Happy Birthday to Panda's Thumb!

Today, March 23, 2005, marks the Panda’s Thumb weblog first year of service. Now we have nearly 900 posts, nearly 22,000 comments, and over 450,000 visits logged by Sitemeter. We’re around ranking #508 in the “Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem”. Site traffic runs about two-thirds that of the TalkOrigins Archive. Happy Birthday, Panda’s Thumb!

This past year, PT brought its readers the first public notice of the Stephen C. Meyer article in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. As a scoop, it was a doozy, leading notice in Nature, Science, and other venues. PT also led with a technical critique of a paper by Michael Behe and David Snoke on evolving complex adaptations. (Both of these are also linked in the “Must Read” sidebar on the right of the PT main page.) This sort of leadership did not go unmissed: Panda’s Thumb ran high in the vote tallies for the Koufax Awards in the “Best Group Blog” category.

We’ve had a lot of laughs at the expense of the Discovery Institute Media Complaints Division, but we’ve also kept in touch with the serious side of all this, which is the integrity of science education in our public schools. There is humor to be had while we take care of serious business, and we’ll be keeping this in mind in the coming year. I’m not sure what to say to the Panda’s Thumb Bar Crew besides, “Thanks, and another round, please.”