Three Quarks for Science Writing

I already mentioned this in a Links Dump, but there's enough buzz that it's probably worth a full post: the people at Three Quarks Daily have decided to offer prizes for blog writing:

Starting next month, the prizes will be awarded every year on the two solstices and the two equinoxes. So, we will announce the winner of the science prize on June 21, the arts and literature prize on September 22, the politics prize on December 21, and the philosophy prize on March 20, 2010.

About a month before the prize is to be announced we will solicit nominations of blog entries from our readers. The nominating period will last approximately one to two weeks. At the end of this time, we will open up the process to voting by our readers. After this period, we will take the top twenty voted-for nominees, and the four main daily editors of 3 Quarks Daily (Abbas Raza, Robin Varghese, Morgan Meis, and Azra Raza) will select six finalists from these, plus they may also add a wildcard entry of their choosing. And finally, a well-known intellectual from the field will pick the winner, runner up, and third place finisher from these, and will write some short comments on the winning entries.

Yeah, this still leaves them two quarks short of a Standard Model, but it's the thought that counts.

Nomination is now open for the Science prize, with the nomination period closing June 1. After that, there will be a week of voting on the nominated posts, then celebrity judge Steven Pinker and his fabulous hair will choose the winners.

If you'd like to nominate something, from this blog or any other, you can do so by putting the URL into a comment to the contest announcement post.

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