From me to you

Just to let everyone know.  Today, this blog has surpassed the monthly mark for pages read.  I thank each one of you who read this blog.  You have given me plenty to think about and discuss over the past year.  It is amazing.

I was looking on Alexa.com the other day and I noted something.  I wanted to list this for each of you to look at because you might want to compare your own sites or you are just interested in playing around.

According to Alexa, Banner Sword and Shield ranks as the 8,583,051busiest website.

By Contrast I have put a list of some of the bigger Mormon sites (blogs) out there so you get a comparison:

LDS.org – 2,965

Mormon Times (Deseret News) 86,742

By Common Consent 321,798

Times and Seasons 406,767

Feminist Mormon Housewives 453,287

Mormon Matters 498,611

Mormon Mentality 668,495

Juvenile Instructor 3,193,386

So yes a ways to go yet but interesting nonetheless.

Welcoming a new contributor

It gives me great pleasure to introduce a new contributor to Banner, Sword, and Shield.  David Strong, from southern Alberta Canada.  David comes to our site with a background researching and participating in the Mormon movie industry.

Welcome aboard David.  Great to have you blogging along and I think we all are looking forward to your posts.

B-day for the Banner

One year ago today I started this blog.

On November 5, 2007 I started this blog with the words, “[Banner, Sword, and Shield is] [t]aken from a line in A Royal Army I have decided to post some LDS Church related thoughts and hopefully scare up opinions from you, the readers of this newest edition of the bloggernacle.”

Public broadcasters a comparison

I have been thinking today about a political, cultural issue.  This is the funding of public broadcasters.  Having lived in the US, Canada and UK, I was curious to do a comparison of the funding, mostly because I thought that Canada’s CBC received a great deal of more funding then they should.

In the USA the Public Broadcast System is funded in part by federal/state funds, corporate donations and subscribers (members) from the general public.  Some of these stations even receive funding from Canada, my parents have been members of KSPS out of Spokane for a few years.

Thinking about blogging

So this evening I have been thinking about blogging.  No not in the sense of, “hey maybe I should blog about something.”  Rather, I have considered my own blogging experience.  In the past three years I have off and on heavily blogged.

I started writing in June of 2005.  Then it was a work related blog, trying to keep up with other political Jones’ who were using this fancy new tool to great effect.  It became, to me, something more than just another political blog.  It came to be about the issues of the day.  Yes it was positively journal like in nature.  I spent as much time talking about my daily travels with Transit, to taking my kids ice skating for the first time.

Will the Real Ox in the Mire Please Stand Up

I found this while browsing old ensigns this morning.  I have to share because it is awesome.  It is an article about reason for Sunday activities (such as shopping) amongst the church membership.

It is a narrow focused study but I suspect that much of it may be more true today than it was then.

After reprinting Luke 14:1-6 the authors, Franklyn W. Dunford and Phillip R. Kunz, make a point that this ox in the mire excuse is used often by the church membership.  From this premise the authors look at two wards to show some intriguing statistics.

This book I once wrote

A long time ago on a helpdesk far away, in Cardiff to be exact.  A legend was born.  Or bored.  Depends on how you look at it.

About 2001 several members of an IT helpdesk in Cardiff Wales started a forum, which has long since vanished off the face of the earth.  In it many of the characters from Deep Space 9 were matched to the various people on the desk.   Fun was then had making this story bigger and bigger.

After about six months only three were left crafting the story.  It had changed radically into a much less inside joke humor to a broader range.  I would say it grew a lot over the years

It could either be called a total SciFi rip off or a mild send up in the fashion of Mel Brooks of our favorite stories and common situations during that period after 9/11.  It is light hearted but I might say it is heavy in British humor and style so if you like Hitchhikers Guide or Red Dwarf you might find this mildly amusing.  Or not.

Since I doubt it will ever see a publishers office I just wanted to post it for consideration and hope it you like it.  Or not.

I give you:

Web World Nine: A Space Oddity