Trending Up

I've been pleased to see blog traffic picking up in the past few months (Thanks!).

For those unfamiliar, most blog toolkits show graphical representations of hits against time, so you can tell when certain posts gain readership by distinct "blips" on the trendline. The chemblogosphere has coined several punny, tongue-in-cheek epithets for increases that result from specific sites. Here's a few I've heard bandied about:

Reader Submission: Found Chemistry,
Hendersonville, NC

The "Lowe Lift"
The "ChemBark Crush"
The "Chemjobber Jump"
The "Slate Slam"
The "Reddit Rise"
The "Bora Bump"
The "Zimmer Zing"

With my pithy phrasing cap on, may I suggest a few more?

The "Wavefunction Wobble"
The "B.R.S.M. Blast"
The "CENtral Science Cuddle"
The "TotSyn Trifle"

Readers, have I missed any?

Friday Book Club

Books, chairs, and lamps = happiness

I live in a sleepy town of about 28,000 people. Quiet, picture-postcard-like scenery. A few coffee shops and pizza joints. Schoolchildren, soccer moms, and tall pine trees. The type of town where a visit to the local library might normally turn up mysteries, nonfiction, and children's books, but not a lot of science content.


So, imagine my surprise at finding a veritable treasure trove in our "New Books" section last week. As I strolled by, I couldn't help scooping up everything I laid my eyes on.


Carl Zimmer's A Planet of Viruses was there. As was Much Ado About (Practically) Nothing, a book about the history of noble gases, by David Fisher. A few rows down, I encountered How I Killed Pluto (And Why it Had it Coming) by Mike Brown, and one row to my right was Rob Dunn's The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners that Shape Who We Are Today. Toss in the obligatory Feynman biographies, and a book or two about popular physics, and I was in science reading heaven.


Looks like a long weekend of coffee and reading (and maybe a game) for me.  Enjoy, everyone!