Thanks, readers!

My site tracker has informed me that this week I had an all-time high number of visitors! Thanks to everyone that comes and reads here, especially regularly, and a bigger thanks to everyone that reads and passes along the links to my technobabble to others. Although this site is often an avenue through which I simply vent my scientific frustration (usually at NASA - when will I let them have a break?), I also fantasize that it will one day be a contentious, open forum for strong-minded thinkers.
For now, though, I take heart in the hope that readers come here, learn a little, think a little, and then pass along what they learn to others. If you disagree with what I write, more power to you. You should write too.

It was suggested to me by a friend recently that I turn "commercial." He said "your material is good, your audience is growing, you should try to turn a profit." Although I appreciate his advice, I also abhor the idea. As long as blogger.com doesn't ask me for rent, I will not get a job. Plus, there is the terrible conundrum bloggers-by-day face: either they become afraid to write what they truly think for fear of losing readers, or they become tempted to write things they don't actually believe in order to increase their readership. It is unlikely I will ever have the reader base of Sullivan, McCardle, or Joyner. That is fine. I am changing the world at my engineering research firm, and the analyses I provide here, both for my own mental rumination, as well as for yours, is really a fringe benefit of having a lenient boss who really likes me and a long lunch break most days.

As this has been going on for some time now, I have settled into a format: 1-3 articles a day, 85% of which are about science and technology, 10% of which are about religion, and 5% are about politics. Sports topics are more of a rounding error, thankfully. I've also noticed a disturbing trend: in almost every post of length, I end with a paragraph that starts with "in any case..."

In any case, thanks for your readership. Thanks for your comments. The internet sure is fun.


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