Well, two reasons; reason one is that if we write about bdelloid rotifers we just make reference to bdelloid rotifers but if they write about bdelloid rotifers, they find a way to incorporate lesbian necrophiliacs into the title.   

Seriously, who is not going to click on that title?   I am sure we can all agree that Safe For Work (SFW, because I am so internet lingo hip after getting a Facebook account) articles with 'lesbian' and 'necrophiliac' in the title are kind of rare.


Who knew you were so sexy?  And deviant!  Credit: David Mark Welch

They are fascinating critters, to be sure, but I never considered making them Friday night Cinemax worthy.   Instead, our stuff usually focuses on environmental adaptability, DNA repair during meiosis, etc.    Boooooring.

The other reason they are bigger than we are is plain old marketing savvy, with nifty ideas coming out of their editorial meetings like ... 

THE TOP 100 STORIES OF 2008

And those top 100 stories will all be written by Discover!    That's terrific, though I imagine Science and Nature are disappointed that their magazines, where the studies Discover writes about are published, don't have any of their articles merit a mention in a top anything list.

I am not sure when we will be big enough to do something of that magnitude - that would mean 2 articles per week here would have to be the best science stories on the whole internet - but we could do something smaller.

So, for all 25 people who read anything I write, if you have ideas for maybe a Top 20 Science Stories of 2008, send them to me and we'll combine them.   They can be from writers here or anywhere else - one could even be Discover's Top 100 Stories of 2008!   Because that would be pretty darn funny.