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sastyk | February 9, 2010I have nothing to do with the recent kerfuffle about civility and comment policies that has been meandering through science blogs, but a large quantity of posts on the subject on a largeish number of blogs has, I admit, gotten me thinking about my own comment policies. Since I often get queries, often in personal email, about my comment policies, particularly why I let X or Y person say what they do, I thought it might be useful to make my comment policy more explicit.
My basic philosophy towards commenters is that I don't censor and I don't ban except under extreme provocation. In over 5…
razib | January 23, 2010I noticed that Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan was watchable online on Netflix the other day, so I checked it out. I liked it. As any movie there were liberties taken with aspects of Genghis Khan's biography, but I felt like most of them were true to the general outlines of what really happened. The main downside was the whole warlord-with-a-heart-of-gold element to his personality. I'm definitely looking forward to The Great Khan, the rumored sequel.
revere | January 23, 2010I'm fully immersed in writing a big grant proposal so I have even less time for blogging and reading blogs than usual, but that doesn't mean I have no time. Along with my colleagues I've been working on this beast for 9 months, but now with only 3 months to go before the deadline it's crunch time (the last time we did a competitive renewal of this thing the application was over 900 pages long and this one will be close to that). So time is a precious commodity.
It is also a fascinating biological variable and scienceblogs is blessed with several experts on the subject, notably Coturnix at…
razib | January 10, 2010I hadn't logged into my Google Wave account for about a month. No one seems to be using it. But I checked it out the other day, and it seems someone finally contacted me last week...turns out it was an "old friend" who I've been ignoring because of his anti-social personality disorder (blocked him from my regular Gmail account). Thanks Google Wave for helping me reconnect with people who I've been trying to avoid!
razib | December 29, 2009Google, Past and Future:
Ah, but what about 2010? That, claim the editors at Smartgrid, will be the year that Google and Microsoft really roll up their sleeves and go to war. In everything from search to office apps and Internet browsers, the two behemoths will roll out fancy new services designed to erode their rivals' revenue streams. "Both companies are largely betting their collective futures on this battle, so the stakes are huge," said industry analyst Rob Enderle. "Microsoft is going to partner and try to starve Google out of content and partners. Google is going to work against…
razib | December 1, 2009Why Tiger's endorsement empire is safe:
And as indiscretions go, this is not Michael Vick, say sports marketers. This is not Michael Phelps. This is not Kobe Bryant. Not yet, anyway.
"I'm convinced that this will not cause the end of Tiger Woods Inc. as we know it," said Paul Swangard, managing director of the University of Oregon's Warsaw Sports Marketing Center.
Probably Woods will still make gajillions of dollars in endorsements. Vick and Bryant's transgressions were much more serious. But are professional golfers graded on the same curve as NBA or NFL athletes? I'm skeptical.
revere | November 25, 2009We just realized that today is our fifth blogiversary. Young if you are a human, prime of life if you are a dog, but Methuselah if you are a blog. We've not gone dark for a single day in those five years, although on many we've thought about turning off the lights permanently. But we're still here, the day before Thanksgiving. That's not a coincidence.
In 2004 Thanksgiving fell on November 25. One of the original reveres (the one tapping these keys, in fact) was making a nuisance of himself in the kitchen as Mrs. R. was trying to prepare one of her virtuouso Thanksgiving dinners. She shooed…