Blogging
grrlscientist | February 3, 2010tags: meme, blogging, Why Blog?, navel gazing, lint picking
Steffi Suhr, who writes Science Behind the Scenes at Nature Network, is (re)asking this popular meme in the wake of the internecine explosion that ensued after a misunderstanding at the recent Science Online 2010 conference expanded to encompass the two best and biggest English-speaking science blog sites in the world: Nature Network and ScienceBlogs. The questions;
What made you start blogging?
Is a sense of community an important part of blogging for you, or do you prefer blogging 'solo'?
Are there blogs you never look at? If…
clock | February 3, 2010Several items showed up recently that may be of interest to science bloggers, their readers, and related science communicators of various stripes....
A) Today, Eureka, the science section of London Times, published a list of Top 30 Science Blogs.
Every list that has me in it is a good list ;-)
They say "Zivkovic, who studies circadian rhythms, is an often-provocative evangelist for new media who has probably done more than anyone else to inspire scientists to blog. He is also a must-follow on Twitter, where he posts as @boraz"
They could have had a more diverse group (in sense of gender,…
jstemwedel | February 3, 2010Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session's wiki page.)
The panelists made a point of stepping away from the scientists vs. bloggers frame (as well as the question of whether bloggers are or are not properly considered journalists). They said some interesting things about what defines a journalist -- perhaps a set of distinctive values (like a commitment to truth and accuracy, possibly also to the importance of telling an engaging story). This, rather than having a particular paying gig as a…
clock | February 2, 2010With Bex Walton moving on to another job, it is now my duty to take over posting about media coverage over on everyONE blog, as well as to pick a cool image of the week. So I started this week with Weekly PLoS ONE News and Blog Round-Up and Worth a Thousand Words. Take a look. Am I doing it right?
emjohnson | February 1, 2010Kind of Curious is hosting the latest edition of the premiere science blog carnival. Stop on in and thank him for an excellent collection.
clock | January 31, 2010...has just been announced. To see who won, you will have to click on this link right here ;-)
emjohnson | January 29, 2010 Goldberg shown here (right) "gangbanging" with a guy who enjoys making fun of the dead.I must have done something very, very wrong. Jonah Goldberg, that noxious, infected man-tit of a human being, has just praised my work at the National Review. Referring to my series on Deconstructing Social Darwinism Goldberg writes:
This is a very comprehensive assault on the prevailing understanding of "social Darwinism." Eric Michael Johnson's essay is a bit too rambling at times, but it is very welcome and good reading nonetheless.
Readers of my book might remember that I have nothing but…
aardvarchaeology | January 27, 2010The eighty-fifth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Very Remote Period Indeed. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Magnus at Testimony of the Spade. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is on 10 March. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.
And check out the new Skeptics' Circle!
aardvarchaeology | January 26, 2010The 85th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at the A Very Remote Period Indeed tomorrow, Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Julien, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The next open hosting slot is on 10 March. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo field, drop me a line! No need to be a pro.
laelaps | January 24, 2010
I got a nice little surprise this week. It turns out that my twitter feed (@Laelaps) was recommended by Scientific American in their latest issue. The scan I have (kindly sent to me by Anne-Marie Hodge) makes the endorsement a little difficult to see, but it simply reads;
Brian Switek, science writer with a focus on evolution (@Laelaps)
With any luck my name will someday appear in the magazine as an author of an article, but this is not a bad start. And congrats to Karen James (@kejames), too, who was also recommended by the folks over at SciAm.
clock | January 23, 2010I understand that some excellent entries have already been submitted to the Post with the Most 2010 contest:
Tom Paine's Ghost is excited to announce a composition competition.
A $100 cash prize will be awarded for the most aesthetically powerful multi-media blog post.
Post content is limited only by the bounds of imagination.
Keep in mind Tom Paine's Ghost was founded amidst a battle to defend freedom of the press and we hope to echo that theme throughout our pages.
