I love Wikipedia. I love the concept where everyone chips in with information to build up a fantastic encyclopedia. Yep, I know it’s not always accurrate or up to date. Still, it came in handy when my daughter, Gillie, had to research her second-grade project on crickets last week. As for being out of date, well I love the fact that I was able to update my own entry on Wikipedia (which someone else must have started, because it certainly was not me).

Get this — they even have the tall WITI TV tower by my house listed in Wikipedia. If it were not for that, I would not have known that it was briefly the tallest free-standing tower in the world.

Lastly, as I’ve become more diet- and nutrition-conscious, I appreciated how balanced their entry on milk is. There’s a section on the health “benefits” but then an even bigger section on the detriments and controversies. It’s not a huge article, but it’s pretty well-written and talks about how a good portion of the milk in the U.S. would be illegal to sell in Europe or Canada because of pus or rBGH content. An interesting fact I learned from the site is that skim milk is 0.1% fat but is allowed to be called “fat free” according to USDA guidelines. That’s all for now…

[Marek: You can read more about Scott on his website at Yanoff.org.]

I blog because it is fun. It makes me think. I forces me to put into writing what I am thinking. I teaches me to write better. It allows me to express myself. It aids me to share with my friends and family. It facilitates finding new friends and networking with new people.

Through blogging I am learning a lot of aspects of web presence. This is a natural extension of what I do at work and at home. Blogging has many related elements to Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEO) and web production.

I get excited when I go to my web analytics tool (Google Analytics) and to see how many people visited this blog from how many different countries (so far in February only, it is 25 countries!).

But this is not the main reason why I blog. If it were, I would be another narcissistic blogger. I hope that blogging will change me as a person. As Seth Godin states on his blog:

The act of writing a blog changes people, especially business people. The first thing it does is change posture. Once you realize that no one HAS to read your blog, that you can’t MAKE them read your blog, you approach writing with humility and view readers with gratitude. The second thing it does is force you to be clear. If you write something that’s confusing or in shorthand, you fail.
More

If you are interested in starting your own blog, stay tuned. In the coming posts I will list simple steps to starting your own blog.
This is a repost from my other blog.

1. I was born in the same month the musical Hair premiered on Broadway and my dad was not allowed in the delivery room.
2. I grew up in Bielsk Podlaski, Poland. Yes, I am Polish, and no, English is not our native language, as I’m sure you can tell by reading my posts. I left Poland while she was still communist.
3. I love sailing and last year along with 3 other guys we sailed 600 miles in 7 days on the Great Lakes from Detroit, MI to Milwaukee, WI. I love music and enjoy messing around on my bass guitar. I like to travel and thanks to my wife who works as a flight attendant with Midwest Airlines, we get to do it often.
4. I am married to the most incredible woman in the world for almost 17 years! We have 2 daughters.
5. I believe in God, the creator of everything, and Jesus Christ the Savior, His atoning death and resurrection, His second coming, the Heaven and the Hell. I believe in 6 day creation, Noah and his ark with all the animals, the global flood, Jonah in the belly of the fish, dinosaurs, and the young Earth. I believe in the intelligent design from the Universe to the smallest strands of DNA.

*So what’s a meme?
The term was coined in 1976 by the zoologist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins, refers to a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another.

I am passing the challenge to these next 5 bloggers. Can’t wait to hear your stories.

Juan Irming
Susie Palmer
Scott Yanoff
Daniel Banna
Alex Hardin (sorry Alex for messing up your last name in the original post)

Lets see who does it first!

The top picture is me playing in the sand. Boy, I had a big head.
The bottom picture taken in 1928 is my grandfather Pawel (Paul) as the Polish Army private.