Blogging
laelaps | May 29, 2009Welcome, new readers. Thanks for sticking around after all the excitement over "Ida" last week. You can expect plenty more posts on strange mammals, odd evolutionary hypotheses, and new peer-reviewed research in the near future, but if you just can't wait, check out a list of some of my "greatest hits" posted by sbh of Rational Rant. I was definitely flattered to receive such praise, and I don't think I could have made a better list myself (although I would include my essays on "Giant Killer Lungfish From Hell").
clock | May 28, 2009You have proven your fitness, evolutionarily speaking, not when you have babies, but when your babies have babies. So I am very excited that my babies - the three science blogging conferences here in the Triangle so far - have spawned their own offspring. Not once, but twice. The London franchise will happen again this year. And just like we changed the name from Science Blogging Conference into ScienceOnline, so did they.
Science Online London 2009 will take place on Saturday August 22, 2009 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London, co-hosted by Nature Network, Mendeley and the…
laelaps | May 28, 2009The folks at 3quarksdaily have just announced that they are going to award three prizes (called, appropriately enough, quarks) to some of the best examples of science blogging on the web. All you have to do is pick out your favorite blog post written sometime between May 24, 2008 and now and submit it in the comments. The submission process will be open until midnight on June 1, 2009, shortly followed by the opening of public voting. Then six finalists will be selected from which the winners will be chosen by Steven Pinker.
If you have any favorite Laelaps posts please feel free to submit…
skookumchick | May 27, 2009I just spent 2 hours writing a blog post for you that I completely can't post. My husband says it is really not about being a chicken but deciding what battles to fight. And this post would name names and describe how upset I am about something, and, as mentioned, my president reads this blog. So I can't post it. It would be really stupid to post it. I would deeply regret it.
I hope I don't also regret not posting it. Because I would rather have a blogging philosophy like Zuska's.
But, it turns out, today I discover I am a big ol' chicken blogger.
This is why pseudonymous blogging…
clock | May 27, 2009The First Award for Best Science Blogging Judged by Steven Pinker
Celebrating the best of blog-writing on the web, 3 Quarks Daily will award four annual prizes in the respective areas of Science, Arts & Literature, Politics, and Philosophy for the best blog post in those fields. This year, the winners of the 3QD Prize in Science will be selected from six finalists by Steven Pinker, who will also provide comments about each of the three winning entries.
Please nominate your favorite blog entry in the field of the Natural and Social Sciences by placing the URL for the blogpost in the…
clock | May 27, 2009There have been quite a few posts over the last few days about commenting, in particular about posting comments, notes and ratings on scientific papers. But this also related to commenting on blogs and social networks, commenting on newspaper online articles, the question of moderation vs. non-moderation, and the question of anonymity vs. pseudonymity vs. RL identity.
You may want to re-visit this old thread first, for introduction on commenting on blogs.
How a 1995 court case kept the newspaper industry from competing online by Robert Niles goes back into history to explain why the comments…
clock | May 26, 2009Last year in May, when I visited Belgrade, I gave interviews with Radio Belgrade, talking about science publishing, Open Access, science communication and science blogging. The podcasts of these interviews - yes, they are in Serbian! - are now up:
Part 1
Part 2
I know that this blog has some ex-Yugoslavs in its regular audience, people who can understand the language. I hope you enjoy the interviews and spread the word if you like them.
laelaps | May 26, 2009There has been a lot of moving and shaking going on at ScienceBlogs lately. Not only have we welcomed two new library science bloggers (Christina's LIS Rant and Confessions of a Science Librarian, welcome), but three of my favorite bloggers have left the Sb community. John Lynch (Stranger Fruit, now a simple prop), John Wilkins (Evolving Thoughts), and Afarensis have headed off to new corners of the blogohedron. They will be sorely missed here, but update your links and bookmarks so you can continue to read their excellent work.
laelaps | May 25, 2009It has been nearly a week since Darwinius, a 47-million-year-old primate heralded as the "missing link", burst on the public scene. (See some of my previous posts about the fossil here, here, and here.) Nicknamed "Ida", the fossil has already spurred comments from nearly all corners of the science blogohedron, but with documentaries about her airing tonight (USA) and tomorrow (UK) there is still plenty to talk about.
