Brent Rasmussen is shutting down Unscrewing the Inscrutable. This is sad; Pharyngula is a lowly newbie to the atheist blogosphere, and when I set up shop way back in 2003 the godless blogs I followed included the Raving Atheist (which switched sides with the conversion of its owner years ago), World Wide Rant (which shut down a while back), UTI (which was hanging in there until now), and Stupid Evil Bastard, which is still plugging away. This is simply the nature of the blogging beast, which tends to be tied to the personality of the owner, and if someone decides there's something else they'd rather be doing, the blog doesn't outlast them. There will be a day — not in my plans, and certainly not, I hope, imminent — when Pharyngula also shuts down.
I'd like to see Brent keep on going with it, but that's his personal decision. And while the individual blogs have their own lifetime, have no fear, the atheist blogosphere is still booming and will keep on growing.
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A likely story. As if the crypto-commie-fascist-darwinio-atheist conspiracy doesn't plan everything.
Ask Ben Stein if it doesn't.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
I kind of doubt that your blog will go away. I get the idea that you like being outspoken. A lot of bloggers I can think of who have been around for 5+ years are that way.
Vita brevis, ars longa.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Auf wiedersehen.
Hey, if PZ were to bale out, the thread-undying would go on.
I assumed you'd leave the keys to the blog to Skatje once you kick the bucket.
Good Lord (if you'll excuse the expression), I remember how The Raving Atheist got weirder and weirder until all of a sudden he got religion. I imagine some would call it a miracle. Steadier types would call it an unfortunate derangement.
I suspect PZ is too robust to fall for the God delusion or just collapse from exhaustion.
1: Technically, it's "bail out," it's a reference to scooping water out of a boat. /grammar nazi
2: Not that I want Pharyngula to die (perish the thought!), but I like the idea of an endless thread, wandering the intertubes, accumulating another thousand posts anywhere it can find a place to host it.
I always assumed it would be Janine. Or David Marjanovic (sorry, can't to the accent marks).
sounds like your "prepping" us.....
"Shut down" the finest procrastination engine yet devised?
*shivers*
We'll always have Pharyngula.
I have been quiet all day, today's news has been such a bummer. But I saw that Nubela99 had such kind word to say about me. Thank you. But there are about fifty regulars here who should run a popular blog before I do. I lack style as a writer and I lack to discipline to accurately translate my thoughts to something readable. The main reason I keep my posts so short is because when I expand, I start going off course.
I wish I was in the same class as SC, Sastra, Danio, David, Owlmirror, Lynna and the many other that I embarrass myself with because I am not naming them. But I am grateful that I seem to have the goodwill of many people here.
Carthago delenda est!
There's always Quintessence of Dust. This guy is doing a chapter by chapter dissection of Meyer's Signature in the Cell. Many new years resolutions involve giving up forms of self-abuse...
I found this via John M Lynch's A Simple Prop.
You brought it on yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht9EMjjr5oM
Geez. At this rate, the only thing left keep the fundies' feet to the fire will be reality itself. Good luck with that one.
I'm not prepping you for anything -- I plan to keep going forever. There is the reality that I am a mere mortal human being, though, and someday I'll die, or go crazy like the Raving Atheist, or when the Nerd Rapture comes, be immanentized in the global machine intelligence, and then it will end.
Now I could pass it on to someone else, and might just do that, but then it wouldn't be Pharyngula anymore, no matter what title is on the masthead -- it would be their blog, with their ideas and personality expressed in it. Maybe you'd like it better. Maybe you'd like it less. But it would be something different.
Blogs are great, and so are the comments. I'd like to think, though, that there is still a place for the good old traditional discussion board.
I read, and comment occasionally on some of them, a few blogs, but discussion boards are still my first love. I was involved in starting one early last year, and still learn a lot from it.
Yet more yankee colonial imperialism;
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/bail.html
Eddie, wrong thread. I think that should be in the Haiti thread.
Link to UTI already removed from my bookmarks and feeds; I'm pragmatic that way.
Janine,
I think you are.
Each of you has different strengths and focus, but you're all classy.
Aww Janine. Read the link ;-)
I going to bed now. Up for work in 4 hrs.
Sorry, it is just that a discussion of American imperialism got started there. Now go to sleep.
You mean you haven't set up a mind-transfer device to place your consciousness in the brain of a clone yet?
What kind of evil overlord are you?! Did you blow all the dough on the cyberpistol™?
SC @14:
NOOOOOO! I'd just gotten that OUT of my head!
Impossible to resist. Probably wouldn't have been so fresh in my mind had you not mentioned it the other day.
:P
What lend to the Raving Atheist becoming the Raving Theist?
