It's that time of the year again where I look back and see what has happened over the past 365 days in the life of this blog. So far in 2013... ...I have posted 65 posts ...that received over five hundred thousand views ...from 207 countries/territories ...with 755 comments The most popular post of the year was my open letter to Discovery Channel for their terrible Megalodon fauxmentary that kicked off shark week, with its follow up not far behind. Second most popular was The Mythic Bite of the Komodo, explaining the venomous nature of these dangerous reptiles. Seaward posts fared well, with some of the top slots going to my critique of a BuzzFeed article, why dolphin-assisted births are a really, really bad idea, and yesterday's post on how dolphins might not be getting high on tetrodotoxin. Also on the list were posts about the evolutionary origins of allergies, how parasites violate Dollo's Law, the addictive taste of beer, and the difference between concern and denialism. Elsewhere on the internet, I wrote about obese lionfish, and Slate liked it so much it they put it on their list of their favorite animal posts of 2013. And last but certainly not least, my post Are Lower Pesticide Residues A Good Reason To Buy Organic? Probably Not was chosen to be included in the Open Laboratory 2013, an anthology of the best science writing online! I'm thankful for the wonderful year that I have had here at Discover, and look forward to an even more amazing year to come. Thank you to all of you who read this blog: let's keep this bio-nerdy party going all through 2014!
Fireworks image (c) Mark Wooding, from Wikipedia