Blogging
clock | July 23, 2006My son's birthday is next week. He wants (and we agree) a laptop. He is, surprisingly for a man of his brilliance, a PC guy. Good graphics and sound are very important for the stuff he does (making Flash movies, gaming, etc).
What should we get him? You know we are dirt poor, so steer away from $1200 Dells....(and no, I do not have enough parental power to persuade him that Mac is the real thing).
clock | July 23, 2006Inspired by RPM of Evolgen, I ask, how many people in your school/University, or town, or state, are blogging, especially about science?
First, I don't know of anyone from my University who blog privately, though you can probably search the MSNBlogs etc. for schools and locales. But, folks at North Carolina State University started, just a few months ago, their own blogging service, called WolfBlogs, using Webroller as the platform. There are still not that many blogs there, most are still trying to figure out how to do this thing, but a few have taken off nicely, and a couple are science-…
clock | July 23, 2006Did you know the origin of the phrase "Every time you masturbate (or do whataver in the context), God kills a kitten"? I just found out that Wikipedia has a full illustrated history - which is hillarious.
clock | July 23, 2006Pam: 'Creationist' says IRS is out to get him on Kent Hovind
Shakespeare's Sister reviews (again) Fussell's 'Class'
Lance: Castaway (Thoreau, Darwin, Sexton)
Paul the Spud: As The World Burns on Inhofe and global warming.
Pam: Q of the day - Unfortunate interiors on the horrible interior decorating style of the 1970s.
Lindsay links to an interview with George Lakoff and some of her commenters display the usual misunderstanding of Lakoff's ideas and of the concept of framing, and believe that Truth and policy proposals will win on their own.
Lance: Sharks, seals, foxes, pink jellyfish, and…
clock | July 22, 2006Top secret blogger for CIA fired, shut down:
Christine Axsmith, a software contractor for the CIA, considered her blog a success within the select circle of people who could actually see it.
Only people with top secret security clearances could read her musings, which were posted on Intelink, the intelligence community's classified intranet. Writing as Covert Communications, CC for short, she opined in her online journal on such national security conundrums as stagflation, the war of ideas in the Middle East and -- in her most popular post -- bad food in the CIA cafeteria.
But the hundreds of…
clock | July 21, 2006Technorati treats each of SEED blogs as anindividual entity but also the whole scienceblogs.com site as a single blog. Over the past week or so, the SB gradually moved up from #51 to #32 on the Top 100 Most Popular Blogs list. More you link to each one of us, or the site as a whole, higher up we'll get. Do you think we can overtake at least Michelle Malkin? At least we write empirically correct blogposts....
clock | July 21, 2006Owner of the very popular French blog, La Petite Anglaise got Dooced:
She kept her popular blog anonymous, never revealing her full name or workplace. But despite her attempts at secrecy, her employer found out and fired her -- unusual in labor-protected France, where workers have strong legal protections.
It does not matter that nobody has any idea what he name of the company is or even in what city it is located. If you blog, you are automatically suspect and can be fired. We'll see what the French courts think about this. Liberte, ....
On the same day, in the same newspaper, David Broder…
clock | July 21, 2006I had lunch with Anton yesterday. We talked about the upcoming busy blogging Fall and he showed me his new book.
We ate in my neck of the woods, at Town Hall Grill in Southern Village in Chapel Hill. Anton brought his laptop - the wi-fi signal is strong, so, after Brian and Ruby get married tomorrow (OK, they already are), Brian can add this restaurant to the Chapel Hill Wireless map.
Being very hungry, and knowing that the food there is delicious, I came prepared. While Anton had their lightly-battered fish and chips, I ordered a NY strip.
When the food arrived I reached down into my…
clock | July 20, 2006Natural scientists (unlike social scientists and humantities folk) are cautious, perhaps overcautious, about publishing data on blogs. So, it is really nice to see original research on a blog every once in a while. So, you should read this nifty little paper by Miss Prism. Rejected from Nature? Publish in samizdat - on your blog. (Hat-tip: Evolgen)
clock | July 19, 2006Anton has announced a brief summer break in MeetUps (I doubt I'll make it to the last one before then) followed by an ambitious Fall: a Triangle Bloggers barbecue in August, a science blogging workshop, a parent blogging workshop, a storyblogging event, and bloggers meeting with John Edwards. Of course, we'll also all go over to Greensboro for the next ConvergeSouth bloggercon.
