Links and Minifeatures 10 03 Monday

Well, according to the server logs, I finished September with 24,587 visitors on the month, an improvement of 20 percent from the 20,442 I had in August. No, it's not Instapundit, but I'm happy. If I can increase visits that percentage every month, I'll be ecstatic. So thank you to the readers. Yes, I know Sitemeter says 8600 and something total visits, but it's wrong and I'm seriously considering deleting it altogether. (btw, as of the end of September, I had 58,349 visits since launch on June 19th, 183,564 page views. Thank you all again).



Next step, getting you all to participate.

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Several weeks ago, my wife and I needed to buy an algae eater, and we thought that as long as we were at the fish store, we'd buy a blue male guppy because we had too much orange. Unfortunately, the blue guppy we bought brought an ick-festation with him, killing all but three of our guppies (including him) before we got it under control. We only had two girls and one fodder-sized baby left. So we waited about two weeks to make sure the tank was stable, and went out and bought two pairs. Got home, and found that one of the boy guppies we selected managed to confuse us and the clerk long enough to substitute a similar looking girl (the stores tend to sell not-quite adults and once they're in the net, it's hard to tell). Plus one of the two girls we already had popped out half a dozen babies while we were getting the new fish; we noticed the little eyes looking out of the plants while dropping the new purchases in (Five sizes to guppies: Eyes, fodder, survivors, juveniles, and adults. They go from eyes to fodder within a couple days, survivors when they're too big for the adults to swallow, and juveniles when they start getting significant color).



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RINO Sightings is up over at Strata-Sphere. Recommended: ROFASix (I love the Trackback Squirrel!) Castle Argghhh!, Big Cat Chronicles



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Captain's Quarters covers the start of a civil war between Hamas and Fatah. Is anyone surprised? Anyone?



State of Flux has more.



Victor Davis Hanson has a Harry Turtledove-esque piece on the likely situation if Bush hadn't topple Saddam Hussein.



LGF reports on some of Iran's domestic propaganda, which confirms what I said here.



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Tapscott's Copy Desk completely demolishes a liberal meme in the ten seconds it takes to read his chart. It tends to be the well off that enlist, and more so now than before the 9/11 attacks. While recruitment in the poorest zip codes is off as a proportion of recruits, those better off have enlisted at higher rates. He also links Grim's Hall who has a break down by region. Could it be just that the northeastern liberals don't know anybody in the military and therefore assume that we don't either? We all know what happens when you assume.



I don't link Mudville Gazette as often as I probably should. If you want good information as to what's really going on in the war on terror, they've always got links to and from eyewitnesses. What brings this to the fore today is that he's got the low down on a great report on the recruiting situation.



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Smackdown! La Shawn Barber speaks truth to those after Bill Bennett for his recent remarks.



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Armies of Liberation has an article about the opposition coalition and another about a fatwa'd Journalist trying to defend himself who needs some assistance.





Sorry, but I'm out of time!