April was another busy month for us. We had just over 4,500 unique visitors, another record high for us, and we had our highest ever stat day (since keeping stats) that saw us have 600 page views in one 24 hour period. Further, HalfDone's half-April stats reported we were in the position of 6th most read New Zealand blog; we are looking forward to the official result for April coming out in the next day or so.

Our Alexa stat continued to grow. At the time of writing this our Alexa score is 295,028, up considerably when you consider this time last month it was 365,051 a climb 170,000 spots in the past month and 6.8 million in the last year. (The Alexa number tells you how far away a website is from the position of number 1 most read website in the world - this is not limited to blogs)

We have maintained our US traffic ranking, which varies from 10-15%. The US IP addresses suggest that most of this comes from US Universities with strong Philosophy departments, so we are absolutely delighted about that! We have also made the blogrolls of a few major US philosophy websites in the past month and would have no objection to being added to more ;-)

We have also been personally approached by three separate media websites comprising, international and local, who have asked for our feedback, participation and endorsement and our number of followers on Twitter has almost doubled.

One of Matt's recent publications, "Abortion and Capital Punishment," came online; Thinking Matters Auckland, which we run, has announced its winter lineup and things are going well for all of us undertaking tertiary study. Still on the wish-list, however, is the elusive permanent, full-time lectureship for Matt; we will relocate anywhere in the world so if you have an ethics, philosophy of religion or theology vacancy please contact Matt to see his CV.

In case you missed them, here are seven quick takes as to what was most read on MandM during April:

Good Friday: Why Celebrate Easter?
Matt wrote some reflections on the importance of ritual from a Protestant perspective. He shared some of his faith means to him personally alongside his cerebral insights.

The Problem of Evil: Why does God Allow Suffering?
Madeleine gave an overview of the problem of evil and the resources that Christian Philosophy offers to overcome it.

How to become a Famous Blogger
Madeleine sarcastically poked at those who insist that paying attention to blog rankings is evidence of bad motives.

Guest Post: The Virtue of Christian Dogma
Dominic Bnonn Tennant defended being dogmatic and rebutted the cliched and superficial epistemology that is often used to repudiate dogmatism.

With God Anything can be Permitted: Another Bad Argument against Theistic Morality
Matt responded to Ken Perrott of Open Parachute's contention that because people appeal to divine commands on different sides of the same debate that it follows that theistic morality is relativistic.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm
In a two-part series Matt responded to Armstrong's arguments for the conclusion that God is not an adequate foundation for morality because causing harm is a more plausible foundation.

The Foundations of the Alexandrian Argument against Feticide
In a six-part series Matt set out his Alexandrian Argument and then offered a critique of Beverly Wildung-Harrison's claim that this argument is based on a mistranslation of the Septuagint.