Blogging
sb admin | January 6, 2008 It's a new year, bringing new changes. I've decided to quit Omni Brain and move on to less important things, like creating baffling and somewhat offensive art and writing more books that I won't want anyone to read. It's been fun to be here, though. I'm grateful to Steve for being a terrific co-blogger, thankful to ScienceBlogs for hosting, and am glad we've all shared lots of laughs.
There's been plenty of silliness and also some seriousness. On pondering what to write in a farewell post, it seems appropriate to share a piece of writing I never really knew what to do with. It exposes the…
aardvarchaeology | January 6, 2008Canadian newspaper The National Post seems to be subscribing to a blog-buzz service that everybody on Sb got onto a while ago. Therefore, I just got an intriguingly worded letter from Canadian creationist David Johnston (appended below the fold for the edification of the interested Dear Reader).
In response to David's letter, I'll just say that I have decent basic knowledge of biology and Christian scripture, and that my reading has convinced me that the latter has nothing to contribute to the former.
Hello Dr. Martin.
Where does a skeptic (or anyone) find an origins scientist? No such thing…
clock | January 6, 2008Some top medical bloggers got together and started a new group blog Science Based Medicine:
Science-Based Medicine is a new daily science blog dedicated to promoting the highest standards and traditions of science in medicine and health care. The mission of this blog is to scientifically examine medical and health topics of interest to the public. This includes reviewing newly published studies, examining dubious products and claims, providing much needed scientific balance to the often credulous health reporting, and exploring issues related to the regulation of scientific quality in…
clock | January 5, 2008Wayne Sutton (of 'Local Conversations') posted a great interview on the evolution of blogging with Anton Zuiker:
Local Conversation interviews Anton Zuiker from waynesutton12 on Vimeo.
retrospectacle | January 4, 2008Hear ye, hear ye! To all those curious about the mysteries of the Plague, next week I will be blogging something about the Plague every day. To get a whiff of where I'm going with this, check out my post Coffee as A Treatment for the Plague.
If you've got anything you'd like researched, or interesting questions about the plague, leave them in the comments!
sciencewoman | January 4, 2008for three reasons.
The January Scientiae party is up at Jokerine's. Check out all the awesome writing and witty conversation.
Open Lab, the best science blogging of 2007 has been announced. I'm looking forward to buying my copy.
There's a new blog around these parts, and it's got a really amusing name.
purepedantry | January 3, 2008Happy New Year to everyone! I'm back from my lovely New Years vacation, and I wanted to take a moment to look back on my first full year as a blogger for ScienceBlogs.com. (This will be for the last year and a half actually, since I didn't do this last New Year's.)
First, let's do some numbers. Since this site started on ScienceBlogs in June 2006 we received following traffic:
There were 811 posts including this one.
We had 1,609,974 Pageviews and 854,709 Unique Pageviews.
2,541 people commented.
Pretty sweet, huh?
(In the spirit of honesty, however, a large percentage of those visits were…
aardvarchaeology | January 3, 2008The thirty-first Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Walking the Berkshires. Archaeology and anthropology, oh my!
Also, don't miss the 77th Skeptics' Circle over at White Coat Underground.
retrospectacle | January 2, 2008Its great to come back from vacation with good news waiting for you. Usually I just come back to school (and my blog) to a build-up of spam, bills, and unwanted catalogs so it was quite a welcome surprise to be notified by Bora that a post of mine will be published in the up-coming book, Open Laboratory 2007. The post that got in was a rather notorious one, but one I'm still proud of, entitled "How Much LSD Does It Take to Kill an Elephant?," published a few months back. Not bad, considering there were over 450 entries.
The Open Laboratory is a print-published book highlighting the best…
neurophilosophy | January 2, 2008
At A Blog Around the Clock, Bora has announced the posts that will be published in Open Lab 2007, the forthcoming second annual anthology of the best science blogging of last year.
Of the 486 submitted entries, just 50 have made it into the book, and I'm pleased to say that one of them is written by me. It's one of the last posts from my old blog, and I'm currently re-reading it to weed out any errors before it is formatted for the book.
