Blogs
drorzel | March 14, 2013What with all the angst lately over the impending death of Google Reader, I finally got over my inertia and am testing out the WordPress auto-tweet feature, because that's apparently how the kids get their blog feeds these days. I sort of hate Twitter feeds that are nothing but blog post links, though, so I've set up a separate account, @PrinciplesBlog for those posts. I'll continue my practice of social-media bombing the occasional blog post that I find particularly worthy of extra attention, but if you want to see absolutely everything, follow the blog account.
This nothingburger of a post…
drorzel | March 5, 2013One of the things that's been rattling around in my head since ScienceOnline back in January is the need for a greater diversity of voices in science communication generally. I don't mean diversity in the sense of racial and gender make-up of the people doing the communication, though that would be nice, I mean a greater diversity in the way people talk about science.
This started bugging me in the panel that led to the "Journosplain" image that I'm somewhat unfairly tagging as the "featured image" for this post (grabbed from here)-- somewhat, because it's not really Carl Zimmer's fault. But…
drorzel | March 4, 2013In rapid succession yesterday, Twitter threw me two how-to-behave-online links that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. The first was a widely re-shared essay titled You Are Boring:
You listen to the same five podcasts and read the same seven blogs as all your pals. You stay up late on Twitter making hashtagged jokes about the event that everyone has decided will be the event about which everyone jokes today. You love to send withering @ messages to people like Rush Limbaugh—of course, those notes are not meant for their ostensible recipients, but for your friends, who will chuckle and retweet…
drorzel | February 11, 2013Last Friday, when I didn't have any time to blog, Zen Faulkes wrote an interesting wrap-up post on Science Online 2013 in which he declared he won't be back. Not because it was a bad time, but because other people would benefit from it more, and his not going frees up a spot for somebody else.
I recognize a lot of his reaction, though there were a couple of things that I got out of it that I think made it worthwhile, beyond just the socialization. On the whole, though, it wasn't really a transformative experience for me. I like to think, though, that I was able to provide a few things that…
drorzel | February 6, 2013This is the third post in which I'm pulling a revise-and-extend job on some things I said at Science Online at a few panels on bloggy stuff, and the one I'm least settled about. Previous posts covered the in how-to-do-outreach session (posted Monday and the blogging long term session (posted yesterday). This one covers the what-to-do-when-people-start-taking-you-seriously session.
I say that this is the one I'm least settled about because what I said in that panel had literally not occurred to me before listening to that discussion. I've been thinking about it off and on since, and am still…
drorzel | February 5, 2013This is the second post in which I'm pulling a revise-and-extend job on some things I said at Science Online at a few panels on bloggy stuff: in the how-to-do-outreach session (posted yesterday, the blogging long term session, and the what-to-do-when-people-start-taking-you-seriously session. In order to get these out in a timely manner, while catching up on all the work I have to do, I'm splitting these up into individual posts, though really they all kind of fit together.
Blogging for the Long Haul
There were two easily misinterpretable things that I said at this one, that deserve a bit of…
drorzel | February 4, 2013I ended up feeling that my most valuable contribution to the Science Online meeting (other than boosting the income of the Marriott's bartenders) was providing experienced commentary and advice from a slightly different angle than a lot of the other participants. A bunch of this got tweeted out by other people in the sessions, but the format (both at the conference and on Twitter) necessarily strips a lot of nuance out of what I was trying to say (and not always saying successfully). so I thought I'd revise and expand on my remarks a little bit. In particular, I want to post expanded versions…
drorzel | February 3, 2013The Sciece Online meeting wrapped up yesterday afternoon, though the associated conversations and socialization carried on late into the night. I got to meet a lot of people I've only previously known as cartoon avatars, and spent a surprising amount of time talking about rugby.
One of the things that stands out about the meeting, and that lots of people raved about, is the "unconference" style, where there aren't formal presentations, but moderated discussions. This wasn't all that surprising to me, because it's essentially identical to the more casual sort of panel at a science fiction…
drorzel | January 31, 2013I thought I had mentioned it on Twitter enough, but as several people were surprised to see me last night, it's probably worth saying more prominently: I'm at the Science Online 2013 conference in Raleigh, NC this week. This is making me tremendously popular with my class, who are taking an exam tonight...
Anyway, if you weren't aware that I was going to be here, now you know. If last night and this morning are any indication, I may not have any voice left by the end of the conference-- the bar was LOUD last night-- but if you're around, say hi.
catdynamics | December 19, 2012More Phenomenal random links to random stuff: life, the Universe and Everything
Phenomena - new blog group under National Geographic, including some long time scibloggers: The Loom, Not Exactly Rocket Science, Laelaps and Only Human, to begin with.
