Reason Online's Successful Surge!
Nick Gillespie | August 5, 2007, 8:43pm
I'm happy to announce that reason online once again broke another traffic record in July; we've busted our previous highs in each of the past five months. In July we pulled 3,016,469 visits, which represents a 69 percent increase over the same period last year and a boost up from June's (then-record-setting) 2.6 million visits.
Thanks to all of our readers and commenters for helping to make the site a hit. And please keep voting up our articles on reddit and digg--it's bringing in new readers every day.
Thanks also to all the bloggers and other sites who consistently link to our stuff, especially Instapundit, Arts & Letters Daily, Fark, and RealClearPolitics, who were among our top referrers last month.
We also want to give a shout-out to PJ Doland Web Design, the folks who built this version of our site and who are constantly working to make it even better. Since launching the new version of reason online last October, those server squirrels that bedeviled the site have gone extinct.
M | August 6, 2007, 9:57am | #
What on earth is a "server squirrel?"
No place like a blog to expose one's ignorance, so here goes:
Server = host computer, eg Hit and Run's website.
Squirrel = rodent, either on staff, like a hamster on treadmill, to produce the energy on which said server operates, and/or vagrantly/parasitically self-employed to subvert said server's operations, on the model of
Scientology's squirrels.
The mammalian equivalents of gremlins, server squirrels were blamed here for screen-freezes, unpredictable delays between hitting Send and seeing one's witty remark publicized, posts disappearing, posts appearing multiple times, parts of posts deleted, and all manner of glitch.
The conceit of reason.com's rebellious server squirrels, ie its recalcitrant collective engine capriciously failing to facilitate the imperious ambitions of
soi-disant mavericks, became a handy vehicle of self-irony. It lent an accessible handle to express oblique views on labor conditions, animal rights claims, a Heideggerean gloss on technology's alienation from Nature, and rueful indulgence in sensuality, as squirrels are at once winningly cuddly and ferociously punitive.
In the good tradition of discipline-by-negative-reinforcement, I stand ready to be shamed by wiser heads castigating me for omitting learned semiotic borrowings about squirrels
qua servers from the likes of Heinlein, Jefferson, Bart Simpson, Janet Jackson, Bill Gates, and Ayn Rand, which enlightenment I will receive eagerly, suppressing any reflex to think, let alone respond with something like, say, Nuts to you.
