got the most hits.  It's not the final set of maps, but at the time people didn't know that.  
  
  
• Joe Miller: "If East Germany could, we could."
  6,871 page views,  Oct 17, 2010, 26 comments
• This post got the most hits in a single day for several days.  It's the post that probably could be said to have gone viral as the video quickly got onto Daily Kos, TPM, Huffington Post, Politico, CrooksandLians, Washington Post, even the Guardian, Paris Match, and Der Spiegel. 
  
  
• "Does you hotel have any vasectomies next week?" ...
  6,056 page views,  Mar 7, 2011, 1 comment
  
• When I need a laugh, I go to this post and the link to  Damn You Auto Correct which posts the messages people sent thanks to auto-correct.  Not sure why it makes me laugh so hard.  I think it's my imagining the people seeing these messages on their phone. 
  
  
• AIFF 2010: Features in Competition - The Temptati...
  5,645 page views, Nov 27, 2010, 4 comments
• It seems these folks aren't  coming to learn about the Anchorage International Film Festival, but rather to see a picture of Saint Anthony - particularly Salvidor Dali's painting of him, which I used to give some background of the Estonian movie The Temptation of St. Tony.
  
  
  
• Brown Bug
  4,897 page views,  Sep 28, 2009, 10 comments
• Bugs get two entries in the top ten.
  
  
• Victor Lebow's Complete Original 1955 Article
  4,878 page views, Dec 24, 2007, 57 comments
• This was probably my first 'big post' in the sense of getting lots of hits, and I'm pretty sure it has the most comments.  It was my reaction to a quote in Annie  Leonard's otherwise great video The Story of Stuff.  It involves not only the original article the quote came from, but research on Victor Lebow, and my adventures in the library tracking things down.

• 1 800 695 6950
  4,423 page views,  Sep 13, 2012, 10 comments
• People also want to know who's calling them.  In this case, a very aggressive and obnoxious collection agency.  
  
  
• Asiana Crash and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers Chapt...
  4,336 page views,  Jul 6, 2013, 10 comments 
• When I heard about the Asiana crash in San Francisco, I immediately thought about Malcolm Gladwell's chapter on Korean pilots in his book Outliers.  I was also pleased that a commenter shared a link to Ask A Korean that supported a problem I have with Gladwell:  He gets an idea and seems to run with it, ignoring glaring questions.  In this case, Ask A Korean refutes a good part of Gladwell's chapter convincingly.    

But don't take this list too seriously.  I have real questions about the accuracy of the google statistics.  But the numbers are probably relatively accurate for the rankings - particularly the first two posts which far outdistance the rest.  I'd note that for the last month, Tiny Black Bugs is also number 1.