Discover Magazine Dot Com, which has been expanding its blogospheric presence recently, has just reached the one million plus monthly page view mark, having shown a steady expansion since last year. Since Science Blogs has also been growing (though I’m guessing much more slowly since we are not brand new … I don’t really know) this is great news. It means the science blogosphere is growing, and hopefully because more people are paying attention to science stuff. Of coruse, without a more sophisticated analysis, it is hard to say.
Of course, I question the wisdom of Phil Plait and Discover publisher Henry Donahue getting tattoos to commemorate this event. You can get diseases from tattooing, right?
“I question the wisdom of Phil Plait”
You too? You continue to impress me…
http://www.partiallyclips.com/pclipslite.php?id=1360
Did I read that wrong? Phil’s page seems to say it’s 2 million, just for his site- And somewheres about 5 million monthly for the total of discover…
Thanks Greg! To be clear on the traffic numbers: we just topped 1.5 million monthly unique visitors (as opposed to page views) for the entire site, which includes the online magazine content in addition to the blogs. Phil’s blog alone in March had over 2 million page views. A good place to compare the traffic of various sites (including us and ScienceBlogs) is Quantcast (http://www.quantcast.com).
Yes, you can contract diseases from tattoo needles, but it is extremely rare. Any reputable tattoo parlor will either use new, hermetically packaged needles for every tattoo, or else needles which have been thoroughly cleaned and sanitized in an autoclave.
In this day and age, in this country, contracting diseases in a tattoo parlor is not much of a concern.
I like my tattoos. I got my first 23 years ago. Like so many other things though, they definitely aren’t for everyone. And yes, the first few lines hurt like hell (don’t let anyone tell you differently). The shops where I got them were all very clean and professional.