Blogs
drorzel | November 10, 2008The announcement of Cosmic Variance's sell-out has prompted some people to link to Nicholas Carr's lament for days gone by:
Blogging seems to have entered its midlife crisis, with much existential gnashing-of-teeth about the state and fate of a literary form that once seemed new and fresh and now seems familiar and tired. And there's good reason for the teeth-gnashing. While there continue to be many blogs, including a lot of very good ones, it seems to me that one would be hard pressed to make the case that there's still a "blogosphere." That vast, free-wheeling, and surprisingly intimate…
drorzel | November 2, 2008Via FriendFeed, an interesting analysis of Internet traffic at compete.com. They set out to test the assertion that the "Long Tail" of low-traffic sites account for more traffic than they used to, and found exactly the opposite-- the share of all pageviews for the top ten domains increased from 29% to 40% between 2001 and 2008.
What's really interesting is the reason why:
The driver of this Top Domain growth can be summed up in two words "social networks". If you were to remove MySpace and Facebook from consideration in 2006 (also removing their pageviews from the total) top domains would…
drorzel | October 30, 2008Steinn responds to yesterday's post about his comments about science blogging. I'm going to continue the tradition of responding here, rather than in his comments, because, well, I need something to post today.
He concedes that outreach is a worthy purpose of blogging, but continues to be concerned about blogging as a tool for more traditional science:
Is blogging enabling collaborations?
Is blogging leading to new initiatives? New directions in research? Providing connectivity which would not otherwise have happened? Conveying information that is important to research and otherwise hard to…
drorzel | October 29, 2008Steinn asks a provocative question:
has science blogging done any good?
I can think of science policy issues where blogging has made a contribution, and the general spread of information and communication done by blogs has probably had some impact, but has any actual science been directly impacted by blogs, or discussion on blogs? I am hard pressed to think of concrete examples.
I think this is a badly framed question. That is, I think it's a mistake to define "good" for science to exclude science policy questions and the general spread of information. It's a very common mistake, mind, and…
drorzel | October 26, 2008I tagged Ethan Zuckerman's post abpout video "windows" to other places in a links dump recently. The idea is to put big video screens and cameras in fast-food restaurants around the world, and provide virtual "windows" into other restaurants in other countries. In talking about the idea, Ethan threw out a great aside:
(If I were Cory Doctorow, say, I'd write a short story about the idea rather than wondering how to build it, where a group of kids in Brazil befriend another group in China that they meet randomly over the monitor. The keep returning to the restaurant at pre-agreed times, hoping…
drorzel | October 21, 2008Chris Mooney will be visiting Union tomorrow (I'm picking him up at the airport in a couple of hours). He'll be speaking to a couple of classes and then giving a presentation about science and politics in the evening.
If you have any questions that you've been dying to ask Chris, and haven't been able to get him to address on his blog, leave them in the comments. If they're reasonable, I'll see if I can get answers during one or another of tomorrow's events.
drorzel | October 10, 2008I went to an evening talk last night by Brother Guy Consolmagno (about which more later, maybe), and one of my colleagues said "Hey, congratulations on your blog appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education." Being quick on my feet, I said "Hunh?"
So, of course, I checked it out when I got home. And, indeed, I am mentioned in a post at the Chronicle's jobs blog. I'm thanked for pointing them to an article I disagreed with at length.
And that, right there, is the kind of week it's been in Chateau Steelypips.
drorzel | October 7, 2008I got some interesting comments on last week's post about the science blogging bubble, and there were two in particular I wanted to highlight. Bee wrote (among other things):
But what I think are further obstacle to blogging is the inappropriateness of the medium to science. E.g. blogs put by format an emphasis on novelty, which occasionally disturbs me. There's the option to label posts, but who ever looks at this? I'd vastly prefer to be able if interesting topics stay on top, such that it would be easier to spin longer discussions around a specific topic. Not sure I'm making that very…
drorzel | October 7, 2008Paul Ginsparg, the founder of the arxiv preprint server for physics, has a very nice article at Physics World reminiscing about the rise of the Internet, particularly in physics. This also serves as a nice counterpoint to his talk at the Science21 conference (video, microblogging), which included a wealth of fascinating information about the current operation of the arxiv.
In both of these, he mentions that the arxiv grew out of a pre-existing preprint culture in high-energy theoretical physics. People in the field would make copies of their manuscripts in progress, and send them to other…
drorzel | October 3, 2008Over at Nature Networks, Timo Hannay has posted a conference talk in which he questions the future of science blogging:
"Science blogging is growing" I confidently wrote in an essay a few months ago. Then, like any good scientist, I went in search of evidence to support my prejudice. But I couldn't find any beyond the anecdotal. For a year or more, estimates of the number of blogs by scientists about science seem to have been stuck at about 1,500 (give or take). Services such as Alexa and Compete.com (if they can be believed) show traffic to sites like ScienceBlogs.com to have been flat for…
grrlscientist | September 25, 2008I thought I'd mention the upcoming Science Blog writing discussion that is scheduled for Tuesday, 1 October, at Manhattan's Apple Store in Soho. This isa panel that will discuss the value of a blog to communicating with the public about one's research. The panel will be moderated by Katherine Sharpe and, along with me, includes several of my SciBlings, Jake Young, Jessica Palmer, Steinn Sigurdsson, and Brian Switek.
