Traffic on this site is unpredictable. On an average day it’s around 20,000 views (a bit lower on the weekends), but sometimes things spike for reasons that are completely unpredictable. Last Tuesday I posted a gif of a bacterium sitting on a diatom sitting on an amphipod, which was a pretty cool bit of faux-zooming photographed by James Tyrwhitt-Drake on a scanning electron microscope. And I forgot that I had posted the very same animation a while back. It’s a really nice piece, but it’s not Anna Karenina, elevator drama, or even my own writing.
Nevertheless, views began spiking, hit 153,000 by the end of the day (the record is 304,000, on the day of the Mother Teresa post, last July 8) and are already nearly 31,000 today already—and it’s not even 7 a.m.
What happens, of course, is that some other place, usually reddit, picks up a post, sending elebenty gazillion people over here. This time, however, it appears to be Facebook, which accounted for 106,000 views yesterday, and since I don’t have many “friends” on that site, it must have been re-Facebooked. I don’t know; I’m a n00b at social media and don’t track this stuff down. BUT, I checked the ranking of WordPress websites and, to my amazement, this place is almost on top for the period (I don’t know how WordPress calculates these ranking), second only to a Blog of Disrepute, but beating two Simpsons sites:
So, here is my prayer to Ceiling Cat, “O holy Feline Father, please let me be #1, just for one brief shining moment, and if you can do that, I will be a good boy FOREVER. Just let me beat “Watts Up With That?” one time, and I will spread Your Good News for the rest of my life.”
I think it’s too late, though. There is no chance of beating that perennially popular climate-change-denialist site. And, as I once saw in a poster stuck on the lab wall of a particularly ambitious professor, depicting a golf ball stopped at the lip of the hole, “It is a sad fact that, regardless of effort or talent, second place only means that you are first in a long line of losers.”
Who knows what will capture the attention of folks on the Internet? Who would have predicted, for instance, that a tubby Japanese cat would become a world celebrity. Oh hell, I might as well show Maru with his new tabby companion, Hana:
The Dawkins Foundation posted it on facebook yesterday, that probably explains the sudden surge. Dunno about reddit.
Michael Shermer also tweeted your story on Chopracopra 2 days ago:
‘@michaelshermer: Jerry Coyne deconstructs Deepak Chopra’s and Rudy Tanzi’s claims about consciousness & genes http://t.co/bAquTU1kK8‘
Oh and Steven Pinker a few days ago:
‘@sapinker: Pinkah takes pickchas! A selection from Jerry Coyne on Why Evolution Is True -http://t.co/a8fJTkjQ4G’
Drat, and I thought it was MY Facebook repost.
Do a post on Miley Cyrus and you’ll see those figures sky-rocket. I’m sure you can combine her with something cat related!
…& biological!
I dunno. Dr Ceiling Cat generally looks with disdain on those who osculates their rump before invisible agents.
sub
You need an xray CT of an anti-vax, denialist, compatibilist cat…in boots. That will do it.
Kinky boots.
No sense in not adding known hit factors.
Or, am I taking too much from a programme I’m watching about psychopathy?
I say Rihanna in boots. If you wanna win, sometimes you have to play dirty 😀 ….
http://www.google.com/search?q=rihanna+in+boots‘&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=2DuvUs_rHsXz2QWqloHYCQ&ved=0CCsQsAQ&biw=1019&bih=618&dpr=1#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=aS41EEYw_DHnPM%3A%3BcLB8pqMfqG8GZM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fshoefessional.com%252F
Here’s the biology connection:
hollywoodlife.com/2013/10/14/rihanna-camouflage-boots-africa-pics/
And panther-esque:
http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news/132942/Attention-Seeking-Rihanna-Flashes-Her-Butt-In-Body-Suit-And-Thigh-High-Boots-On-Night-Out-
Forgive me Ceiling Cat – I confess – I often send links to the sources rather than the posts!
Nice little cat.
Is “elevator drama” a linguistic thing now? I do hope that’s just a Coynage 🙂
Is “Coynage” a linguistic thing now? I do hope that’s just a Coynage.
What does Google say?
Not by a considerable length of earthy textured, fine grained biogenic limestone (chalk) :
‘Charles II, 1666: An Act for encourageing of Coynage.’, Statutes of the Realm: volume 5: 1628-80 (1819), pp. 598-600. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=47387 Date accessed: 16 December 2013.
OTOH, that might be enough for Prof.Ceiling Cat to claim Royal patronage.
“Coynage” was my own punning coinage. I never thought to check if the term existed already 🙂
IIRC it’s spontaneously arisen many times before here…
Always apt, though. 😉
I didn’t expect to find such a venerable source.
BTW, did you know that for a large part of Charlie-2’s reign, the Master of the Mint and counterfeiter-hunter-in-chief was one Issac Newton?
All readers of good books know that, of course.
There was a radio adaptation of the tale – possibly that one – a couple of years ago.
I usually read your posts in my email without actually going to your website. Perhaps there are other readers like me, and if we all clicked over to the website to read posts we’d rocket to #1?
I do that when I know I don’t have time to get caught up in the comments!
That’s a good idea. A little extra effort for a very worthy cause!
Concats! … eh, congrats!
This site and some silly comments on a financial website by a colleague have driven the two biggest hit days on my not-a-blog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTIjLLCRD4g
Awwww…. Maru and Hana… love in a box.
Good job, Jerry.