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Blogging Your Way To Success Part 4

(Continued from Blogging Your Way To Success Part 3)

In this last part of the series, we will summarize what we have covered:

1) You have registered for a Blogger account at http://www.blogger.com.

2) You have created at least 20 pages of content and set to archive daily.

3) You have registered an account with AdSense.

4) You have created a feedback form at your blog.

5) You have started your link exchange campaigns.

With most of the technical things taken care off, the maintenance of your blog depends heavily on your consistent updates.

Make it a ritual (not just a habit) to post at least once a day at your blog. If you want visitors to keep coming back to your web site, then let your visitors have your word that you will post just as often.

Your posts need not be a timely issue. Rather, you can offer tips and ideas on a specific topic. For instance, if your blog is about football, you do not necessarily have to update your visitors with the latest scores. You can do that on a timely basis. But rather, you can teach your visitors tips and tricks on playing football.

By now, you have one source of revenue. In time, you can either create your own product or source for other peoples products to sell at your web site.

From time to time, you will want to establish link exchanging campaigns to build your page ranks as well as drive in fresh targeted traffic derived from other peoples web sites.

If you need to see an example to model after, you can visit my blog at http://ebizmodelsyoucancopy.blogspot.com/.

There you go a complete step-by-step guide on creating your own blog! Towards your blogging success!

Copyright Edmund Loh

posted by sndabacv @ 10:32 PM 0 comments

The Game is the Name

Shakespeare could wax poetic about 'What's in a Name?' because he didn't have to contend with sports mascots ...

It's the politically-correct issue in America that refuses to subside. I consider myself to be an enlightened cyberbeing, but I contend there are just some topics that blur the bigger picture of an ethically responsible society, and complaining that mascots can be degrading is near the top of the list.

A quick check of Webster's Twentieth Century Unabridged Dictionary defines 'mascot' as 'any person, animal or thing supposed to bring good luck by being present.' So, it would seem that a team mascot is an honorable title. Most mascots in American sports had their origins in the early 1900s. Back then, teams fumbled around with quaint monickers until they gradually realized the tremendous marketing value they carried. The New York Highlanders became the more regionally-identifiable Yankees, for instance, and the Chicago Cubs took their nickname so newspaper editors could more easily fit it into headlines. Distinguished symbols like Tigers and Giants appeared. Unique features like White Stockings and Red Stockings evolved into the more headline-friendly and spelling-special White Sox and Red Sox.

One of the earliest attempts at humor in mascot-anointing was made by the Brooklyn nine of baseball's National League. Urban legend wasn't a known phrase back then, but it farily describes the allusion to fans who 'dodged' trolley fares to get a free ride to Ebbetts Field and watch the game. Those 'bums' were called Dodgers, and their favorite team became christened as such.

Ironically, that drift toward the whimsical --- probably intended to portray sports in its proper context as a divertissement of life --- may have been the root of indignation two generations later.

The social upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s were certainly justified, in my view. Civil rights needed to come to the fore, and the resultant improvement in how all peoples were perceived was a great step forward for mankind. Still, there's a difference between significant awareness and pedantic perception in any movement. Thus, in my view, when certain Native Americans first raised the mascot controversy in headlines of the time, the attention afforded was only due to its being sucked into the backdraft of searing human rights campaigns.

Personally, I've always thought the issue had as much relevance to their legitimate concerns as bra-burning did for women's rights.

Think about it. Native Americans aren't alone in being designated as mascots. In accordance with Webster's Dictionary definition, other persons given the distinction include the Irish (University of Notre Dame) and Scandinavians (Minnesota Vikings). Both of these ethnic groups endured their moments of discrimination in the annals of American history, too. So far, neither has mounted a protest about being characterized as a good luck symbol for a sporting organization.