What: Apple Pro Session panel with ScienceBloggers
Date: Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Time: 7 - 8pm ET
Location: 103 Prince Street [map].
You might also wish to refer to several…
drorzel | September 23, 2008Two new articles appeared yesterday on the topic of science blogging and academic science:
GrrlScientist posted the text of an article she wrote titled "Science Blogs Can Advance the Academic Process".
ScienceBloggers Shelley Batts, Nick Anthis, and Tara Smith have a new article in PLoS Biology, titled "Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the Academy".
Check 'em out.
drorzel | September 21, 2008With the LHC starting up last week, this week's Saturday science video on bloggingheads.tv had a physics theme, with Sean and Jennifer getting together to chat about physics, calculus, and poker.
It's good stuff, and I was surprised to hear my own name appear in the middle of it. Unfortunately, the idea Jennifer cites me for-- the concept of "lies-to-children" isn't original to me. I got it from Terry Pratchett (or possibly Ian Stewart or Jack Cohen-- I think it's in The Science of Discworld).
Of course, the really important question here is how does one get on the list of people asked to do…
drorzel | September 15, 2008As you might have guessed from yesterday's tease, the folks at ScienceDebate 2008 have now managed to get answers from the McCain campaign (to go with Obama's froma few weeks ago). Which means that while you may never see them answering science questions on a stage together, you can put them head-to-head on the Web, and see which you like better.
Of course, the key question regarding McCain's answers is "How long does it take him to mention elements of his biography?" The answer: There are 186 words before you get to:
I am uniquely qualified to lead our nation during this technological…
drorzel | September 13, 2008Back in March, I noted that I had inadvertently done an experiment to see what kinds of posts bring the most hits. That week, I posted one peer-reviewed post every day, along with a bunch of other articles, and I looked at the traffic stats to back up my contention that hard-core science blogging is not what racks up the page views.
The question came up again at the conference this past week, which reminded me that at the time, some people argued that the science posts weren't a big immediate draw, but would build up more posts over the long term. I thought it would be interesting to go back…
drorzel | September 8, 2008I gave my talk this morning at the Science in the 21st Century conference. Video will eventually be available at the Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive site, but if you'd like to get a sense of the talk, a few people were live-blogging it in the FriendFeed room for the meeting. You get a pretty accurate impression of the talk from the comments there.
I think it went well. People laughed in the right places, and there was some really good discussion in the question period. I look forward to seeing what it looks like on video. They have a really nice AV set-up here, with two cameras…
drorzel | September 7, 2008Sunday's a travel day for me, as I take a tiny little prop plane to the exotic land of Canada, for the Science in the 21st Century workshop. After an hour and a half bent double in a goddamn Cessna, I'll probably be too sore to type, so don't expect much blogging from me.
If you're looking for something to fill the blog-shaped hole in your day, though, you could enter the Millionth Comment Contest ScienceBlogs is running. The lucky winner will get an all-expenses-paid trip to New York to do see cool science-y stuff, and have dinner with a blogger of their choice.
All you need to do is give…
grrlscientist | August 19, 2008tags: Who Blogs, blog writing and personality, Big Five personality inventory, social psychology, technology, computers, internet, researchblogging.org
You all read blogs, and many of you write them, too. But what sort of person writes a blog? Are there particular personality traits that make certain people more likely to write a blog? If so, what are those personality traits? Do you have them, too?
A team of scientists, led by psychologist Rosanna Guadagno from the University of Alabama, wondered what personality traits made some people more likely than others to write blogs. To answer…
drorzel | August 15, 2008I've seen this a bunch of places, but the most recent was Skwid's LiveJournal: below the fold is a big long list of foods (exotic and otherwise), with ones I've eaten marked in bold face. The standard instructions call for striking out anything you won't even consider eating, but I can imagine circumstances in which I might end up having to try any of these, even things I'm not likely to enjoy.
The striking thing about this, to me, is not the gourmet stuff that I have eaten, so much as the non-gourmet things that I haven't.
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros (I don't like eggs)
4.…
drorzel | August 4, 2008As you may or may not have seen from the banner ads on the site (depending on whether you read via RSS or not), ScienceBlogs is running a Reader Survey at the moment. Here's your chance to tell the Corporate Masters that they really need to sign up some more physics blogs.
Or, you know, whatever else you think about the site. It shouldn't take long, and they're giving away Apple stuff, so if you're bored and missing Scrabulous, take a few minutes to fill out the survey.