Comments are the lifeblood of blogging. If no one responds to our erudite pontifications then we may as well not bother (quiet in the cheap seats. Hang on, no, that’s wrong…).<\/p>\n
\nI’ve been keeping a semi-professional weblog at another<\/a> place for a year and a half (and a personal weblog for more than six years, in one<\/a> place or another). And I’ve learned a few things about the sort of post that attracts comments, especially in science.<\/p>\n \nThe top three science weblog comment baits are probably \nSo it’s a little strange to look at the comment pr\u00e9cis (on the left, down there a bit) and see that the person attracting the greatest number of comments on Network Nature is the mild-mannered and completely offenceless Jennifer Rohn. What, I asked myself, is going on in her Gap Minding<\/a> ?<\/p>\n \nAnd then it struck me. She (inadvertently, I’m sure) is cast as a damsel in distress, and, metaphorically, an entire Round Table of Bioinformatic Knights has sallied forth from their disparate Camelots (these days we might say ‘IKEA’) to rescue her from the clutches of \nOn their ivory \nThere’s only one thing for it.<\/p>\n \nI’m having trouble making some mutants.<\/p>\n \nThat picture in my profile? I found it on the internets. In reality, I’m 23, blonde with blue eyes and a figure that Helen of Troy would have scratched my eyes out for. I’m trapped in this lab, which looks suspiciously like a tower, until my wicked stepfather marries me off to a biotech mogul (the genetically engineered and perfect son of Craig Venter, probably). I might even be able to imagine some dragons, and a moat.<\/p>\n \nLet’s chat.<\/p>\n \n(oh, and “Help! Help!”)<\/p>\n 0<\/sup> This is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Unsporting, perhaps: I don’t think anyone seriously thinks Creationism is science, so attacking it on those grounds is a bit silly. Like trying to swat a mosquito with one of these<\/a> . You could probably get as many comments if you were to attack someone who really deserved it, like certain fundamentalist atheists, but they tend to have a lot of support so you’d have to be really brave. Or Henry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Comments are the lifeblood of blogging. If no one responds to our erudite pontifications then we may as well not bother (quiet in the cheap seats. Hang on, no, that’s wrong…). I’ve been keeping a semi-professional weblog at another place … Continue reading religion<\/del> pets, abuse of students<\/a> , and silliness<\/a> about comments. Serious posts that deal with the actual science, even the human story behind papers, are greeted with deafening<\/a> silence. Indeed, it seems that the best way to get a lot of comments is to get students to make fun of creationists0<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\nMordred<\/del> Mordor<\/del> Henry<\/del> Microsoft Excel.<\/p>\niMacs<\/del> chargers, lances in hand and colours fluttering like so many EST<\/a> s, they crest the South Downs and ride towards Astolat (it sounds better than ‘Chelmsford’), to free Jenny (or whoever happens to be this week’s distress\u00e9d damsel) from the tyranny of the bench and bring to her the Holy Grail<\/del> treasures of Computational Biology, blood-hewn from the the golden plains of Silico<\/em>.<\/p>\n
![these<\/a> . You could probably get as many comments if you were to attack someone who really deserved it, like certain fundamentalist atheists, but they tend to have a lot of support so you’d have to be really brave. Or Henry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comments are the lifeblood of blogging. If no one responds to our erudite pontifications then we may as well not bother (quiet in the cheap seats. Hang on, no, that’s wrong…). I’ve been keeping a semi-professional weblog at another place … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/www.raf.mod.uk\/rafcms\/mediafiles\/4ACEA50A_1143_EC82_2E7D3E1B4CE5A25C.jpg\"){kind=link}