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tlambert | June 10, 2008Eli Rabett has written a how-to guide for climate trolls. If you think of some troll tactics that he missed, add them in comments.
tlambert | April 15, 2008I don't like banning people from commenting here. To make sure this is transparent I keep a list here of everyone who is banned. Inspired by the example of John Quiggin, I've added a third name to the list, the poster who calls himself "Reality Check".
Incidently, if you've missed the writings of JC (Joe Cambria) who I banned in January, he's obsessively commenting on postings here over at Catallaxy. Most recent rant:
Another day, another smear attempt at the little fellas site. This time Tim Worstall gets a smearing because he dared not to accept Lambert's line which is that we must re-…
goodmath | March 25, 2008 I'm going to jump into the framing wars again. As I mentioned last time,
I think that most folks who are "opposed" to framing really don't understand what they're talking about - and I'll once again explain why. But on the other hand,
I think that our most prominent framing advocates here at SB are absolutelyterrible at it - and by their ineptitude, are largely responsible for
the opposition to the whole thing.
Suppose you're watching an interview with a writer, and the writer says something like: "I don't believe in style. I don't write with any style
at all - I just write. All those…
goodmath | March 18, 2008 As you've probably noticed, things have been rather slow around here lately. I've got more posts in the works on group theory and abstract algebra - but they take a lot of time to research and write, so they'll be coming out slowly - one a week or so.
In the meantime, I'm looking for other topics to write about, and I'd like to know what you, my faithful readers, are interested in hearing about.
Some things I've considered:
Cellular automata: CA are very cool. I've been wanting an excuse to read my copy of Wolfram's text.
Data structures: my programming-related posts have always been…
loom | March 13, 2008If you're a scientist mysteried by the media, AAAS has set up a nice site to help. Included are a series of interviews with members of that dubious profession, including Science Friday's Ira Flatow talking about radio, and the New York Times's environment writer Andrew Revkin on newspaper reporting. I talk> about life as a multitasking freelancer, and how blog posts and books are and are not the same.
goodmath | March 11, 2008 At Science, Education, and Society, the Urban Scientist
posts a meme to name five women scientists from each of a list of fields. Sadly, my fields are left off the list. So I'll respond in my own way
by adding computer science. This is a very idiosyncratic list - it's women
who are particularly important to my own experience as a student and later
practitioner of computer science.
It's worth noting that I've got a very atypical experience as a computer
scientist, in that many of the most influential people in my
career have been women. That's very unusual, given the incredibly skewed
ratio…
greengabbro | March 9, 2008 First things first: Happy birthday, PZ Myers! (MOAR LOLPZ?)
Next things next: The Borg Overlords are working on a replacement for that "most active/most emailed" thing in the sidebar - one that gives more exposure to good posts from us wee little borgians, and less to gratuitous celebrity pix. The idea is to exploit engage a select portion of the readership to put favorite posts from across ScienceBlogs into a "best of" feed on del.icio.us.
Each of us in the Borg gets to pick two "Super Readers", who will be given access to a shared del.icio.us account for posting links. So I'm looking for…
goodmath | February 21, 2008 Over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, Janet
Stemwedel, our resident ethicist, has been writing about academic
dishonesty and how professional researchers should respond to it.
I've been on the receiving end of dishonesty on three occasions -
ranging from a trivial case (arguably not dishonest at all) to the profound.
I'll describe my three experiences, along with how I did respond to them, and how I could have responded to them. Unfortunately, my experience isn't very
encouraging, and most of my advice comes down to: always, always keep a paper trail: it can't hurt, but don't count on…
tlambert | February 18, 2008The two millionth visitor here came from California State University, Sacramento. My thanks to everyone who has dropped by.
greengabbro | February 4, 2008 I'm a bit cynical about the revolutionary power of the blogosphere. I blog because it's a fun and easy way to share things that I find exciting, it makes my writing better, and it helps keep my ginormous slavering beast of an ego fed in the manner to which it has become accustomed. I don't blog because I want to have a scientific discussion with scientific colleagues about peer reviewed sciencey science. I would rather have sophomoric intellectual wank-fests about science policy, cockroach geologists, and structural inequity... um, but when I say "sophomoric intellectual wank-fests" I mean…
sb admin | January 31, 2008Welcome, Gentle Reader, to my new series of Internet tubes. You'll notice that I haven't completely unpacked - there's no pretty banner at the top, the blogroll is woefully incomplete (it's probably even missing your blog!), and my profile page is not nearly as verbose as it could be. It'll get there in time.
