Top posts on Stickman’s Corral for 2013

As if you care!

I'll limit it to three because: a) Parsimony, b) Blogger is being recalcitrant b*tch at the moment and is not letting me see any more than that.

1) Econ blogosphere comment form. Way out in front — with nearly 7,000 views thanks to links from FT Alpha, Barry Ritholtz and a bunch of people on Twitter — was this spoof of the various personalities, trolls and anti-trolls that populate today's economic blogs. Some of the additional suggestions provided by commentators were golden.

2) Thinking of doing a PhD? My post advocating for postgraduate studies in Norway accumulated around a 1,000 views over the course of the year. It would appear that the idea of drawing a healthy salary whilst having access to great data and clean air could prove a viable alternative to crushing student debt (or miserly graduate stipends) and 80-hour work weeks. As an aside: A fairly large number of hits on this one where referrals from a single comment that I left under one of Noah Smith's blog posts. Thus is the way of the blogosphere layer cake.

3) Review - Extreme Environment (Ivo Vegter). It may not have reached the top spot, but my review of Ivo Vegter's anti-environmentalism screed was certainly the longest post of the year. Five thousand words for around 750 1,000 views may sound like a poor return to some, but it does occupy second place in the Google search rankings for Vegter's book behind only Amazon. Speaking of which: Rather irritatingly, my abridged review on Amazon has garnered more "unhelpful" votes than the other way around. I emphasise the "helpful" bit. This isn't about whether you agree with an author — or reviewer for that matter — but rather a question of whether a review enables you to obtain a better understanding of a book and it's relative merits. I guess in-depth, considered criticism is less helpful than gushing, one-line endorsements. (Or lazy dismissals for that matter.) Haters gonna hate. Derpers gonna derp.

If memory serves me correctly, I have a couple posts with 500-odd views here at Stickman's... while my most widely read articles of the year were almost certainly the series I did for the Energy Collective on natural gas. So, it's been a respectable year blogging-wise for yours truly. I might get around to listing my personal favourite posts of the year later during the week.