Sunday, December 04, 2005

More on stats

Truth Laid Bear reveals the silly stuff that some try to hide: stats!

It's pretty humbling too.

For example, based on number of average daily visits, DC Art News is currently ranked 657th in the world, just slightly ahead of the Baseball Crank and just behind Let it Bleed.

There are a couple of other visual art blogs on that page (which lists 501-1000 in the world).

One (a "national audience" Blog) is surprisingly just barely ahead of DC Art News but within striking distance.

And we're all easily whupped (virtually) by Pussy Talk, which comes in at number 531 with 1077 visits a day.

As far as I can figure it out, the highest ranked visual arts-related Blog in the world is Photographica ranking in at #494 with 1204 visits per day. If I am reading (and recognizing Blogs) these stats right, that would make DC Art News the 3rd highest ranked visual arts Blog in the Blogsphere!

And all that we post about (generally) is little ole DC stuff... and yet readers pop in from all over the world... is there a lesson for the Lame Stream Media there?

Here are the top 100 Blogs in the Blogsphere. I tried to figure out which were the top ranked DC-based Blogs and nearly became depressed in the process... either leftwingnuts or rightwingnuts or... nuts. There's probably someone good here that I am not recognizing as a DC area Blogger; if so, someone please let me know and my apologies in advance.

And if your Blog is not listed, then add it here.

These things really spin me off... If I said that NPR is going to cover an art show about an artist who is doing a whole exhibition about Mexican "Lucha Libre" (wrestling), where the artist takes his influences from an obsession with Mexican wrestlers and their masks. What would you think? Well... if you were slightly plugged in to the DC area art scene, you'd hopefully think Andrew Wodzianski and his recent Georgetown solo of Mexican wrestlers? Right? You'd be wrong, because NPR did not do a story of Wodzianski's elevation of Mexican wrestling to the realm of the fine arts in a gallery less than half an hour cab ride from the NPR studios, but instead sent a whole crew to the other side of the country to do a story about a photographer who takes shots of Mexican Lucha Libre and then has the exhibition in a bookstore! 

 And in case you're wondering, yes - we do blanket NPR with press releases about our shows. I am almost resigned to the fact that most of our area's museum curators all but ignore their own backyard; but Noah Adams - you're breaking my heart!

Talking about Mexico and Mexicans... it baffles me that the egg heads in the Democrat Party cannot foresee what every contemporary Latino/Hispanic knows in his or her heart: One day, not too far in the future, as the Hispanic population in the US continues to grow,  and because we are so diverse in thought, culture and perspectives, that one day, a decade or two from now, when Latino numbers make Latinos the largest ethnic minority in the US... the DNC will be shocked to "discover" that Latinos will not be obedient voters for the Democrat ticket only, and Latino/a politicians will run and win under the Republican party, and large percentages of the Latino vote will go to the right.

This will come as a shock to both the DNC and to their so called experts with a vowel in their last name but little otherwise of real knowledge of the immense diversity of the nations and peoples south of the US.  "They" are making and will continue to make the mistake of viewing Hispanics/Latinos as a monolithic "group", rather than the racially diverse, culturally tied by language and "some" customs, but NOT a single-think group of people.  As the millions continue to pour in from the southern border, expect the first warning shots to the DNC come from Hispanics/Latinos (mostly of Mexican ancestry) come from South Texas.

10 to 15 years from now... faster if the DNC continues to drift left.

Case in point: I know of not one single Cuban or Cuban-American "Lucha Libre" wrestler in the history of that sport... Although I did like the "El Santo" photo-comics when I was a teen in New York! They were awesome!