Don't even try to broach the 'caricature' argument as a reason why the Native American situation is different. Perhaps Notre Dame uses a leprechaun logo now, but the term 'Fighting Irish' was a clear reference to barroom brawlers, a stereotypical low-life trait at which immigrants from the Emerald Isle were perceived to be quite proficient. As to the Scandinavians, there is no evidence that even one Viking was ever so dim as to go into battle with a set of heavy horns on his helmet; why would any warrior charge into a kill-or-be-killed scenario wearing anything that could directly impede his ability to win? (The image of horns came from priests' drawings of Viking attacks, attempting to equate them to the Devil incarnate, and it was Wagner who popularized this image when he staged his epic Ring of the Niebelung.)

Cleveland's baseball team sorted through a number of mascots in their early days. 'Spiders' just didn't have that 'je ne sais crois' of marketing sizzle. They were the 'Naps' for a while, in honor of their star player-manager, Napoleon Lajoie. So, when they finally settled on 'Indians' in correlation to one of their first star players --- Louis Sockalexis, a Native American --- the monicker may not have begun as a tribute to him, but it has since memorialized his legacy. The evidence indicates the term was derogatorily applied to all members of the Cleveland team in the 1890s because it dared to have the fortitude to allow an Indian to play for them. Since then, Sockalexis has been recognized as being as much of a pioneer for minority involvement in major sports as the great Jackie Robinson was fifty years later.

Yes, the team uses a caricature of a Native American as its logo now. In fact, Chief Wahoo is perenially one of the hottest-selling logos on sports merchandise. It far outsells the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets orginal logo, which is honoring the valiant Ohio battalion that fought so honorably in the Civil War. We haven't heard historical societies from that great state howling with indignation that this is done by putting a green insect in a Union soldier's uniform. Instead, the odds are they're pleased that more of the North American public has become aware of the Blue Jacket history than ever before, just as the Cleveland Indians can keep alive the memory of Sockalexis.Some protestors say Chief Wahoo has 'shifty' eyes and that makes him even more demeaning. I, for one, never drew that connection, but if anyone else did, why wouldn't they be laughing and demeaning the Oklahoma University Sooners? After all, that term originally implied cheaters getting a jump on staking claims to land being opened for settlement.

There are many more examples. I simply don't see Native Americans being unduly isolated in this context, and no one else involved is feeling belittled.

The Washington Redskins originated in Boston, home of baseball's Red Sox and Braves in the 1930s. They were also called the Braves back then, because they played in that team's stadium. However, when they wound up getting better terms to locate in Fenway Park, they didn't want to confuse the paying public by being Braves but playing in the Red Sox stadium. Their solution made sense: they incorporated references to their origins and their new game site by changing their name to Redskins. The logic apparently didn't register with enough fans, though, and the team soon exited to the nation's capital.

The point here is that the Redskins name wasn't derived as a slur, but as a facilitation to distinguish the team's new --- albeit transitional --- home. Furthermore, to be fair, the Redskins organization has only used a noble image as a symbol of the name. Washington DC is one of the most liberal cities in North America, with its population's majority consisting of minorities. The connotation of that nickname being demeaning, as in the Cleveland Indians case, just doesn't emerge from its context.

My impression, then, remains that the mascot controversy has its sole value in the publicity it gives those organizations who are raising it. Pro and college sports are more visible than ever in the USA, and what better way is there to affix one's organization to higher 'page rankings' than making headlines in the Sports section of newspapers and broadcasts?

The matter isn't going away anytime soon. Now the NCAA --- college sports' governing body --- has decreed that any university with a Native American mascot can neither host a championship event nor use their mascot in any championship event. Some schools have successfully been granted exceptions, which makes even less sense to me. Does this mean that Florida State's Seminoles, for example, are less demeaning to Native Americans than North Dakota's Fighting Sioux (a traditional college hockey power)? How hypocritical is that? If they're contending that degrees of discrimination exist due to local circumstances, then they're admitting to a targeted sensitivity beyond society's pale, which is discriminatory in itself. How can such a position be rationalized with a clear conscience?

Mascots, no matter how commercialized, are still nothing more than whimsical symbols. Society as a whole understands that, just as it realizes the stylized violence in Grimm's Fairy Tales leaves no lasting scars on the psyches of children who innocently absorb them. Those who claim to the contrary only risk trivializing themselves and the credibility of their greater cause.

