Tara C. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology in the 
Just what the world needs, right?
There are already carnivals for medical-type follk, general science folk, the godless, philosophers. There are already carnivals about birds, cats, dogs, general multicellular animals, invertebrates. But something is missing. Oh, yes. Those poor little creatures that are ruthlessly killed every day of our lives--the underappreciated, the underloved, the oft-maligned--the animalcules. This grave injustice will now be corrected.
Submission guidelines
One, the post must focus on a microbe--bacteria, parasite, virus, fungus, etc. Prokaryotic or eukaryotic, we don't discriminate. The posts can be light-hearted or serious, research-heavy stuff. New info on a pathogenic virus? A soil bacterium being put to a new use? More microbial toys? Send it along.
Two, the post should be well-written, informative, entertaining, and substantial--that is, more than just a link to a story or another site with a half-dozen words of commentary.
Third, the host reserves the right to decline entries that don't meet the guidelines.
Fourth, for now at least, we'll try this thing every other Thursday, beginning this Thursday, February 9th. Sure, it's short notice, but I hear through the grapevine that most of y'all send your links at the last minute anyway. I'll host it here for now, and depending on how/if it takes off, I'll take other volunteers to host it.
Fifth, one entry per person for each edition of the carnival.
Sixth, rules are subject to change at my whim. Woman's prerogative and all that.
Entry submission
Send me a message (aetiology AT gmail DOT com) with a link to your post and "Animalcules" as the subject line by 11 PM EST Wednesday prior to the carnival. Assuming I get some submissions, I'll assemble 'em and post them on Thursday.
Questions/comments? Send 'em to me at the address above (or, y'know, just use the little comment feature below...)
Comments
Lovely, lovely! Are there niches if nobody is filling them? Hell yeah! And you just filled one obvious one.
I hope you pick a really cool name for the carnival (not the "Carnival of...") and have somebody design a cool logo we can use as buttons (several other carnivals have them made on World Of Blog).
Posted by: coturnix![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 7, 2006 01:49 PM
postsmustalsobetinywithnowastedspace.
Posted by: PZ Myers![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 7, 2006 01:51 PM
Oh, BTW, since it is the first edition and the time is short, are old posts eligible just this one time?
Posted by: coturnix![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 7, 2006 01:53 PM
Tempting...I may get dragged back into blogging after all!
Posted by: Paul Orwin | February 7, 2006 03:05 PM
coturnix--sure, old posts are fine. And I was thinking of just using "Animalcules" for the title. Too obscure?
PZ...don't tempt me. Absolute power corrupts--you never know what I might do! Bwa ha ha ha...
*Ahem*
Paul---*drag, drag...*
Posted by: Tara | February 7, 2006 03:17 PM
How about: "The Dancing Animalcules".
"I then most always saw, with great wonder, that in the said matter there were many very little living animalcules, very prettily a-moving. The biggest sort. . . had a very strong and swift motion, and shot through the water (or spittle) like a pike does through the water. The second sort. . . oft-times spun round like a top. . . and these were far more in number." In the mouth of one of the old men, Leeuwenhoek found "an unbelievably great company of living animalcules, a-swimming more nimbly than any I had ever seen up to this time."
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html
Posted by: Pharma Bawd | February 7, 2006 07:24 PM
Tara,
Animalcules is the running title of Bernard Dixon's column in Microbe (used to be ASM news). I have no idea about copyright law, but i'd go with a slightly different name.
I'll write something for it, but no promises of quality...
Posted by: Paul Orwin | February 7, 2006 07:56 PM
Huh. I read that regularly and never noticed that.
Posted by: Tara![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 8, 2006 10:03 AM
There is a fine line between a post about a microbe and a post about a disease caused by that microbe (in case of microbes that cause diseases). Sometimes the disease is even named after the microbe (or vice versa). What's the policy? Is the disease enough, or does the post have to say something about the organism istelf?
Posted by: coturnix![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 8, 2006 01:33 PM
I think it's going to have to be something we play by ear a bit, but I'll say that it has to say something about the actual organism. Like today, my post on bird flu in Nigeria--nay. A post describing the molecular biology of the influenza virus? Yay.
Posted by: Tara![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 8, 2006 01:46 PM