This is November, which means it is time for the October Retrospective.
This month's shameless naval gazing includes a major look at politics, which dominated the blogosphere and my own blog all month. My most read non-political post were about co-evolution of genes and culture, and about race and racism. And I won a contest!!!
Cultural Evolution from Mosquitoes to Worm Grunting explored the complex and often mysterious relationship between the strange behaviors we do (and the details of the rituals) and our evolutionary fitness. If any. This was the most widely read post of the month, and was also one of the few science posts I produced in this period of intense political activity.
And the political activity was intense. The other most widely read post of the month was "My godless money. Take it or leave it." in which I propose that everybody should cross "GOD" off the "In GOD We Trust" part of their money. See the post to explain why.
My favorite post of the month was I am the angry left but I'm not sure how much others appreciated it. Maybe this is just one of those narcissistic things for me, I don't know.
This is the month when the McCain campaign fell apart. In "McCain PWNED by Minnesota. Race Over.*" I isolate what I think was the moment of the McCain campaign's undoing. Michele Bachmann was a major focus here and on other Minnesota blogs. The two most widely visited posts of the month concerning this horrid person were Michele Bachmann Meltdown: Jesus-Loving Frankie Vennes, Tom Petters, and Pardongate II? and Michele Bachmann.
A widely read post that resulted in very interesting conversation was on the urban myth that earlier immigrants (as opposed to these pesky recent immigrants) learned english on the way from Ellis Island to their home in the suburbs, first week on arriving in the US: When Do Immigrants Learn English? Likely, not when you think. A natural extension of this discussion involved a paper on which I was co-author that came out just a few weeks before, which I discuss in "Review of SMM Exhibit on Race and Racism." Discussion on this post inspired me to extend the discussion on race in a post called The Nature of the Racist Conversation
And, finally, yes, I did win the big contest of the month, amazingly, with A poem for Open Access Day
Comments
Sarah Palin clears it all up
This looks like a bit of sleight of hand. Wouldn't it be more helpful if she just put out a list of the books she did try to ban, rather than address the books she didn't try to ban, one by one?
Posted by: Virgil Samms | November 10, 2008 3:23 PM
No ships at all?? :-)
Posted by: Scott Belyea | November 10, 2008 3:49 PM
What ... Ever....
Posted by: Greg Laden | November 10, 2008 4:26 PM