by chelsea schuyler

Update!  Remember that time I told you about the Russian Antarctic research station called Vostok?  And how underneath that station there turned out to be a gigantic lake called Vostok? (isn’t dat veird?)

WELL, the water they sampled from below 2 miles of ice did INDEED result in bacteria!  Living life forms in one of the most extreme environments known on earth.  One form had DNA that was less than 86% similar to anything we’ve seen before.  Which means it’s official, that ice-covered moon of Jupiter, Europa, is probably teeming with sea-aliens.

So, that’s exciting.  But hardly worth a blog by itself!  So allow me to add some useless filler ..a backstage pass if you will, to give you an idea of the impact this blog is making on the global population (i.e. who reads this crap?).

Odd stat facts:

1)  a) Most common search term: “chow chow panda.” 1700 people entered this into a search engine and ended up reading my blog on dye-ing dogs absurd colors, shapes, and animal prints.
b) 2^nd most common search term: “black lung.” Over 600 people were inevitably disappointed to find my incredibly brief mention of black lung in my blog “Dust: the Particle That Helped Bring Us the 30!”
c) 3^rd most common search term: “cats in space.”  Actually beats black lung if you include “cat in space” too.  Now I’m just proud.

2)  By far Thursday is the day I receive the most views, by a freakishly high margin. The worst day is Saturday.  Which means everyone reading this blog is slacking off at work, waiting til Friday when they can call in sick and have a three day, not-blog-reading weekend.

3)   This blog is viewed in 113 countries, mostly the US, Canada, and the UK, but also by countries I have never heard of and honestly would have guessed were baking ingredients, like Macao and Malta.

4)  My best day was July 10, 2012, I got over 401 viewers.  (My average is 50 or so).  Turns out that that day Morning Edition aired a 2 parter about safety fraud in coal mines leading to increased cases of …The Black Lung.  Ahhhh….

So, in conclusion, my readership, or “audience” are cat astronauts who listen to NPR and enjoy mocking their terrestrial enemies, dogs.

But what behind the scenes would be complete without spam?  My latest favorite:

“I was reading through some of your blog posts on this site and I believe this website is rattling instructive! Retain putting up.”

Rattling instructive! Praise the thesaurus for donating us the profligacy to injustice it regularly!  Though I must insist my spammers stop out-funnying me.