Saturday Ramblings

I got a laugh out of Phil Johnson’s post this morning on Pyromaniacs. He wrote “I have part 3 of Gary Johnson’s review queued up and ready to go, but I’m holding it till Monday because weekend traffic at the blog is sometimes low, and I don’t want the end of that series to get overlooked.” I have to admit to doing the same thing, namely, writing an article and figuring that it’s just too good to post on the weekend when blog traffic tends to fall by 40 or 50 percent. In fact, it happened today where I began writing and, as I was about to hit the “Post” button, realized that I should probably wait to post this one another day when more people can read it. That may sound awfully arrogant, but all the wisdom in the post comes courtesy of another person and I believe this wisdom needs to be heard by more than a diminished weekend audience.

For those who are interested, traffic here at Challies Dot Com and at most other blogs is highest on Monday. It slowly subsides over the week, dropping maybe a few percentage points each day until Friday. Then on Saturday it takes and dive and falls further on Sunday, before rebounding for Monday. I guess this proves what we already know: the vast majority of people who read blogs do so from work. Shame on all of us.

Scrabble: Stefan Fatsis, writing for Slate Magazine, has somehow managed to do the unthinkable. He has written a play-by-play for a game of Scrabble and has made it interesting. You can read here about how a carpenter managed to shatter the previous single game record of 770 points. In the basement of a Unitarian church, two men “set three records for sanctioned Scrabble in North America: the most points in a game by one player (830), the most total points in a game (1,320), and the most points on a single turn (365, for Cresta’s play of QUIXOTRY).”

Johnny Mac Rap? Expository Thoughts posts the audio for another weird and wonderful Internet phenomenon, suggesting “John MacArthur has finally embraced his rap alter ego “Dr. Miggidy Mac.’”

Symposium: I do intend to award a prize in the Reformation Day Symposium. The participation in this Symposium was far beyond my expectations and I have not yet had opportunity to sift through the entries (there must be 70+ entries to go through!). The team of judges (i.e. myself and a friend) have pulled out a few favorites and will go from there. Check back sometime next week.

Books: Every now and again I like to mention some of the books I’ve read or have tried to read, but have decided not to review or not to finish reading. Such is the case with A Week in the Life of MAF by Irene Howat (published in 2006 by Christian Focus). The book has a very interesting premise: it discusses each of Mission Aviation Fellowship locations around the world and seeks, on the basis of week-long diaries, to show what happens within the organization in a given week. Unfortunately, I found the execution of this good idea was somewhat lacking. Not every good idea makes a good book and this may just be proof of that. Still, for the right person with an interest in this organization or in mission work, this may be a worthwhile book. As an aside, the book begins with a sentence that is strangely awkward: “The week in 2004 in which the snapshot of MAF’s work was taken started with the rising of the sun on Sunday, 5 September, and the first operation on which it shed its light was in Eastern Australia, in Cairns, where MAF’s Head Office is.”

Etc: And that’s it from me today. I am about to head out to do some shopping with the kiddies. Have a blessed weekend (the 40 or 50% of you who actually visit on Saturday…)!