The Good and Popular Posts of 2014

Thanks to the data that Google provides (as opposed to the data they keep–which I’d love to see), I have a pretty good idea of which posts attracted the most attention over the past year.  Google tracks “entry pages,” which is a good proxy for post popularity. These are the individual post pages people are referred into–from other sites or internet searches–as opposed to coming to the main site. In the modern era, entry pages are referred largely by social media referrals.  Early in the year, Reddit was responsible for some of my biggest traffic days, but that site has become an anemic source of late.  Twitter remains my biggest performer, but virality transcends platform.

I’ve always described my blog as a garbage scow of information–you’ll find some treasures and some rubbish, but it’s a theme-free jumble. Actually, that’s not entirely true.  If anything unites the content here, it’s my proclivity for finding a tiny thing and writing a thousand words on it. It’s what I like. One t …