Nowhere in the country do such topics remain in a lighthearted perspective more than in Orofino, Idaho. That's the site of the state's mental hospital. The local high school's teams are called the Maniacs.

No one protests, unless the teams don't play hard.

posted by sndabacv @ 6:35 PM 0 comments

Parenting - My Story

When I became pregnant with my daughter, Aubrey, I was 21 years old, freshly married and scared to death! I read all the books, including the "What to Expect" series (even the infant and toddler ones). All these books gave us "one size fits all" kind of parenting advice.

When Aubrey was born, we practiced the "one size fit's all"; parenting advocated by all the books I read. We encouraged her to fall asleep on her on, meaning we let her cry herself to sleep. I also encouraged Aubrey to feel comfortable playing alone, and not need me. I did however KNOW that breast milk was best, and since I did not know that the resources were out there to seek help to learn HOW to breastfeed, I pumped.

Fast-forward 5 years.

I unexpectedly got pregnant with my son. This time I found myself alone. So, instead of reading (yet again) all the more mainstream books, I instead turned to my heart. I searched my heart for the kind of parent I wanted to be. The kind of child I wanted my son or daughter to be. I was not going to have help this time, so it had to be something I would understand, stick with and love, unlike the parenting style I choose with my older daughter.

I had no idea about Attachment Parenting. I did not know there was a name for how I instinctively parented my son. I just followed heart. I was steadfast in my resolve to breastfeed my son. I sought so much help in this. I had issues, just like many other first time nursing mommas. From problems with to much milk, to problems with the pace that my milk did flow as well. We struggled, but it was a struggle that really made me feel good, like I was really doing the best thing possible for myself and my child. We eventually "got it" and it was/is the best thing in the world for both of us!

Then while at a LLL Meeting someone was wearing a ring sling. I thought it was amazing to be able to hold your baby AND get something done! So I bought one. This was my first and not my most comfortable, but I learned that I could have my newborn son with me, and still tend to my 5-year-old daughter and get work done around the house.

I searched, high and low, to find the perfect sling for me. I learned how many different types there were, and decided on how I liked mine best. When I did not find one on the market that catered to my needs and wants, I created my own.

It was not till then, that I accidentally bumped into the name "Attachment Parenting"; I started reading, and was amazed and shocked that there were other mommas just like me. Mommas who loved their children enough to listen to their hearts AND their children's cries! I also learned that my co-sleeping is actually a great way to "attachment" parent, and is especially good when you are breastfeeding.

I was introduced to cloth diapers, which at first I thought, "NO WAY; Are people NUTS?"; Well I know different now. I then began cloth diapering my then 8 month old little boy. The patterns are so fun, the work is minimal and I know that I am doing just a little part to save the earth. Not to mention save some money! Another added benefit to my choosing cloth, is my son has extremely sensitive skin, and with cloth diapers he has had not ONE break out -- not even a hint of any type of diaper rash.

To me Attachment Parenting is not at all about a set guidelines though this is the set provided by Attachment Parenting International:

1. Preparation for Childbirth

2. Emotional Responsiveness

3. Breastfeed your Baby

4. Baby Wearing

5. Shared sleep and Safe Sleeping Guidelines

6. Avoid frequent and prolonged separations from your baby

7. Positive Discipline

8. Maintain balance in your family life

We (as a family) practice several or most of these guidelines, now. Though like I said, my daughter as a baby was not parented this way, so I have a good sense of the exact diffrences in the two children.

Why these guidelines are nice to see, they are (to me) just that guidelines, to me Attachment parenting is more about Instinctive parenting listening to my heart and doing what comes naturally to me, not about some set of guidelines I "must" follow.

Now my son is 22 months old, still and still totally "Attachment Parented," which to me means he is continueing to co-sleep, nurse, is still being worn on a daily basis, and still has cute cloth on his little butt every day AND night.

He walks, has started talking, and is becoming a real "little man" (I am sometimes sad to say.) I am confident that he is so well adjusted because I was and am so steadfast in "my kind of parenting"; and my beliefs.

posted by sndabacv @ 2:58 PM 0 comments