Five years ago today I launched my blog and began this labor of love. When I embarked on this journey, my goal was to write one or two posts a month on the twin topics of public policy and being a dad. In publishing my 100th blog post earlier this week, I comfortably hit that goal.
I wasn’t sure what sort of audience I’d receive, but as the years have gone by, it’s felt like the little blog that could. With tens of thousands of page views and some posts written years ago being read daily (see below), it’s exceeded my expectations.
My first post was on a Washington State initiative on the mandatory labeling of GE food – 55% of voters later supported my recommendation to reject it. But the more notable posts over the years have been the following:
Top three posts of all time
Seattle’s homeless contradictions
This 2018 post went viral and was shared on multiple Facebook groups and others that are concerned about Seattle’s homeless crisis. Many people commented that they had expressed several of the individual points I made, but they had never consolidated these thoughts in one place.
Bernie Sanders, Sweden and New Zealand
This 2016 post was popular here and in New Zealand, where it was run on a local site.
Feel-Good Bans on Straws and Plastic Bags Don’t Help the Ocean
While this piece was popular on my site, it was first published in National Review. Having first run there, it didn’t garner the same number of page visits on my blog as the posts above, but it was read by a much wider audience.
Most enduring posts — health care
A couple of my posts on health care have had remarkable longevity and both of them are consistently visited daily. I can only assume that they are linked to elsewhere or are ranked high in search results, or both. The first post has the unusual distinction of being read more in 2018 than when it was published in May 2017. There was a massive page visit spike in January of this year and I have no idea why!
U.S. health care problems–universal health care is not the solution
Life expectancy and infant mortality – poor health care performance measures
Most blogged topic – global warming
The topic I’ve written the most about is climate change. All of the pieces I’ve written on the subject can be found here. But by far the most comprehensive piece is the first one I wrote back in 2014. My writing on the subject resulted in me being asked to deliver a speech on global warming to a local group last year.
Global warming: a review and how to respond
Daddy Rants
My two most popular posts on being a dad have been the following:
Peeling back the curtain on parenting
A reply to “If you’re having a baby, don’t get a dog”
Thanks for stopping by. I’m looking forward to the next five years.
– Nicholas
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