I won't link to the post just yet, as I'm currently extending it slightly for the book, because I think the original ends a bit abruptly. I'll post the…
omnibrain | January 2, 2008After reading well over 400 blog submissions for the second edition of the "Open Laboratory" the judges have finally whittled the list to the best 51 to be included in the book. Surprisingly, one of the Omni Brain posts has made it into the anthology - I think perhaps one of the only serious blog posts I've written this year.
The winning list has a great variety of wonderful posts from a great variety of blogs, some of which I have never heard of. So head over to A Blog Around The Clock for the winning list and links to all of the great articles.
clock | January 2, 2008Well, The Day has arrived! After reading all of the 486 entries at least once (and many 2-3 times) and after calculating all of the judges' ratings of all the posts, Reed Cartwright and I are happy to announce which blog posts will be published in the second science blogging anthology, the "Open Laboratory 2007".
First, I want to thank the judges (at least those who do not wish to remain anonymous - let me know if I missed one of you) for spending their holiday break reading, commenting on and grading all the submitted posts and making our job that much easier. Those are: Anna Kushnir,…
aardvarchaeology | January 1, 2008
I just learned that my blog entry Your Folks, My Folks in Prehistory has been selected for inclusion in the 2007 Open Lab science blogging anthology! Yay! I was likewise honoured a year ago when I had an entry about the field-archaeological paradox in the volume for 2006.
The 2007 volume is edited by Reed Cartwright of the De Rerum Natura blog and Bora Zivkovic of A Blog Around the Clock and will be available in bookstores and from Amazon.
aardvarchaeology | January 1, 2008Here are the ten most popular non-carnival entries on Aardvarchaeology for 2007.
Djurhamn Sword Excavated
Stockholm Art Shows
Scandinavian Attitudes to Nudity
Wish I Could Do That in Linux
Lamprey's Spinal Cord Modelled
Djurhamn Sword
Star Wars Lego Girls
Toys to Teach Little Girls Their Place
Indecipherable Punk Reactions
Subway Beggar Retaliation
These ten have been popular for very different reasons. I'm happy to see such interest in one of my archaeological finds, viz. an early-16th century sword (#1, #6). But I'm not too thrilled to find that most of the top-10 entries are only on the…
clock | December 31, 2007Food:
Where's the schmaltz? Look no further...
How religious curbs lead to great food (take with a grain of salt....and pepper and garlic).
My mother's sarma recipe will come shortly...
Drink:
Ask the expert on vodka: Just Like Water, But Better
What are you drinking tonight at midnight? The Friday Fermentable: Champagne and Sparkling Wines for New Year's
Good news for the liver cirrhosis (and the grapevine genome): Eat, Drink and Be Merry (but Not Too Much)
Books:
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (which I have reviewed ealrier this year) is now available, in its entirety, on the Web, for free (…
clock | December 29, 2007They come and go. The good blogs. Kate has decided to stop posting (but not delete) her magnificient Anterior Commissure. Perhaps it's because the topic is of interest to me: hormones and behavior, or because the topic is of universal interest - sex, or because of her personality shining through in each post, but this was one of my favourite blogs over the past several months. So, I am sad to see it closed. Perhaps one of her posts will make it into the Open Laboratory 2007 - that would be nice.
I understand she needs to wrap up her studies and get a postdoc. And she is busy with the…
aardvarchaeology | December 29, 2007It's been a year now since I started blogging at Sb (after a bit more than a year at Blogspot). Looking at the server stats for December 1-28, Aard is ranked #31 out of 66 blogs here for traffic, with a daily median readership of about 650 uniques, including about 130 identifiable returning readers. (Meanwhile, my old site is still attracting a median of about 70 daily uniques.)
Looking at Technorati rankings, Aard is at about 16,000 worldwide with an "authority score" of 317 (28 December). There has been considerable re-shuffling among the top-10 Sblogs from a year ago. Of those ten, only…
clock | December 27, 2007...the intertubes:
Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)
When tigers cross the walls
Internet trolls really are clueless morons.
Krugman: Progressives, To Arms! Forget about Bush--and the middle ground.
The 2007 Medical Weblog Awards still taking nominations.
First, the neckties, now the sleeves (with no research to support either) but it makes it look like they are doing something.
A little more on anti-science conservatives.
clock | December 27, 2007But only those bloggers found on the blogroll of John Swift. Which is all the blogger that matter, anyway.