Submissions will be selected and judged on the basis of four criteria:
1. Clarity
2. Originality
3. Integration (at least three…
laelaps | January 22, 2010Last weekend I attended the annual North Carolina sci-shindig (called ScienceOnline2010 this year), and it was the best iteration of the conference yet. I am still reeling from everything that happened during the three days I was there. Rather than post a session-by-session discussion of what happened there, though, I thought I would simply share a few of the main lessons I took away from the conference.
Writers Help Other Writers
Writing a book is no easy task. It involves much more than simply sitting down and hammering out an arbitrary number of words or chapters, and as someone who is…
emjohnson | January 21, 2010My friend Henry Gee at Nature Network wrote a few thoughts about how issues of race, gender and communication were discussed at the recent ScienceOnline2010 conference (#scio10 for the Twitter inclined). In his post he raises what he felt were unfair criticisms to his comments about laying ground rules to enforce civil conversation in science blog posts:
I make the point that civility can be encouraged by laying out ground rules - as John Wilkins says on his admirable blog, Evolving Thoughts - and I hope he won't mind my quoting it in extenso:
'This is my living room, so don't piss on the…
emjohnson | January 21, 2010
This is the brief presentation I gave on Saturday, Jan. 16 as part of this year's ScienceOnline conference. I was thrilled to have PZ Myers, Greg Laden and Janet Stemwedel present (the latter of whom posted her thoughts on the session).
John McKay and I led a discussion on the intersection between open access and scientific innovation. See the program description here and these posts for more information. In John's section he emphasized how the early history of scientific publishing was one where individual researchers simply pooled their letters into journals and shared them with one…
emjohnson | January 19, 20102. Rebooting Science Journalism in the Age of the Web (description here):
Sciblings Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science and David Dobbs of Neuron Culture as well as the author of Reef Madness and the forthcoming The Orchid and the Dandelion, joined science writer extraordinaire (and duck sex enthusiast) Carl Zimmer and cell biologist/blogger John Timmer for an excellent discussion of what science journalism means in the age of the internet.
The take home message was that science journalism is in a state of flux. What had previously been traditional journalism in which the reporter…
laelaps | January 18, 2010The wonderful thing about this past Saturday's ScienceOnline session on going "from blog to book" is that my co-panelists and I were able to highlight the ways in which the web is becoming increasingly important for authors. The only drawback was that there was so much to talk about that we could not have answered all the questions even if we stayed in session for the rest of the day! Fortunately audience members continued to ask me questions and make comments throughout the rest of the conference, and I wanted to specifically address one comment brought up by the wonderful blogger Stephanie…
aardvarchaeology | January 13, 2010The eighty-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at the A Primate of Modern Aspect. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Julien at A Very Remote Period Indeed. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is on 10 March. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.
jdupuis | January 13, 2010I was chatting with a colleague during the long commute home the other day and he noticed I was reading this book. "What's it like?" he asked.
"Clay Shirky lite," I replied.
And that's about right. In Six Pixels of Separation, Mitch Joel comes to grips with the effects of social media on marketing, media, sales and promotions, he covers a lot of the same ground as in Clay Shirky's classic Here Comes Everybody (review). Glib, conversational, fast-paced bite-sized -- an easy read for sure -- Joel does a solid job of translating Shirky's more scholarly approach to a business audience.
Which…
laelaps | January 13, 2010For the third consecutive year I was surprised to find that one of my posts made it into the annual science blogging anthology The Open Laboratory. Not only was the number of submissions very high (760!), but my essays were up against some stiff competition (and I should know since I sifted through quite a few as a judge).* There was a good chance that none of my entries would make the cut, but I am proud to say that my essay on the early whale Maiacetus will be included in the 2009 anthology. Many thanks to those who nominated my posts on "Ida" and "Ardi", the judges, Bora, and Scicurious…
clock | January 12, 2010The time has come....the moment many of you have been waiting for, for months!
The most amazing 2009 guest editor Scicurious and I are ready to announce the 50 posts that have made it through a grueling judging process to emerge as winners to be included in the Open Laboratory 2009, the anthology of the best writing on science blogs of the past year.
Out of 760 posts, all of amazing quality (we could have collected something like ten anthologies, all good), the survivors of all the rounds, the posts that will actually get printed on physical, dead-tree paper, are:
Breastatistics, by Dr.…