Dennis Says

Dennis The Peasant has recently been offering some advice on blog writing. Part Three of the series is on how to select your blog's theme. Dennis's advice is ...

It is surprisingly easy to develop a successful blog site theme as long as you remember these two rules:

1. You must be able to express your entire theme in five words or less, and

2. You must hate at least two separate and distinct categories of human beings and/or things.

Helpful Hint: Here is a template that many of the leading bloggers have used to become successful:

I hate [insert Demographic/Thing #1 here] and [insert Demographic/Thing #2 here].

Judging by the number of political blogs that seem to be based on the themes of "I hate Conservatives and Christians" or "I hate Liberals and Muslims" it seems that a lot of bloggers have been taking Dennis's advice.

Now, if you have been following this blog in recent weeks you might think that my theme is "I hate Daniel Bernoulli, Jim Madden and jetskiers". Or if I have to follow Dennis's advice and state that in demographic terms "I hate 18th century mathematicians, owners of ostentatious racing yachts, and teenagers overdosing on testosterone".

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have never met Professor Bernoulli -- or any other 18th century mathematicians for that matter. Our Daniel seems to have been a fine looking fellow though with rather an effeminate taste for long curly wigs, but that was probably perfectly normal for folk with his particular lifestyle. His choices of book titles, Exercitationes and Hydrodynamique, are not quite as compelling as A Brief History of Time but I am sure they were best-sellers in their day. And, in spite of what you may have assumed by reading my various ramblings in recent weeks on how wings and sails work such as this and this, I am not denying the validity of the good professor's famous principle or even arguing that it does not have some relevance to how wings and sails generate lift. I am just saying that the conventional explanation of how Bernoulli's Principle applies to sails is total BS. And I will prove it here some other day. Uncle Al may say that Bernoulli sucks but what does he know?

And as for Mr Madden. Yes, it is true that I poked fun at his style of sailing here and here. But if you read his own accounts such as here and here, I think you will see that our Jimmy has a gentle touch in self-deprecating humor and is actually quietly mocking his own extravagances.

It would appear that Mr Madden is seriously rich. (As opposed to filthy rich or extravagantly rich -- I would never want to be one of those.) By "seriously" rich I mean that he is a self-made man who built a successful company and is now enjoying the fruits of his labors. Hey, there's nothing wrong with that. I suspect that if I could afford to spend several million dollars on a plaything I too might splurge it on a racing yacht with flat screen monitors in every stateroom and a wine cellar. Good luck to him. I'm only jealous really.

So no, I don't hate Bernoulli and Madden.

But I still detest jetskiers.