NPR now has its own science-meets-culture blog, 13.7:
13.7: Cosmos And Culture is written by five prominent scientists or science journalists with different fields and focuses. The five will write, as individuals and sometimes collectively, on the places where science and culture intersect, on all levels. The blog will at sometimes be provocative, controversial, amusing, idealistic, academic, insightful - but always thoughtful. The contributors to this blog stand by the conviction that scientists must engage in the public debate of what science can and cannot do.
All well and good, but I was skeptical. The whole science/culture thing is ubertrendy right now. And everyone wants their own in-house blog. But check out what 13.7 blogger K.C. Cole has to say:
These days, I'll stop total strangers not only to point out beautiful interference patterns, but also to talk about how ideas such as symmetry -- the basis of the Golden Rule -- not only underlie all modern physics, but have a lot to tell us about fairness, and how we might discover which things are fundamental to all people, and therefore worth fighting for, and which are relative to history and culture. (It is the same notion of symmetry that Einstein used to show that the fundamental nature of the speed of light makes space and time secondary and elastic.)
Okay, you're in, 13.7! Welcome to the science/culture blogosphere.
All of this reminds me that I have been menaing to read and review K.C. Cole's book, Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the world he made up
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But I hope that you don't mean that your work HERE is done. That'd just ruin my whole holiday season(though you absolutely deserve a vacation).
Happy Holidays,
MLC
Thanks for the compliment! :) I'm afraid I am going to have to step back from the blogging soon, but for the time being, there is too much bioephemera to post about. :)
Hello Jessica,
I would've emailed you, but I couldn't find your address, so feel free to take this off after you read it.
I actually am a little upset by your post -- in particular the holier-than-thou pronouncement of the trendiness of science/culture blogs, and the condescension you take to blogs of that nature.
I understand that you were early in the game -- and, truly, bravo to you! Your blog has been inspirational to me over the years and I really appreciate all your hard work. And I know what it's like to discover or create something, only to have lots of people follow as if they discovered it on their own. It's like something was stolen from you.
But instead of looking down on new science/culture blogs, shouldn't we be happy that they are becoming more prevalent? Aren't more sources of science made available publicly a good thing? (Assuming accuracy, of course.)
I just started my own blog recently, a science/culture one. And, yes, it is trendy. But that doesn't mean it isn't honest. As a new blogger, it was hurtful to hear a pioneer in the field sneer on newer efforts. I'm proud of what I've written -- but hearing that my hard work and passion are just the result of some trend and are perhaps illegitimate briefly put me in a state of doubt.
I don't think that was your intention, which is why I'm letting you know that your words could be taken that way.
I wish you all the best,
Hannah
Hannah, I have a whole blogroll of excellent science/culture blogs I highly recommend, and if you read my blog you'll see I link to them all the time, particularly new bloggers. But yes, I'm unapologetically skeptical of any large, established media enterprise swooping in and saying "ok, now WE'RE doing this too!" once something has gotten trendy - and science/culture certainly has. I PERSONALLY did not make it trendy - that would be complete hubris on my part - but yes, it is trendy. That's why I gave the post that tongue-in-cheek title - because no one would notice at this point if BioE dropped off the face of the earth! There are many excellent science/culture and science/art resources out there to visit, and many of them post more often and more substantively than I can.
But you know what? Not all science/culture projects are good. I get emails all the time about new projects people want me to share with my readers, generally from PR reps. I rarely pass on such recommendations; I'm not going to recommend new blogs or publications to readers just because they use "science" or "culture" in the title. But NPR has a great track record, so although I was skeptical, I went to the NPR blog site, read a bunch of posts, and gave them deserved props in the post for getting good writers, like K.C. Cole.
If you are also a good writer, you shouldn't worry about whether what you are writing is "trendy" or "done" or "before its time." That doesn't matter. If you're really great, who knows? You'll make your niche trendy, or if it's already trendy, you'll transcend the crowd. It makes me sad that you took my use of the word "trendy" as some kind of personal admonishment - especially since I wasn't talking about individual bloggers like yourself in the post (I'm assuming you're an individual blogger), but about Big Media. I feel that yes, science/culture blogs are trendy, and yes, businesses like Big Media try to exploit trends (just ask Bora about that), and as a result, some of the stuff out there on the internet is not awesome. That's my honest feeling, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise, even to be polite. Otherwise why am I writing a blog in the first place?
Being me hasn't become trendy yet, but when it does, I'll be very skeptical of people who start JohnOhab.com knockoffs.