I would search the forum archive but I thought I would ask here first, in case someone had insight into what happened.
I always found Atheist to Theist conversions interesting...
If PZ blogged right up to his last breath,it might prevent the kooks from claiming he converted at the last second.
I'm concerned that he intends to redirect the page to his Facebook page. That could break a lot of good links. Also, since he has a fair bit of google juice, doing so would damage the rankings of other websites that he has helped link to or promote.
Loim,
Dunno for sure, but it was discussed here earlier.
Part of the work I do involves a gadget that makes a noise eerily similar to "JEESUUS CHRIST BAIL BONDS". What can I do but follow with "BAIL OUT-BAIL-OUT", to the bafflement and increasing concern of my colleagues?
Yeah, my last blog post will be roughly, "Hey, what's that twinge....yeeeaaaaaarrgghlglglglargh."
As for the Raving Theist, it sounds like what led to his derangement was the issue of abortion. He didn't like it, and ended up twisting his brain around to Christianity in order to rationalize his revulsion.
"But if you were dying, you wouldn't bother to blog 'yeeeaaarrrghlglglgargh'; you'd just say it."
"It's down there, carved in stone."
"Perhaps he was dictating."
(/Monty Python)
A successor will be chosen. I will start the nominations with Lynna.
Hi - thanks for the mention of the World Wide Rant, even if it just reduced to a parked domain name page these days (I can't seem to let go of the name for some reason, and no one has offered to pay me for it!).
I agree with your assessment that the fate of the blog is tied to the interest of the blogger. I'm still an atheist... I still get into periodic debates with creationists and then pound my head into a wall... but the blog sort of set up the expectation of a reply to every dumb assertion they made in the comments. I grew weary (and didn't have the hordes you've amassed to get their hands bloodied for me). :-)
In the end, I replaced the time spent blogging with endurance running. It can be a magical experience, but I chalk that up to endorphins (or, fine, the Baby Jesus). First marathon is 1/31 in Miami - pray for me!
Yeah, kidding about that last part (the praying, not the marathon).
Keep up the good fight!
If that were to happen, wouldn't you simple become Pharyngula?
Well, the Raving Atheist blog may have bitten the dust, but the forum is doing great guns:
http://ravingatheists.com/forum/
Theist blood and teeth all over the place.
Each of you has different strengths and focus, but you're all classy.
Puts me in mind of a song...
I've been a skeptic and non-believer for years, but I was a bit late to catch on to the atheist blog scene. I've only been reading them for about four years now, and the first three blogs I started reading regularly were UTI, Stupid Evil Bastard, and Pharyngula. I believe I left my first comment ever on UTI(although it just might have been on SEB). Over these last four years, UTI has had some great writers, and I enjoyed them all. I started reading it just as Darksyde was getting out, Hank Fox, Rick Ulrey, and Brent were still going strong, and Alon Levy and Jim Downey were just getting going. I have noticed that discussion seems to have cooled a bit at UTI over the last year or so, and it disappoints me, since although Hank and Brent were my favorites stylistically, Jim Downey posts a lot of stuff about church & state, religious & government abuses of power, and other like subjects that are always on my mind.
I encourage other fans to read the individual blogs of the writers, if they continue.
Here is my modest attempt at atheistic blogging:
Chain The Dogma: Beware of God
http://www.perrybulwer.com/chain-the-dogma/
Religion & Child Abuse News Archive
http://www.perrybulwer.com/religion-and-child-abuse-news/
The latter is merely an archive of news items, whereas the former is my sporadic start at actually writing on issues related to that archive. I am currently unable to be more prolific (working on a book), but I'm hoping in the months to come to spend more time blogging.
Perry Bulwer
What happens to Pharyngula is up to the will of the FSM, like all things.
Dahan, FSM helps those who help themselves, like any deity, and (of course) is no less subject to reality and contingency than any other deity!
Apart from my conversion, I discovered that there are more socially useful activities than blogging about whether the cause of the universe was conscious or not. There's a limit to what can say on one side or the other. Although it's certainly possible to go on forever by discussing the relevance of theism/atheism to current events, that too becomes repetitious. As I recall, sometime around 2005 I posted a fill-in-the blanks template for constructing an atheist post.
The debates over empiricism vs. objectivism, or the subjectivity vs objectivity of moral judgments, are also interesting but it would be difficult to sustain a blog about either topic year after year. I suppose one's motive for persisting would be -- as atheist bloggers often insist -- that one side is rational and the other is deluded, and reason needs to be defended to prevail.
As to where the atheist blogosphere is headed, I don't know. I think much of it sprang up as a reaction to the perceived theocratic leanings of the Bush administration. It may well start to wane as the failures of the current secularist administration continue to mount.