We are in a bit of a contemplative mood here at salad headquarters. The year is wrapping up, the blog has been going for a little over 6 months now and we are closing in on 10, 000 page views. Some stuff we are happy about here are the steadily increasing page views daily and the amount of worldwide traffic to the blog. Seriously it never ceases to amaze me how connected people are throughout the world. Even China seems to have temporarily lifted its ban against this site and we are getting a surprising amount of hits from the Middle East. The European Union gives us a lot of love as well as Russia, Australia and India. South America and Africa- not so much- but one can well imagine the socio-economic reasons for that.
Another reason we are happy here at da' salad is for the progress in writing and blogging that this venture has allowed me. I was a little lost at times in the beginning striving for a coherent voice and direction for this blog. And really if you look at my posts it seems I am all over the place with my subject matter from coy-wolves to frugivorous pterosaurs. And this variety and spontaneity in subject matter is something I don't intend to lose- I called it antediluvian salad for a good reason- a salad is a mixture of things. But what I do think has crystallized in this blog is a strong theme and thrust to this blog- striving to portray the history of life on earth as a narrative seamlessly merging with the present- not as a cavalcade of prehistoric monsters so remote and tenacious they border on the fantastique. I will always write about toothy, bitey, giant stuff- but let us not fetishize the past at the expense of the present. Keep in mind that the current biota boasts the largest organism ever (a fungi or grove of willows), the largest and tallest trees known (redwood and giant sequoia), the largest animal ever (blue whale), a predator as large as any other in the history of the earth which uses sound as a weapon (sperm whale), and the most efficient, strategic group predators the world has witnessed (humans, killer whales, chimps, ants, various canids). Our time is a special one.
Some things you can expect more of this next year; fungi, Mesozoic ground-cover musings, social insects, pack hunting sharks, baby dino survival strategies, Mesozoic arctic ecosytems, crypto-biotic soil crusts and coprophagy. I will continue to expand upon and embellish my writing style- keeping it as succinct and direct as possible- but always injecting a bit of wit, irreverence, and humour whenever possible. And pics of pretty girls does not hurt (cuz they drive up hits).
A couple of things I hope will change this next year. More discussion in the comments section- seriously I would love to hear what you guys think (I even allow anonymous posters)- and it can't just be my Mom and sister posting messages. More followers as well would be nice- I make a really good Kool-aide!!! And on my end I hope to illustrate more for the blog instead of just stealing stuff willy-nilly.
Cheers and Happy New Years from da' Salad
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1 comment:
Personally I can only agree to the size records for the present (and the blue whale is technically the largest predator ever).
So, if it's extinct it's a failure as a predator?
Evolution is a branch not a hierarchy and those branches weren't failures, they were just as deadly and efficient as the ones that lived (and remember whatever's from the Late Pleistocene would still be here if not for us)
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