Loving

1. Babies are born with an in-depth knowledge of Murphy’s laws. They always get ill on the first day you enter your new job or at least during plenary sessions. There’s never a clash of family and career.

2. Your employer is 100% sure babies are never ill for more than 2 days in a row. For some secret reason, babies are not so sure about that.

3. If there’s no way you can stay home with your ill baby because of work, there’s always professional medical help available. Be sure to inform them around 1 week before your baby gets ill, otherwise they won’t be able to assist you.

4. If you think that parents’ uninterrupted night sleep chances constantly ameliorate, you should refresh your math skills and remember what sinusoid is.

Caring

5. There’s no such thing as green babies: they waste food, soil clothes and outgrow them. And yes, they need some kind of diapers.

6. Babies and toddlers tend to have their own schedule which might be incompatible with your own.

7. If your parents living in your home country visit you, your baby will surely bring some gastroenteritis from the crèche and will share it with the grandparents just to be sure they have the ultimate experience and come to visit more often.

8. Bumps on toddlers’ heads tend to multiply: if they have one, they will surely get another one for the sake of symmetry

9. An angel might turn into a monster if you miss the bedtime by mere 15 minutes

10. American word “pacifier” is much more exact that British “dummy”, just because it brings peace on earth.

This inexhaustive list should not discourage you to have babies. It is an incredible learning and loving experience that you should not waste. Enjoy it ;) because kids do not belong to us, they are just given to us for a temporary care and protection.

A while ago, in February to be precise, I wrote a post entitled “Sex, Porn and Britney Spears“, at the end of which I wondered “whether an article titled and tagged as this one is, especially when these terms appear in tempting conjunction with “European Parliament”, gets any bump in traffic?”. Well, since we’ve been in the mood for number crunching I went and checked.

Thanks for the traffic, Britney

And the answer is: since records began (as they say) “Sex, Porn and Britney Spears” is our “most read” page on this blog – homepage excepted – by a street. The page has been viewed over 3000 times, which is roughly six times the number of the next most popular page, the Team, and over seven times the score for the next real post. What’s more, it maintains a constant flow of readers, so, yes, some search terms are, well, timeless.

People are looking for sex and go away the moment they realise they’re not getting it

It amuses me to imagine the disappointment of hopeful teenage internauts* who find themselves confronted with my earnest musings on search engine optimisation. Actually, I don’t have to imagine; I can see the disappointment in the 94.95% “bounce rate” on this page, and the average 1.34 minutes people spend there (so, actually, some-one must be reading it!).

What do we conclude? Well, the obvious I suppose: people are looking for sex and go away the moment they realise they’re not getting it. (You didn’t need me to tell you that, perhaps?) Oh yes, and that if you want your comments section spammed by a world-full of internet sleazeballs, just publish a post entitled “Sex, Porn and Britney Spears”. Now I know why Tibo looked heavenwards when he saw what I’d done. But he found a good spam filter, so all’s well that ends well, right?

Anyway, what about our real top posts? Here are the top five “real posts” on our blog so far in 2009 (in reverse order, of course):

no. 5

“Moderation in all things“. My own best scorer (without cheating), with some thoughts about moderation v. censorship on Parliament’s website.

no. 4

“New technologies: keeping up without being killed in the attempt“. A “guest blogger” piece, this, by Jaume, a.k.a. The Director, about how to deal with unruly WebCom subordinates. A recent publication, so probably has the legs to move up the rankings.

no. 3

“The importance of being normal” by Manja. This one involves Manja meeting her friend and normal person, Ola-dele Kuku, and getting a bit of real-world perspective on what we call Europe.

no. 2

Are people looking for love as well as sex?

“P.S: I love you“. Eirini talks about meeting real people at the 2009 Open Day. (Actually, honesty dictates that I reveal that this one has a highish bounce rate too – are people looking for love as well as sex?)

no. 1

“Europe is nothing but a big bad wolf“. Eirini again, this time priming her readers for the European elections. Well done, Eirini! A few more people reading our blog and we might even have got turnout to go up…

And finally, quality…

Since we are believers in quality, not only quantity, a “special mention” here also for the post with the longest average time spent by readers reading it. This goes to Tibo, for a post (alternatively cri de coeur) called “Living in a world of meetings“. It’s good, so why not go and read it, but be sure to spend at least 4 minutes 42 seconds doing so, so you don’t depress his record-winning online stamina.

So there you have it. Totally scientific and statistically rigorous, of course. By the way, do you think I got enough dodgy search terms into this article to make the top five?

*****

PS The Irish said “Yes” to Lisbon today. Should I have blogged about that? Never mind, the EP reaction is on Parliament’s website (on a Saturday!!!), thanks to our friends in the press service. Besides, blogwise, there’s always our soon-to-be new friend Julien Frisch to do the heavy lifting (looking forward to meeting you, Julien). I keep checking for the inevitable post.

PPS and * English language readers may have enjoyed a great new word: “internaut”. Yes, the French have this great neologism for internet users. I has always amused me. Just thought I’d share that.