If you want to be involved in one or another of these events, please contact Anton and he'll put you to work!
clock | July 19, 2006Attention span:
With a daily newspaper, there is a tacit understanding: That day's paper is the latest news; yesterday's paper becomes old news -- recycling-bin fodder, fishwrap, bird-cage liner, art-project makings, whatever.
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The Internet is a 24/7 environment, where everything is happening all the time, right now. That's because it's a hive-mind of people spread across the planet, and something's always happening somewhere. Sinatra wanted to wake up in a city that never sleeps; the Internet is the digital-world equivalent of New York City -- only with a…
clock | July 18, 2006Reed Cartwright, the blogger of De Rerum Natura and Panda's Thumb fame, has moved to my neighborhood (OK, 28.7 miles from me), getting ready to start his postdoc at NCSU. A loss for Georgia is a gain for North Carolina. I hope he enjoys the vibrant local blogging community.
clock | July 14, 2006This I first posted on June 24, 2004 on www.jregrassroots.org, then republished on August 23, 2004 on Science And Politics. What do you think? Was I too rosy-eyed? Prophetic?
In the beginning there were grunts, tom-tom drums, smoke signals, and the guy on the horse riding from village to village reading the latest King's Edict. That is Phase I in the evolution of media.
Phase II was ushered in by Gutenberg. Remember the beginning of Protestantism? Luther nailing copies of his pamhlet on the doors? That was also the beginning of the first great Universities, such as those in Genoa, Padua…
clock | July 12, 2006Fred Stutzman just posted his latest data on the use of Facebook, this time comparing the incoming college freshmen of Summer 2006 to Summer 2005.
Quick notes:
- more people enter college with already existing Facebook accounts
- less people announce their political affiliation
- people have more out-of-network friends
Fred notes some possible explanations for these trends. I posted my quick thoughts in the comments on his post.
You can find my quick analysis of Facebook here and all of Fred's posts related to his Facebook research here.
In related news, Danah Boyd posts about the latest…
clock | July 12, 2006Carnival of Community Campaigns
....will be a fortnightly roundup of all the best posts put together by local community campaigns, aiming to spread their message - an international forum for local campaigns.
The carnival will favour the voices of people excluded from power, people and communities who the establishment parties may sometimes court at election time, but forget as soon as the polls are closed - turning back to their corporate paymasters, at least until the next time they want our votes!
clock | July 11, 2006Anton notes that Dave Winer is advising John Edwards to start a program to teach North Carolinians to blog.
Er, Dave, you've been here several times at various bloggercons. And the bloggercons were here because this is one of the Big Centers of blogging in the country. Why should John Edwards start doing something that is already done by people who know what to do and how to go about it and are successful at it as humanely possible?
John Edwards is using the new communications technologies better than any politician - he is light years ahead of the competition. He sits in the hotebed of…
clock | July 5, 2006Journal Nature has published a short article about science blogging. You do not need a subscription to read it - you can find it here.
In it, they highlight Top 5 science blogs according to Technorati rankings. Those five are, quite deservingly, Pharyngula, Panda's Thumb, Real Climate, Cosmic Variance and Scientific Activist. Interestingly, three of the top five are group blogs, and all five delve, either partically or entirely, on various religiously and politically motivated attacks on science. I guess this is what sells better than pure science commentary, for good reasons, and the…
clock | July 4, 2006This was one of my first posts about blogging, and THE first about the impact of blogging technolgoy on science. A lot of time has passed since then. There are several science-related carnivals now, not just Tangled Bank. There are SEED scienceblogs. It is fun to look back at my first raw thoughts and see if, or how much, I was right or wrong on specifics. Under the fold....
I have done meta-blogging, i.e., written about the phenomenon of blogs, very, very little. Actually, I found only five posts in the archives that are specifically about blogging. The first three are very early and are…
clock | June 27, 2006A bunch of updates are in store. First the DonorsChoose update. Let's look at the whole SEED scienceblogs action first (thanks Janet for all the information):
Total raised so far: 13,535.14
Total donors so far: 170
Excluding Pharyngula (because Pharyngula is done), the top 5 in terms of ...
Amt/donor:
Stranger Fruit ($132.64)
A Blog Around the Clock ($116.50)
Good Math, Bad Math ($110.34)
Terra Sigillata ($86.35)
The Scientific Activist ($86.25)
Donors per 1000 hits:
Terra Sigillata (4.96)
Evolgen (2.35)
Stranger Fruit (2.02)
Afarensis (1.89)
The Questionable Authority (1.74)
$ raised per…
clock | June 27, 2006IAMB of Pooflingers Anonymous is celebrating his first blogiversary today. So, go there and say Hello and check out the Achives if you have not done so before.