#40884: — 09/21  at  01:01 PM
Dunno if I count as a lurker, but I comment pretty rarely. I only came across your blog recently, but I used to participate pretty regularly on TO and remember you from the good old days. I enjoy and appreciate your work, and if I don't comment, don't take that as disinterest. Just count the page views.

Cheers,
Craig

#40886: — 09/21  at  01:06 PM
I had never even read a blog until I found a reference to yours in Newsweek's "blogs to watch" about a month or so ago. Now I am hooked, which is good for my knowledge base - I actually found two very useful references on your site that I had not previously encountered. So while popping on and off your site a few times a day is not speeding my dissertation along, I have already been paid back in knowledge what I have spent in time. Plus now I see what (science) blogs are all about . . .

#40887: Alan Johns, M.D. — 09/21  at  01:09 PM
I'm a notorious lurker. A Gynecologist, surgeon, researcher, raised-southern-baptist-turned-athiest. I enjoy your topics and writing style (logical, brief, to the point)

#40888: — 09/21  at  01:10 PM
hiya. you something. [you wrote "tell me i suck or something". since you don't suck, you something.]

thanks for making modern biology accessible. also, thanks for continuing to take out the trash. it's a smelly job but needs doing.

since you're probably curious about your lurking readership, i'm a 40ish land use/water rights attorney in southern california. i think i first found my way here via crooked timber.

cheers

p.s. what's a zygotene?

#40889: dtlocke — 09/21  at  01:13 PM
I'm Dustin Locke, a philosophy graduate student from the University of Michigan and a very big fan of pharyngula.. I've never commented but I sent you an email the other day. In it, I called to your attention the NAS definition of "fact":

"an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'"

There's bad definitions and then there's bad definitions. This is clearly both. I'll let you come up with your own counter-examples.

#40890: Greg Nog — 09/21  at  01:14 PM
I found this blog through some other blog, and enjoy reading your entries because I dislike the creationists, and like seeing someone fighting the good fight.

I also love biology, but found I didn't have the patience for lab work in college. So I focused on literature, and I try to learn about biology when I get the chance. Your site's good for that.

I work at Sloan-Kettering Institute's Developmental Biology Program as a basic administrator, so I'm constantly surrounded by mice, drosophila, and pretty soon, zebrafish.

I rarely comment, because I have little of substance to add, aside from "YES THAT IS TRUE" or "I ALSO HATE BIBLICAL LITERALISM" or "OKAY I GUESS THAT'S HOW THE TWIST GENE WORKS."

#40891: — 09/21  at  01:15 PM
I guess I'm a lurker: I have visited you several times a day for a little more than a year (which is easier now that I've discovered the wonders of RSS), but have never commented. I must admit that I talk about you often enough with my friends that we are all on a first name basis with you.

I'm a lawyer (or will be after the Bar results come in November) from Texas and an atheist. I love reading your blog and many of those in your web, but, like many of your lurkers, I suspect, I don't have the ability to comment intelligently on most of your posts.

Keep up the good strong work. Babyarm.

#40892: — 09/21  at  01:16 PM
I learned about your site while reading about creationism. I never knew much about it until I discovered my wife was a creationist and was teaching that belief to my kids. Reading your outrage is cathartic.

#40893: dtl — 09/21  at  01:17 PM
I'm just a crap lurker. I've commented here one or twice, though I read here almost every day.

#40894: Jeff — 09/21  at  01:18 PM
I can't remember the last time I commented, so I guess I count. I've been reading your blog (almost) daily basically since you first started. I'm a Computer Science student at Montana State University.

So, yeah, keep up the good work.

#40895: — 09/21  at  01:18 PM
I've been a lurker for awhile now. I'm a High School Science Teacher. Your Blog rocks! Happy Lurker Day fellow Lurkers!

#40896: — 09/21  at  01:19 PM
Notorious lurker here. I live in notoriously conservative Orange County, CAMy education as an engineer has made my interest in the evolution vs. creationist/ID arguements a daily reading for me now. I was exceptionally distressed by our president avocating ID.

#40897: — 09/21  at  01:21 PM
Hi ya. I'm a lurker, never commented. I read this blog every day, and I enjoy it.

#40898: — 09/21  at  01:21 PM
I too am addicted to Pharyngula (and Panda's Thumb and other affiliates), but have not posted. I guess this is my way of saying "howdy" before I go back to the shadows. Good site, needs more octopi.

#40900: MTraven — 09/21  at  01:31 PM
I'm mostly a lurker, I comment occasionally. Recently started my own blog (topic: whatever comes to mind). I'm a software designer with strong interests in biology and evolution, and I really appreciate the time, effort, and enthusiasm you put into this.

That said, the fighting with creationists and ID'ers, while politically important, is kinda boring if you already know what side you are on. I am interested in new approaches to letting science and religion co-exist (as in SJ Gould's NOLA) so both areas of discourse can go about their respective business.

#40901: — 09/21  at  01:31 PM
I read "The Blind Watchmaker" some years ago and was fascinated by the section on creationism/ID. Found talk.origins shortly after, then Pandasthumb and last (but not least...) your page.

I love your responses to ID/creationism propaganda and the biology/evolution factiods. Also like that you don't cover up being an atheist and try to side-step religious issues.

All in all a nice distraction from my chem. eng. studies.

#40902: DrunkHamlet — 09/21  at  01:31 PM
Longtime lurker, so Hiya PZ, and thanks for all the nifty information, great arguments, and solid trouncing of the ID-obsessed religious zealots. You make my mornings shiny bright and new, like windex.

#40904: Mark Chu-Carroll — 09/21  at  01:32 PM
Hiya Paul.

I only discovered your blog recently, but a few years back, I was pretty active on talk.origins, and when I saw a link to your blog from somewhere else, I was immediately hooked.

I haven't commented yet, because in general, when you're skewering the weenies, you don't need my help; and when you're talking biology, I'm
interested, but far too clueless to say much. I'm pretty much a math guy.

-Mark

#40905: — 09/21  at  01:33 PM
Hiya.

#40906: — 09/21  at  01:33 PM
Hey this is really great. I can't wait for troll day.

#40907: — 09/21  at  01:33 PM
Hiya!
Great, great blog; informative and extremely entertaining! Yep, even physicists like to read about biology.

#40909: — 09/21  at  01:35 PM
Hey, howdy, hey.

I don't really recall how I found this site, but I come here almost daily.

However, the nature of the material keeps me from commenting most of the time. I enjoy reading about biology even if much of it is something I don't fully grasp at this time.

Awesome work. Thanks.

#40910: — 09/21  at  01:36 PM
Here's a big how-do and a wave from an Oregon lurker!

jaydog

#40911: Dr. Free-Ride — 09/21  at  01:36 PM
Do Trackbacks count as comments (or is that still in lurky waters)?

#40913: — 09/21  at  01:39 PM
Hello PZ. Please keep up the fight against ID in schools. I would prefer you get the trolls and haters but settle the (non)issue soon so I don't have to fight my local school board eventually.