You can expect to see this space filled in the future with rocks, water, progressive identity politics, primal screams of terror associated with my master's thesis (due in May) and/or my upcoming wedding (September), and maybe some lolcats. Oh, and pie - I am quite keen on pie. If you're…
greengabbro | January 31, 2008Welcome, Gentle Reader, to my new series of Internet tubes. You'll notice that I haven't completely unpacked - there's no pretty banner at the top, the blogroll is woefully incomplete (it's probably even missing your blog!), and my profile page is not nearly as verbose as it could be. It'll get there in time.
You can expect to see this space filled in the future with rocks, water, progressive identity politics, primal screams of terror associated with my master's thesis (due in May) and/or my upcoming wedding (September), and maybe some lolcats. Oh, and pie - I am quite keen on pie. If you're…
tlambert | January 30, 2008Tanta writes:
I cannot make anyone stop responding to pointless or nuisance comments. You have to want to restrain yourself, because you understand that the only way to get rid of them is to fail to give them the attention they want. A "troll" is not just someone whose comments you disagree with, or even just a nasty or badly-worded comment. A troll is someone who does not, under any possible set of circumstances, care what you think about him or his comments. He merely wants attention. Negative attention will do. The more you disagree with him, the more he is able to tell himself that he is…
goodmath | January 9, 2008I was just perusing my stats on sitemeter - and to my amazement, I discovered that Good Math/Bad Math had its 2 millionth view this weekend. 2 million pageviews! I never dreamt that this little blog would ever see a number like that. Astonishing! Over 1.3 million visits to the blog so far!
Thank you all!
sb admin | January 6, 2008 It's a new year, bringing new changes. I've decided to quit Omni Brain and move on to less important things, like creating baffling and somewhat offensive art and writing more books that I won't want anyone to read. It's been fun to be here, though. I'm grateful to Steve for being a terrific co-blogger, thankful to ScienceBlogs for hosting, and am glad we've all shared lots of laughs.
There's been plenty of silliness and also some seriousness. On pondering what to write in a farewell post, it seems appropriate to share a piece of writing I never really knew what to do with. It exposes the…
j7uy5 | January 6, 2008I know I've been a bit lax with this blog lately, but just
in case anyone still cares, and has a mobile device (such as a Palm
Pilot, smart phone, etc.) you now can get the RSS feed for Corpus
Callosum on your device. You have to use the
href="http://www.avantgo.com/">AvantGo service.
If you want, follow the AvantGo link, and download the software, then
install it on the computer you use to sync your mobile device.
Then go through the setup as directed by AvantGo.
Then come to CC and click on the AvantGo button in the left
sidebar (where it says Quick Add-Feed Links). That's it (…
loom | January 2, 2008I've been nosing around Facebook and Myspace for a few months now, trying to understand how these kinds of sites will influence the work of writers like myself. No terribly clear answers yet, but some interesting experiments underway. Facebook, for example, used to only have "profiles," where people could create lists of friends and add various applications. Now they've made the site more flexible with "pages," which can be opened by businesses or--in my case--individuals. The format allows me to create a page that's a lot more like my own web site. It's got information on my upcoming talks…
sb admin | December 21, 2007Since you've all been clamouring to see it, here's my new tattoo, and a video clip of the work in progress. It's an intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cell, my favourite type of neuron. The artist was Gordon at Brain Drops, highly recommended. :)
Enjoy your holidays!
sb admin | December 13, 2007 December 13 is my birthday! Yippee, you say, how old am I? Old enough to not say... I will shamelessly mention the Amazon wish list linked from my contact page, and remind you that Omni Brain has a tip jar in the sidebar (shared with Steve). But I'm not desperate for anything and there are plenty of deserving charities who need your money (I recommend UNIFEM). I'm thankful they are helping people in a more direct way than I can.
Anyway. I'm celebrating aging with a new tattoo, and am very excited about it! I've been interested in intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs…
goodmath | December 11, 2007ScienceBlogs recently branched out and opened up a German-language edition of ScienceBlogs in cooperation with a German media firm. Over at the in-house
blog Page 3.14, our blogging goddess, Ginny, is asking for help with what languages readers think SB should assimilate next. Do us a favor, and drop over to Page 3.14, and fill out the poll. Thanks!