About ~25 percent of the traffic to this website search engines. Mostly Google. Below are two sets of top 25 search results. The first is pretty straightforward. But the second has all the key words which are probably by and large people just looking for weblogs removed. The links are to search results are on Google.
A few qualifications. First, I removed all Google referral sites except for G+. Second, I removed Discover Magazine urls. Some of these sites should perhaps have been omitted from the list as well because of my past or current association with them (gnxp.com, Secular Right, Sepia Mutiny and Brown Pundits). ScienceBlogs is mostly, though not exclusively, from my old website there. I’m a little amused that razib.com is rather high on the list, but that site is the first hit usually for querying my name on Google (and therefore Bing, which seems to just copy Google’s results).
In this list I’ve limited it to posts which were published in 2011. For much of the blog’s history I didn’t autoclose comments after 2 weeks, so the comparisons aren’t appropriate. And comments tend to be less timeless in any case. Comments are a double-edged sword on a weblog, because they often invite the stupid to come out and play in people. But there are a non-trivial subset from whom I’ve learned a fair amount from. That learning doesn’t always have to be a case where you even change your mind. Discussion in good faith can usually sharpen comprehension of your own perspective.
Below are the top 20 accessed posts on this website over the year 2011. Note that some of them predate 2011, but due to search engines or other forms of referral they remain highly accessed.
My friend Holden Karnofsky always pings me at this time of the year. Holden is co-founder of GiveWell. If you’re curious, you can look up more on the outfit yourself, I’ve talked about it enough over the years for you to get why I’m interested and a supporter. Holden is a numbers and data driven guy, and it turns out that 25% of the money given through their website last year was on December 31st. Here are their top charities.
In purely selfish news (yes, I’m a heavy user) Wikipedia is also in need of cash. And yes, I give! (though that doesn’t stop the constant stream of begging headshots)
Sam Snyder has gone through my archives back to 2006, and complied a “best of” list. Snyder admits that his interest is in “primarily centered on human behavior and health, which is the subject of most of these links.” Also, I want to caution you that 5 years is a long time, so please don’t assume that if I believe X in 2006, I continue to do so in 2011.
Over the past few days the American media has reacted with some consternation at the fact that it seems likely that Islamist political forces will probably control around two-thirds of the Egyptian legislature. This bloc is divided between a broad moderate element which emerges out of the Muslim Brotherhood, at around ~40 percent, and a crazy and savage Salafist component, at around ~25 percent. Terms like “moderate” need to be standardized though in their cultural context. The Muslim Brotherhood is moderate in an Egyptian framework. But it is not moderate in, for example, a Tunisian context, let alone a Turkish one. Egyptian American journalist Mona Eltahaway has pointed out that while the Tunisian Islamist party, Ennahda, has women in substantive positions (e.g., 42 or 46 women in the Tunisian legislature are members of Ennahda) the Muslim Brotherhood gives women only token representation, with no leadership role. And, as I have observed before the Islamist prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was greeted with great anger by North African Islamists when he proposed the shocking idea (to them) that all religions be treated equally. My point is that what is moderate in Egypt is going to be very reactionary in North Africa, and what is moderate in North Africa is going to be very reactionary in Turkey. In fact, what is moderate in Turkey is going to be very reactionary in the West. To a great extent, this is common sense, but for some reason this sense is lacking from our broader discussion on these issues.
When perusing Asian groceries I occasionally run into cans of jackfruit. Or should I say “jackfruit,” because often what’s inside of the cans resembles jackfruit flavored wax. Real fresh jackfruit is soft and mushy. Unfortunately the preservation process turns canned jackfruit into a turgid and far less flavorful product. That being said, I recently purchased three different brands, and I found that Chaokoh brand wasn’t totally awful. I don’t know if I’d purchase it again, but I am considering it. It’s not real jackfruit by any means, but the flavor is stronger and the waxiness of the fruit flesh less pronounced.
Do readers have any experiences with canned jackfruit?
Image credit: Wikimedia
I’ve gotten way behind on my RSS…though I caught up a bit over Thanksgiving.
West Hunter. Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending’s blog.
Eurasian Sensation. Liberal Eurasian Australian blogger.
Matt Yglesias moved to Slate. This means that his salary is coming in large part from a firm which he has excoriated in the past. (Slate is owned by The Washington Post Company)
Rod Dreher is now at The American Conservative.
Sorry, Strivers: Talent Matters. “Nor is it to say that it’s impossible for a person with an average I.Q. to, say, earn a Ph.D. in physics.” I think it is possible to earn a Ph.D. in physics with an average I.Q., but only from institutions like Razib-Khan’s-Internet-University, where you pay me $100 for me to send you a printout which purports to give you a Ph.D. in physics. In fact, if someone who is a Ph.D. in physics can send me their G.R.E. scores where they score less than a 550 on the mathematics section, and are willing to go public with this fact (so we can check their scholarly achievements and validate the quality of the institution), I will shell out $250 to this individual. Let’s set the date of expiration for 12/26, so I can budget this expense.
Some ethologists should try and get some research funded to model the “scramble” for “patchy resources” that occurs at Walmart on Black Friday.
(NSFW)
Discover has added a new blog, The Crux. It’s a group weblog, and I’ll contribute now and then.
I haven’t had time to read a book front to back in 2 months. Probably the longest period I’ve gone like this since I was 13. I plan to “binge” as much as I can over the Holidays. Is there anything interesting you’re reading? And yes, I already have The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined on my Kindle.
I’ll Have the Red: Hot Sauce, Island by Island. Seems like the scotch bonnet is the basis of a lot of Caribbean sauces. You might be curious about my reviews of hot sauces from 4 years ago.
A peculiar piece, What Is The Place Of New Science Bloggers In Today’s Science Blogosphere? You can see responses in the comments, as well as Ed Yong at G+. My own perspective is colored by the fact that I’ve been blogging since April of 2002. In other words, this April I’ll probably be blogging for 10 years. A few months ago I mentioned to Randal Parker of FuturePundit, who started blogging in the summer of 2002, that I frankly would have been totally surprised if you’d told me back then that I’d still be “in the game” in 2011. It seemed like a passing hobby (in fact, of the five people who started at “Gene Expression” in June of 2002 three of the four others continue to have a blog or media profile).
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Razib Khan’s degrees are in biochemistry and biology. He has blogged about genetics since 2002, previously worked in software development, is an Unz Foundation Junior Fellow and lives in the western US. He loves habaneros.
