400 to go. . .

30 thoughts on “400 to go. . .”

1. Your spirit animal is Winnie the Pooh’s Eeyore?

   1. Yes; my editor and publicist at Viking/Penguin/Random House address me as “Eeyore”.

2. You don’t seem to be either complacent or Eeyore-like. You seem to get a lot done in a day, and you travel all over the globe.

3. I call it avoiding hybris. Whenever I get too happy, the hand of hubris knocks me down.

4. You need a Tigger.

5. I often read but finally signed up. Informative comment peppered with Python and Hitchens nuggets make my day.

6. Like watching Hank Aaron zero in on the Babe’s homer #714.

   1. AH…Babe – the best baseball player in the history of the game. So PCC is the best from Chicago with 50,000 viewers.

      1. He’s the Ernie Banks of bl*gdom. Let’s play two.

         1. He’s the evolution revolution in the windy city.

7. Fifty-thousand, schmifty-thousand. Why the shpilkes, boychik?

   1. You know the answer. It’s embodied in this joke:

      Jewish telegram: “Start worrying. Details follow.”

      1. Lol!

8. How do I send you a picture of squirrels? of kittens? Limited computer skills here, but I do know how to attach a jpeg to an email.

   1. You just email them to Jerry Coyne.

   2. You can find Jerry’s email address by Googling. He doesn’t put it on here.

9. Shouldn’t the target be corrected up because of the effect of the subscription rate due the infant euthanasia piece?

   1. Excuse me? That was simply something I wrote about because of my own interests, and had no idea I’d become a lightning rod for religious people and conservatives. Whatever extra subscriptions came from that I bloody well DESERVE!

      1. Ok, didn’t mean anything like that – sorry.

10. More posts about the eating of bacon [& other comestibles]? I like your ‘picture posts’ a lot – your commentary makes ’em special! e.g.

    Ducks & squirrels
    Restaurants
    Travels to St. Petersburg [Hermitage, Zoological museum, mousers], Poland & Mr. Das.

    P.S. I half recall a promised St. Petersburg picture post that you never wrote or didn’t publish. I remember looking for it & couldn’t find.

    Which posts get the most comments/views/shares? I noticed a post in December ’16 got 635 comments – it was mainly about grammar & another post on the apostrophe got 108.

    1. Yes, I’m always surprised at the unpredictability of comment numbers and views. I know that science posts get few comments, and posts like “what are you reading?” or “what words irk you?” get a lot, but who could predict that a largely throwaway post on Mother Teresa, which simply called attention to an article by two French-Canadians (in French) criticizing the old charlatan, would be by far the post that has gotten the most views on this site. And every once in a while there’s a new flurry of views for reasons I can’t be bothered to investigate.

       I don’t pay much attention to comment numbers or views, because if I did I worry that I’d start slanting my topics towards what other people like rather than what I really want to write about.

       1. Oh yes. This one of your roughly half dozen “thieving, fanatical Albanian dwarf” posts: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/a-new-expose-on-mother-teresa-shows-that-she-and-the-vatican-were-even-worse-than-we-thought/

11. On rare occasions, my spirit animal is the Colombian Conchita.

    1. @Liz The coffee-bearing mule? I had to google – pretty well unknown here in the UK?

       Cute mule anyway 🙂

       1. Yes. She is a mule.

12. I read all the science posts but rarely (if ever) comment on them. I simply do not know enough to comment on them. I love the new knowledge but am in no position to add anything. Anyone else feel that way?

    1. I don’t have a science background either, so yes, I do feel that way re. some science posts. But what I love about the science posts is that I always learn something, and I don’t find it difficult to ask a question or clarification (the child in me). Many times my questions go unanswered (most are probably stupid), but it doesn’t discourage me from asking or commenting.

       Jerry and the other scientific contributors here like Matthew Cobb and Greg Mayer are gracious and to my knowledge have never disparaged an “ignorant” comment. I believe they teach with this adage in mind: no question is a stupid question.

    2. George, in other discussions here many have said the same thing–you are not alone. Sometimes a simple “that was interesting, thanks” serves to let the authors know their efforts weren’t in vain. (Not that it’s required of course.)

13. Jerry, congrats on imminent arrival of that impressive 50k mark.

    The high volume and never faltering high quality of your output suggests you must be one the busiest retirees on Earth.

    Always a pleasure to read.

14. Dude, c’mon … round up! This is the era of fake news, everybody will believe you! 50,000 plus or minus 1000 is “within the margin of error!”

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