Saturday, April 1, 2023

PBS Eons and SciShow on Piltdown Man for April Fools Day, a Science Saturday holiday special

Happy Science Saturday on April Fools Day! For today's double celebration, I'm returning to the topic of last year's PBS Eons reflects on Piltdown Man for April Fools Day, a Flashback Friday holiday special. In particular, I'm revisiting the following paragraph.
PBS Eons returned to the subject in its most recent Mysteries of Deep Time podcast, The Case of the Most Famous Fake Human Fossil.
This episode is a mystery in the most classic literary sense of the word. It’s a whodunit detective story that spans more than a century - the saga of the Piltdown Man Hoax. From a gravel pit in Sussex, we follow the faked fossils through history, to what’s now the Natural History Museum in London, where scientists are using new technologies to try to unravel the identity of the fraudster, and explore how this hoax impacted the study of human origins.
The podcast episode focuses much more on the fake fossil and the people who likely created it than on its effect on the rest of science. It makes for a good unsolved mystery as well as a good hoax to examine on April Fools Day.
PBS Eons turned this podcast episode into a video last November, The Unsolved Case of a Fake Human Fossil.

This episode is a mystery in the most classic literary sense of the word. It’s a whodunit detective story that spans more than a century - the saga of the Piltdown Man Hoax.
I liked this better as a YouTube video than a podcast episode. If nothing else, it has appropriate images supplementing the audio. I hope PBS Eons turn more of their podcasts into videos.

SciShow uploaded their own video of the story this January, Anthropology’s Greatest Hoax.

Scientists are sometimes deemed objective observers of the world in which we live, but that’s not entirely true. They’re still human and can find themselves victim to fraudsters just like the lot of us.
SciShow is much more certain about Charles Dawson being the hoaxer/fraudster than Martin Hinton, who might have been trying to figure out how the fraudster/hoaxer faked the fossils.

That's enough of Piltdown Man. I might write about the IgNobel Prizes next year, which I haven't done for nearly a decade. Time to return to them. In the meantime, follow over the jump for part one of a retrospective about the top holiday posts during the twelfth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

For part one, I'm concentrating on the most read posts I wrote this year about holidays. I'm saving the holiday posts from the back catalog and those that became popular on Twitter and Pinterest for other posts.


The most read holiday post I wrote during the twelfth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News was The story of Loving vs. Virginia on Loving Day, posted on June 12, 2022. I shared it at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page, then Jon Perr linked to it at Crooks & Liars followed by Infidel753 linking to it at his own blog. All that was enough to earn it 638 default and 776 raw page views during June 2022, ranking it third according to default page views and second according to raw page views for June 2022. It steadily gained readers throughout 2022, ending the calendar year with 2,488 raw page views. That prompted me to submit it to Batocchio's blog Vagabond Scholar for his Jon Swift roundup with the following description.
This post tells the story, real and dramatized, of the Lovings, on the 55th anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision Loving vs. Virginia, which struck down state laws against interracial marriage. This has been one of the most consistently popular posts I wrote this year, earning at least 250 page views every month since I posted it on June 12th, so my readers chose it as much as I did.
The page views from Vagabond Scholar were enough for the post to earn 840 default page views, placing it 18th for the blogging year by that metric. They also raised the total raw page views to 2,745, ranking it third by that measure. Consequently, Vagabond Scholar sent 281 referrals as of March 20, 2023, making it the tenth largest external source of page views. The link continues to send readers my blog's way, adding to the post's page view total.


Using biotechnology to eliminate and control mosquitoes for an early celebration of World Mosquito Day from August 19, 2022 was the second most read entry about holidays, broadly construed, I wrote during the blogging year just ended. This post had a modest start. Unlike most of my top posts, I did not share it at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page. Infidel753 linked to it at his blog, which helped the entry earn 336 default and 407 raw page views, ranking it 13th by the first measure and 15th among entries posted during August 2022 and 21st overall that month. It attracted a steady stream of readers until December 26, 2022, ending the calendar year with 1,585 raw page views and the blogging year with 1,598, placing it ninth among entries posted during the twelfth year of this blog and 18th overall.


France 24 English asks 'France and the US: Best frenemies?' for Bastille Day 2022 from July 14, 2022 — when else? — ended the blogging year right behind Using biotechnology to eliminate and control mosquitoes for an early celebration of World Mosquito Day. I shared it to the Coffee Party USA Facebook page, then Infidel753 linked to it at his blog. Between the two of us, it earned 574 default and 639 raw page views, making it the second most read entry of July 2022 according to the former and the fourth most read according to the latter. The post remained popular through the middle of October 2022 and then received a trickle of page views afterwards, earning 1,296 raw page views during calendar year 2022 and ending the blogging year with 1,308 raw page views, ranking it tenth among entries posted during the twelfth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News and 19th overall according to raw page views.


'SNL' shares Easter wishes in its cold open from April 17, 2022 earned nearly all its page views from being shared at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page, garnering 835 default and 893 raw page views, placing it third overall by both measures and second among entries posted during April 2022 according to raw page views. Its default and raw page views increased to 877 and 1,084 respectively by December 31, 2022 and its raw page views grew to 1,095 by March 20, 2023. It ended the blogging year ranked 15th according to default page views, 19th among entries posted during the blogging year by raw page views, and 28th overall.


Top U.S. baby names of 2021 for the Father's Day Weekend from June 18, 2022 also earned the bulk of its page views by my sharing it at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page. That helped it earn 715 default and 759 raw page views, ranking it second by the former measure and third by the latter during June 2022. It continued earning readers, reaching 978 raw page views by the end of 2022 and 989 by the end of the twelfth blogging year, and ranking 23rd among entries posting during the blogging year and 32nd overall.


It almost seems like it wouldn't be one of my holiday retrospectives without an entry featuring Broken Peach, so I'm happy to conclude this list of most read holiday entries from the twelfth year of this blog with A Halloween concert from Broken Peach from October 27, 2022. I didn't share this at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page, but Infidel753 shared it at his blog on Halloween Eve, resulting in 507 raw page views during November 2022, ranking the entry 16th overall that month. It continued to attract readers, resulting in 925 raw page views during all of 2022 and 945 during the blogging year just ended, placing it 26th among entries posted during the twelfth year of this blog and 35th overall.

It also wouldn't be a holiday post mentioning Broken Peach without one of their songs, so here is Broken Peach - Don't You Want Me (Live on The Night Of The Halloween Specials).

This concert was recorded on September 28, 2022, completely live in one take, completely self-produced and edited by the band and their crew.
That's it for today's holiday retrospective. Stay tuned for the top posts featuring "Saturday Night Live."

Previous posts in this series Previous retrospectives about holidays.
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