I banned my first commenter today. Pretty exciting stuff.

A few people suggested I do so a while back, but I resisted for a number of reasons. I welcome feedback and enjoy seeing comments on my work — a luxury I was never really afforded on the SNY.tv columns — so I intentionally made it as easy as possible for people to comment when I started up this blog. I’m not out to muzzle anybody, even straight-up trolls.

Plus I have a reasonably thick skin and I like giving people an open forum, so I figured if some banned MetsBlog commenter believes he has unlocked the dark secrets to the SNY.tv empire, you know what, go to town in my comments section, bro.

But for some reason, the allegation that my post earlier this afternoon was “hacky” bothered me. I imagine, if pressed, Ryan would say that the Mets absolutely must go out and get Cliff Lee and insist that my post was a Wilpon-driven effort to excuse them from doing so.

Problem is, I honestly think signing Cliff Lee — a 32-year-old pitcher — to a lengthy and expensive deal is a bad idea regardless of it the Mets can afford it and no matter how awesome Lee is right now.

Look: Maybe by now you realize this, but I’m a contrarian by nature. When everyone’s all puppydogs and daffodils about the Mets, I present skepticism. When everyone’s gloomy, I provide some optimism. It’s not a conscious thing, it’s just the way I am. I have no idea why. I went to a stuffy college and became something of a hippie. If I went to a hippie college I probably would’ve started tucking my shirt in.

So this morning’s post — and I really shouldn’t even bother defending it — aimed merely to provide some perspective given all the doom-and-gloom around the blogosphere about the Mets’ payroll stuff. Ryan’s assertion that it was something other than that finally got to me.

When I first started subbing — for some reason my old jobs keep coming up here lately — the teachers I was replacing would always provide a big stack of worksheets to give out to students. I know other subs would yell at kids and force ’em to sit quietly and do their assignment, but that wasn’t my style — I just wasn’t nearly that invested in it.

So my approach was to hand out the worksheets and be forthright: I’d tell students that I didn’t really care if they did them or didn’t, but that I had instructions to collect them at the end of the class. And I’d say, “Look: I’m not here to get you in trouble and I imagine you’re not here to get me in trouble, so everybody just be cool.”

With high schoolers, it worked almost every time. They would sit, usually chatting quietly but rarely getting out of control, and at the end of the period a bunch of them would hand in their worksheets and the rest, I guess, would explain it to their teachers later.

With middle schoolers, the approach failed miserably. Middle schoolers are bastards. They cannot be reasoned with and they are incapable of just being cool. They would yell and throw things and choke each other and then I’d have to yell back and write them up.

My approach to comments on this blog has always been similar: Everybody just be cool. And it has worked. Everybody is cool. There are active discussions and interesting arguments and everyone keeps the tone respectful. It’s great and I am hugely appreciative.

But Ryan had the maturity level of the middle schoolers. And I grew at least a little concerned that some would confuse him with the O.G. commenter Ryan, one of the brightest and funniest people who comments on this blog.

So everybody else, continue being cool. And you’re welcome to doubt my motivations all you want, no matter how often I insist I am being open and honest. Just do it in some productive fashion, or try to add at least a little bit of humor or originality to the mix.

Except you, Ryan, you don’t have that option. You’re banned. Farewell. I will miss your pageviews.

“At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Conservation researchers argue that only by being aware of our aesthetic prejudices can we set them aside when deciding which species cry out to be studied and saved. Reporting recently in the journal Conservation Biology, Morgan J. Trimble, a research fellow at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and her colleagues examined the scientific literature for roughly 2,000 animal species in southern Africa, and uncovered evidence that scientists, like the rest of us, may be biased toward the beefcakes and beauty queens.

Assessing the publication database for the years 1994 through 2008, the researchers found 1,855 papers about chimpanzees, 1,241 on leopards and 562 about lions — but only 14 for that mammalian equivalent of the blobfish, the African manatee.

“The manatee was the least studied large mammal,” Ms. Trimble said. Speculating on a possible reason for the disparity, she said, “Most scientists are in it for the love of what they do, and a lot of them are interested in big, furry cute things.”

– Natalie Angier, New York Times.

I don’t doubt the idea presented by this article at all. It makes perfect sense that conservationists would work harder to protect cute animals than ugly ones.

But I think the evidence cited above is a particularly bad example, and — and maybe I’m missing something here — strikes me as a pretty severe lapse in logic. I mean, what besides ugliness distinguishes the manatee from chimps, leopards and lions that just might make people less likely to study it in-depth?

Could it be that manatees live in water? Am I nuts? Doesn’t it seem perfectly reasonable to expect human scientists would be more likely to study animals they can observe without strapping on SCUBA gear?

Plus, you know, I’m sure lots of people find manatees plenty attractive. Look at the thing:

After he was bonked in the head by a bag, Steven Slater stunned passengers by spewing profanity and ranting about quitting as the flight from Pittsburgh pulled up to the gate about noon.

“To the f—–g a–hole who told me to f–k off, it’s been a good 28 years,” Slater, 38, purred, cops said. “I’ve had it. That’s it,” he added, a passenger said.

The mad-as-hell steward grabbed a couple of brewskis and popped one open before activating the emergency exit, witnesses told airport employees.

After tossing his two carry-on bags on the slide, he followed them to the tarmac.

– Alison Gendar, Oren Yaniv and Dave Goldiner, N.Y. Daily News.

OK, first off, awesome. I bet if you work on airplanes you constantly think about busting out the emergency slide.

When I worked at the high school, my blaze-of-glory retirement plan included pulling the emergency shower in the chemistry room. I always wanted to see what that would look like and if it even was hooked up to anything. The chemistry teachers always gave kids a big speech about how they should never, ever pull that thing because it would flood the whole school. Unfortunately I left on good terms so I never got to find out if that was true.

Anyway, I have no idea what the background story is here or the nature of Slater’s fight with the passenger. But I know from experience that people can treat you awfully when you’re working a service job.

The article says the guy’s father recently died of Lou Gehrig’s disease and his mother has terminal cancer. Brutal.

I happened to endure some heavy stuff myself one summer when I was working at the deli. When you’ve got that going on, and someone treats you like you’re some sort of mindless machine that exists only for the purpose of serving them, it’s one of the worst feelings imaginable. You want to say, “dammit, you don’t know me, you jackass. You think I’m doing this for fun, you clown? You think I really care about your petty needs?”

You want to get on a loudspeaker, call the person a “f***ing a**hole” and storm out of there. I never did, but I get it. Good for Steven Slater for standing up for himself. Here’s hoping he lands on his feet.

Also, for what it’s worth, I fly JetBlue pretty frequently and Slater looks familiar. I’m pretty sure he was my flight attendant once. And furthermore, it’s amazing that the Daily News put three reporters on the flight-attendant meltdown story.