Category: Odds & Ends

Hiatus

I am not going to post anything else until another Catholic Lighter posts something. That is all.

A quotation found in my desk’s stack of papers

Difficulties show men what they are. In the case of any difficulty, God has pitted you against a rough antagonist so that you might be a conqueror, and this cannot be without toil.
                                          — Epictetus

Catholic Light breaks records!

…its own traffic record, that is. And I’m not talking about anything connected to the DMV. No, we’re talking Web traffic. Here are the stats:
Total page views: 32,639
Total visits: 18,019
Average page views per day: 1,087
Average visits per day: 600
Top countries: Italy (!), U.K., Australia, Canada, Netherlands
Even discounting 30% of the traffic as bots or Catholic Light contributors — probably a high estimate — that means about 400 people visit the site every day. Not too bad for a little blog like ours. Break out the holy water! Let’s get CRAZY!

Gutenberg in reverse

Before the 15th century, books were for important information: Holy Scripture; recording baptisms, marriages, and deaths; noting important events in a kingdom; great works of literature. As the demand for literature grew, a German printer named Johannes Gutenberg invented a way to print large numbers of pages, leading to cheap books, and ever more widespread literacy.
The printed word reached its apogee in the 19th century, as there were no competing media for entertainment or news. Since the inventions of radio, television, and film, print has lost its exclusive hold on the public. Indeed, there are indications that it is in decline, hastened by the appearance of the Internet.
Personally, I hope it declines faster. I can’t stand paper anymore. Oh, I love books and magazines just fine, and I even love attractive catalogs with beautiful objects in them, though they are overstuffing our mailbox these days. What I don’t like are the transient papers: bills, receipts, reports, pickup stubs…all the printed effluvia of modern-day life.
The day when print returns to its pre-Gutenberg status as a privileged medium will not come soon enough, as far as I’m concerned. It’s tough to search through paper as easily as the Web, thanks to Google, or your hard drive. We must act now to ensure the revolution does not stall at its present level.
There is much work to be done, fellow paper-deprecators. We must stop our co-workers from printing 500-page manuals, of which they will only read 13 pages. Encourage your financial institutions to send electronic reports instead of paper ones. Stop writing checks and pay bills online. Eliminate paper, and the future is ours!
This rant was precipitated by a small yet daunting mound of papers here on my desk, which I have not gathered the courage to sort through. I am now going to bed, with the mound fully intact.