That's why I am organizing a one-time-only blog carnival all about Ida. Whether you want to tackle the media hype, the more technical aspects of her discovery, or something else…
clock | May 25, 2009I am trying to put together a list of science, nature and medical blogs based in North Carolina, mainly in order to update the Blogroll/aggregator on the Science In The Triangle media page. I tried to put together, out of my own memory, the names and URLs of blogs based in NC, but I need your help to make the list better.
These are either personal, or news, or institutional blogs based in the state. In some cases, these are blogs of people who I know are coming to live in NC very soon. Some of these are group blogs in which one or more co-bloggers are living here. And one is a large group…
awild | May 25, 2009My apologies for the lack of posts. Life and work are conspiring this week to make blogging difficult. In the meantime, here's what's new in ants on the internet:
Roberto Keller explains the clypeus.
PLoS One reports that ant-dispersed plant lineages diversify more rapidly than ant-free relatives.
FlickR user Rundstedt B. Rovillos posts a lovely photo of an Oecophylla foundress.
Myrmecological News publishes a set of new articles today.
The Ant Farm Forum poses a challenging Name That Ant.
aardvarchaeology | May 23, 2009Three of my favourite SciBlings -- Afarensis, John Wilkins of Evolving Thoughts and John Lynch of Stranger Fruit -- have left the Mothership to set out on their own. All had been with Sb since 2006, none explained quite why they left. Find them at their new sites:
Afarensis
John Lynch: A Simple Prop
John Wilkins: Evolving Thoughts
Update 28 May: Doc Bushwell's Chimp Refuge just left too. Check out their new site!
clock | May 22, 2009Go say Hello to Christina Pikas at Christina's LIS Rant - yes, we got another librarian! w00t! You can check the archives of her old blog here.
sciencewoman | May 21, 2009While I'm immersed in writing, planning, and reflection and Alice is uncurling, other people are actually writing the sort of amazing posts that make the blogosphere such a valuable and powerful place to be. These are the sort of posts that make you look at the world a different way or that validate and crystallize the ideas that have been floating around in your head for days, months, or years.
Please go at least one of the following posts, and please add your own suggestions of the best of the blogosphere in the comment thread.
Historiann's inspired series on Lessons for Girls. I…
aardvarchaeology | May 20, 2009The sixty-seventh Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Sorting Out Science. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 15 July. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. No need to be an anthro pro.
And check out the latest Skeptics' Circle!
laelaps | May 20, 2009Many thanks to everyone who has read, commented, and promoted my posts on "Ida", the 'missing link' that wasn't. I have been floored by the response - over 25,000 visits in the last 24 hours; being mentioned on Wikipedia; being quoted on Slashdot; and being picked up by blogs on the Guardian, the New York Times, the Times online (twice!), Popular Science, and New Scientist websites. And to think I was worried that no one would pay attention to my little 'ol blog amongst all the hype...
I think the prize for the best response has to go to Ed of Not Exactly Rocket Science, though. Ed writes;…
sciencewoman | May 19, 2009Fantastic volcano blogger, and all around cool guy, Erik Klemetti has put out a call for volcano pictures that he can use on his Eruptions blog. I'd love to be able to send him some fantastic shot of a plinian eruption, but I live in a pretty tectonically quiet part of the world.
So this weekend, while Minnow was making spaghetti out of playdough, I decided to craft an offering for Erik:
Of course, as I was feeling all smug about my depiction of a Hawaiian shield volcano, complete with lava entering the ocean and creating hydroclastic fragments, NASA's Earth Observatory posted an image of…
clock | May 18, 2009It is a great pleasure to welcome an old friend, John Dupuis, to Scienceblogs.com. As you may recall, John and I interviewed each other last year - first I interviewed John, then shortly after, John interviewed me.
This morning, Confessions of a Science Librarian moved from blogspot to Scienceblogs.com - so go and say Hello!
clock | May 18, 2009It is Sex Week on Deep Sea News.
It started with The Sand Dollar Love Shack: A Special Echinoblog to DSN and followed by 'Sleezy' sponge sexuality and more is yet to come for the rest of the week.