Intellectual Curiosity

This blog’s daily reader numbers vary quite widely, but when I check I usually find something between ten and twenty. A few days ago it suddenly shot up to fifty-six, so I wondered why and checked the numbers for recent individual posts. Much the same as usual: two or three people for each of the last three days’ posts, and the odd one or two for much older posts; someone perhaps intrigued by a title that was a quotation in German of something Wittgenstein said, and someone looking for stuff about Nikos Kavvadias. Perhaps a new country had been suddenly added to the rather unexpected places from which the blog is, as they say, ‘accessed’? No: as usual, Greece, the UK, the USA, Taiwan and Ukrania. Oh, and someone in Holland; I think I know who. So why the sudden increase in readership?

Then I suddenly remembered: a couple of days ago I changed what they are pleased to call my ‘signature’: the bit of boilerplate at the bottom of all my e-mails that draws attention (I hope) to my blog. I wrote that the blog was only for the intellectually curious and that other people should not look at it.

Conclusion? There are about fifty-six people out there who felt got at by the remark: the insulting suggestion that they lacked intellectual curiosity; so they reacted at once by having a look. It remains to be seen whether they will come back for more, but just in case I shall continue to try to pique intellectual curiosity. But I still wish people would simply write in — simondarragh@hotmail.com — to tell me what they liked or didn’t like, and what they would like me to write about.