I'm in New York City for a variety of meetings and, of course, I brought along Bloggy, the Scientific Blogging mascot.   I know how popularity works.  People don't concern themselves much with what I write but Bloggy is popular.  Heck, there is fan fiction written about him.

He's a pretty easy travelling companion, he mostly just sits in my bag but at key moments I avail myself of his wisdom.

I took a few pictures of him in our various adventures and am posting them up here.   Off on a trip of your own?  Need a mascot to accompany you and criticize your every decision?   We'll ship him out.  Just be sure to take a swanky picture.

Worried about how to protect yourself from swine flu (oops, Influenza A H1N1 - stop persecuting pigs!) ? Wondering what you can do to prevent spreading swine flu?  Need an up-to-the-moment break out of where the latest outbreaks have occurred, just in case deaths from swine flu exceed 1/1,000th the deaths of regular flu or 1/10,000th the deaths of malaria?

If only an internet company would capitalize on this hysteria to generate traffic!

Oh wait, here's one.   Internet News Distribution Channel "Feedzilla", which updates news and information around the clock, says they can help you get the latest info while the pandemic panic lasts - namely until the next kid gets kidnapped or Nancy Grace convicts someone of murder on her TV show.  

As long-time readers know, we like to celebrate various holidays and events by making subtle changes to the site.    Sure, sometimes it involve ninjas taking over and writing our science but mostly it is more like sneaking in a logo and seeing who notices.

That doesn't mean all of them get used.    Our first logo, for example, was just something thrown together as a mockup so we knew where it would have to go.   It looked like something a programmer/me would put together:


Then we had a few revisions, by someone who knows what they are doing, and arrived at the one that eventually remained on the home page for some 18 months: