My Favorite Thing about Blogging

I've had fun following comments and feedback from Wednesday's series on Framing Science. Many of you bring up excellent points and I particularly enjoy hearing from folks who do not wholeheartedly agree. It's also encouraging that other science bloggers including PZ Myers and Coturnix are open to re-examine the concept from a different perspective.

A special thanks to readers who challenge my ideas and in doing so, open up the discussion to new potential trajectories and dimensions. Thought-provoking remarks and debate are the best way to develop a broader understanding all around. And that is one of my favorite things about blogging - a topic discussed earlier this week by Jennifer Jacquet at Shifting Baselines and Carl Zimmer at The Loom.

There are ever more avenues to wander down on this one concept and seemingly infinite additional topics I'd love to explore and hammer out here. Yet with only a few days remaining at The Intersection, I'll wrap up Framing this weekend with regard to where it makes sense, what really matters, and a reminder that theory is not dogma.

posted by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum with so much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.

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Keep writing! Regardless of your take on global warming, it is something that is clearly worth discussing. One interesting suggestion that I have heard is to use a different tactic that may achieve a similar goal with less controversy...

At the moment, we're not likely to decrease our emissions substantially, especially given the debate is about whether global warming exists rather than about how to reduce emissions and slow our impact. Perhaps by talking about reducing emissions so that we can all breathe cleaner air, people will be more likely to listen because clean air is something that nobody is really going to argue against.
All of that is based on the assumption that emissions are a major component of global warming.

By San Boyarsky (not verified) on 25 May 2007 #permalink

I am hoping the post that follows this is Your Least Favorite Thing About Blogging. I was listening to an NPR story on blogging and heard that This American Life's blog went along fine until one day, after a show about a promiscuous teenage daughter, the blog went bust. Ira Glass was so disappointed in the number of nasty comments, he shut down the blog forever. Similarly, a blog on food requires something like 12 employees/volunteers to screen the comments. The topic to get folks most angry: Children in Restaurants.

This has led me to wonder: is blogging like road rage? Due to the medium of a computer screen (or, in the case of road rage, the car's body), are people more inclined to act with hate or spite? This certainly seems the case at Pharyngula where scientists (and non-scientists) write in a way I never see expressed verbally.

My least favorite things about blogging also include:
1) the potential to be stalked
2) the lack of fact checking and spell checking (to which I also, then, fall victim)
3) the drain on national productivity

That said, the freedom of expression is DIVINE! Hope to continue to see you in the blogsphere...

1) So far, antics of 'radio stalkers' trump 'blog stalkers' ten-fold.. but then I've only tried my hand at Science Blogs a week. And if this includes folks who google you, that's going to happen no matter who you are - blog or not.

2) To err is human, to blog divine!

3) In lieu of Science Blogs, national productivity will drain regardless by way of alternatives such as Wii or The Onion. Thus, it's not additive :)

Thanks for reading Jennifer!

By Sheril Kirshenbaum (not verified) on 27 May 2007 #permalink