Bon(obo) voyage: the chimps are loping away from ScienceBlogs.com

So. The chimps will be brachiating off to a new territory, the address of which kemibe provides below. We have considered this move for a while, but our decision crystallized lately due to the confluence of a number of events.

My absence may or may not have been noted in recent months here on the Refuge - a blog on which I once posted with more frequency. Part of that is due to work-related writing, part of it attributable to dabbling in creative writing (I use that term loosely), but largely, it's because posting on Science Blogs is no longer fun.

As the bona fide scientist of the chimp troop, having a PhD in biochemistry and such, I feel like I ought to be holding up the scientific end of things that would at least justify the blog's existence here. However, writing science-oriented posts became a chore rather than pleasure. I always felt like I had to be "on my game" in this particular milieu: required to add a gazillion links and references and to be a good community member by linking to other bloggers' posts if they covered a similar topic, all of which is too damn much like work. Not to mention time-consuming.

Also, as the "good cop" atheist of the trio, I am not inclined to ignite the blazing pieces that draw in a number of readers. I'll leave that to kemibe who does it so very well and to Jim, who applies systematic slicing and dicing to these issues. Rather, I like goofball stuff like MSTing bad science fiction movies and television shows, reminiscing about the National Lampoon (I still have some scans of Son-o-God comics), waxing poetic about my past experiences in the scientific arena, posting pornographic photos of flowers, and just slapping up whatever the hell strikes my fancy.

I also want to be open about what I say without fear of being castigated as a misogynist (a term often used inaccurately - try "sexist," folks), a tremendously ironic notion given that I harbor genuine ovaries (although going dormant) and had some pretty hair-raising experiences during my fairly long scientific career which allow me to speak from a solid platform of experience and credibility.

The latter sniping derives from my stumbling upon some very shoddy behavior in the back rooms of Science Blogs, stuff that removed any doubt that leaving Science Blogs for an independent venue was the thing to do. The majority of the folks that blog here do not participate in this -- uh -- "community" forum, but the ones who do are fairly heavy hitters and like it or not, they set a tone.

I'm hoping that Refuge v.3 will host raucous free-for-alls at times and also - at times - will be a place where we can just hang out and pick off each other's nits, crunching the juiciest ones. I'm not looking for kind and gentle behaviors there (hell, it wouldn't be the Refuge then), but in a setting with more freedom and, well, less posturing. And you know, I might even post more often in such a place. I think I'd like that.

Thanks to SEED for hosting us in this little backwater, but it's time to move on. So long and thanks for all the bananas.

~~ Doc Bushwell

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My reasons for leaving ScienceBlogs.com aren't identical to Doc B's, but there's more than a little overlap, and those reasons are compelling all the same. My typically manic-depressive posting frequency has deterorated badly of late; I'm about to sign a contract to write an extremely boring book that will sell few copies, and so, given that I also have a full-time job, I cannot commit to writing anything of substance here, inasmuch as I have ever done so. In terms of my science background, as someone with a long-forgotten physics degree, the vestiges of an astronomy habit, and a fewyears of med school, I'm sort of a jack of few trades and a master of squat, so it makes sense for me to go back to inhabiting a locus where my increasingly occasional tirades about what's wrong with the world and increasingly frequent links to Youtube cartoons of my own design do not clash so admirably with the local decor.

I'm very lucky to have had the chance to post here for almost three years. I rode into this place on the esteemed coattails of a genuine scientist and owing to this burst of good luck have had the chance to meet a lot of my fellow bloggers (a group that includes some truly incredible people, as I found out when weathering some difficult circumstances a couple of years ago) as well as connect with some uncannily clever commenters and people who blog outside of this "community." And I fully expect to keep in touch with many of them. But it is unquestionably time for me to go. I've taken pre-emptive strikes at my own participation here in the past and have ascribed this to any number of reasons, but at this stage I can only see forging on as resulting in a mixture of the toxic and the lame. That's no prescription for fruitful blogging.

We're going to be sounding off, at whatever frequency, at a new Wordpress blog. You can access all of the content we've generated here, should you be so depraved, and we hope to keep it a fun, raucous place. I expect I'll return to writing more about distance running and I have no doubt I will continue to rant and rave like an energetc misanthrope when the occasion strikes. I hope that those who have followed this blog for whatever inscrutable reason add us to your feed reader or favorites list, because the thing that has been most rewarding about being a blogger here has been the cavalcade of wonderfully clever commenters. That includes the people I have brawled with repeatedly over the same hallmark and often trite issues. In the end, it's all just fun and games.

I also want to wish the folks at Seed Media Group, both those I have met and the ones I've only corresponded with electronically, the absolute best. To have people busting their asses on behalf of us 80 or so petulant, demanding, hyperintellectual souls is as much a bona fide privilege as it is a curiosity.

That's more than enough bullshit from me. God bless everyone, and don't be strangers.

~~KMB

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I don't really have much of use to say. Not that I ever did. Thanks for reading anyway.

(And much thanks to the folks at Seed)

~~Jim