Wow! This is the Internet at Work

Okay, so given that there are important things going on in the world, like that lying sack of nonsense, Paul Ryan, running for VP on the Romney ticket, filling the airwaves with a host of utter lies last night. And then there is the flooding in Louisiana--which I'm glad is not as bad as people thought it could have been--and injustice and poverty, both circumstantial and engineered, in our own country and outright starvation in a lot of other countries. And then there was my Madeleina yesterday, who got in my truck after school already angry, and when we started talking about a small get together of previous guests of mine in the jungle suggested that I not be an "A-hole this time, dad, so you ruin everything..." which was the first time she's crossed that line. (Anybody who is a former guest who did not get a specific invite, forgive me. Just don't have the time to cull through years of trips. So if you want to be invited, write me a note at peterg9 at yahoo.com okay?)

Okay, given that, I am going wow because I discovered a button on the dashboard of this web page that allows me to see where people are who are reading the blog. And it was a pretty far-ranging group. Far-ranging enough that last Monday I began taking note of the countries that were accessing this blog. and here is the list:

United States

Russia

India

Germany

United Kingdom

Canada

France

China

Jamaica

Mauritius

Slovenia

Romania

Hong Kong

Netherlands

Australia

Poland

Peru

Italy

Argentina

United Arab Emirates

Ecuador

Japan

Colombia

Spain

Austria

Singapore

Ireland

Belgium

Czech Republic

Philippines

Israel

Thailand

Brazil

Cameroon

Ukraine

Lithuania

Malaysia

South Africa

South Korea

Portugal

Norway

Greece

Taiwan

Turkey

Finland

Croatia

Now to me, that suggests the power and expanse of the internet. If people in Camaroon are reading about ayahuasca, or my family, or what the heck I made for dinner last night (which was just plain roast chicken with garlic served with rice, steamed broccoli and sliced cucumber with lime), well that is a long freaking reach. Why anyone in Estonia or Turkey or Malaysia would want those recipes or want to know that Madeleina, at 15, finally referred to me as an "A-hole", well, I have no idea. But I am amazed that web-visitors from all those places chose to visit this site during the last 10 days that I've been paying attention. Just WOW! is all I can think. Sort of brings to life the thought in the song from the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, New York: "It's a small world, afterall..."

Have a great one, everybody.