I don’t often think about the medium of blogging; I’m usually focused on the message. But tonight, I’ve been thinking about blogging itself, and thinking seriously about a question that many people have asked, dismissively for the most part: What good is blogging? Isn’t it a waste of time?
If you were to ask me after I read today’s news, I’d say, “no good,” and “yes, a colossal waste of time.”
Museum, Bel-Wood bonds may top $90M (PJS)
Hotel options keep expanding (PJS)
Mel’s Cafe closing soon to move to East Peoria (PJS)
Committee backs partial settlement of Firefly suit (PJS)
Central Illinois Railroad Co. to Cease Operations (Peoria Station)
Preview: Schock on Top Chef (Word on the Web)
Obama flops on Snooki? It’s an awkward situation… (Peoria Pundit)
These headlines illustrate that our elected leaders are going forward with additional bad investments even as they pay the price for previous poor decisions from which they should have learned something. Meanwhile, some of our highest elected officials are being treated like celebrities (and acting like them, sometimes) instead of adults with serious responsibilities.
I’d say our nation is pretty much doomed. What’s the use of blogging?
Click above for larger image (PDF)Peoria Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard recently updated City officials on the results of his efforts to quell gun violence. So far, it’s going well:
[P]lease see attached hot spot maps relative to our current task force initiative. We are 14 days into the task force so I conducted an analysis comparing the 14 days prior to launching the task force versus 14 days afterward. City wide we had a 25% reduction in people being hit by gunfire and a 25% reduction in confirmed gun discharges.
The attached maps demonstrate the before and after picture for the combination of murders and gun discharge incidents. The red hot spot areas are gone which is very good news. I would temper the good news however by stating that 14 days is a very small sample size and we need to keep up our efforts.
I also would note that the hot spot maps include all instances where someone was killed, someone was shot, or simply where we had a confirmed gun discharged. This does not include reports of shots being heard with no witness and no physical evidence. We must have had someone who was willing to stat they saw it happen, or we found shell casings, or someone or something was hit, etc. The criteria is identical for both “before” and “after” to ensure apples to apples comparison.
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