On the Usefulness of Useless Knowledge - Bee explains.
Substantive Advice to Admissions Committees - Or, why, all things being equal, we should prefer candidates from less prestigious institutions.
This is actually sensible - it is a "what have you done with what you were given" argument.
But, all things are very rarely equal... and no one ever…
drorzel | October 26, 2012In which I discuss the manner in which and the degree to which Twitter is ruining the media.
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Yesterday, Kevin Drum posted saying that Twitter is ruining political journalism, calling out its role in solidifying media groupthink before events are even completed. That seemed like a pretty good criticism to me, but like a true squishy liberal, Kevin later retracted his comments in the face of criticism. I saw the second link come across Kevin's Twitter feed, and responded there, saying:
You were right the first time. But Twitter's only the latest step in the continuing degradation…
drorzel | October 25, 2012I'm barely keeping my head above water with the day job at the moment, so I'm a bit behind the curve on this. It's October, though, which means it's time for a DonorsChoose fundraiser. If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you've seen a few of these. If not, there's too much to explain, but let me sum up: DonorsChoose matches people with money with schools that need money, and takes donations to support specific projects proposed by teachers in needy school districts. A whole host of fine science blogs have been recruited to raise funds through blog-specific pages, and a…
drorzel | October 15, 2012The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has just been announced, and goes to Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design." I know basically nothing about these guys, but I assume they've earned their Sveriges Riksbank Prize, so congratulations to them. And congratulations also to John Novak, who correctly called Shapley in the annual betting pool.
I think that's all the winners for this year, both of Nobel Prizes and from the betting pool. If I missed one, please point it out to me. And if you…
drorzel | October 8, 2012In which we have the next round of the conversation with Puff the Mutant Dragon. Previous entries here and there.
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Amusingly, your post was singled out for high praise in the Knight Science Journalism Tracker review of the book. Probably because Deborah Blum, who wrote it, wrote a book about poisons, so the topic was close to her interests, but still, congrats.
You're definitely right about blogging being a weird hobby. I think it's one of the more interesting but less examined aspects of the rise of social media that there's been this explosion of text writing by all sorts of…
drorzel | October 4, 2012It's that time of year again, when everybody pays attention to Sweden for a couple of months: the 2012 Nobel Prizes are about to be announced. Which means it's time for the game everybody loves to tolerate: the Uncertain Principles Nobel Betting Pool:
Leave a comment to this post predicting at least one of the winners of one of this year's Nobel Prizes. If one of your guesses turns out to be correct, you win the highly coveted right to choose the topic of a future blog post.
I'm adding an additional restriction to this year's contest, though: You're not allowed to pick anything related to…
drorzel | October 1, 2012My post post Faster Than a Speeding Photon, doing a Q&A explainer of the OPERA fast-neutrino measurement was picked for inclusion in The Best Science Writing Online 2012 (confusingly published in late 2012, featuring blog posts from 2011...). As promotion for the book, it was suggested that pairs of authors from the collection "interview" each other about their posts, blogging, and whatever else, and I was paired with Puff the Mutant Dragon.
We exchanged several emails over a week or so, and thought about cutting them up into typical Q&A type "interview" posts. That seemed like it…
drorzel | June 26, 2012The title pretty much says it all.
One of the reasons I wanted to get the Ten Years Before the Blog series done was that I'm incredibly burned out on everything right now, and I need to step away from the Internet for a while. There are too many things that aren't getting done, and I just can't keep putting in the time needed to produce blog content. I figured that re-reading the highlights of the last ten years would either re-invigorate me, or failing that, it would at least provide a good placeholder for when the blog goes dark.
I'm not officially quitting ScienceBlogs or anything like…
drorzel | June 26, 2012In which we reach the end of our decade-long historical recap.
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So, at long last, the recap of my decade of blogging has reached the current year. And I do have a file of pre-filtered links from the current year (well, up through early May, when it was put together), which I was going to go through and post in the same manner as previous years.
But you know how when some magazine does a list of the "top 40 songs of the last 40 years," or whatever, there are always 6-8 songs from the last couple of years, and you say "No way. It may be a big hit right now, but it's too soon to call…
drorzel | June 25, 2012In which we look back on the ninth full year of this blog, and one of the most unpleasant incidents in the whole run, which nearly ruined what was otherwise a good year.
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This is probably going to be the longest of these posts, at least in terms of the number of links included-- I've got all of the worthwhile-looking posts open in tabs, and it comes to 82 total. I may ditch a few of them during the post-writing process, but we'll see how that goes.
Anyway, this blog year kicked off with probably the least enjoyable incident of the entire run, namely Sodamageddon. The higher-ups at…
drorzel | June 22, 2012In which we review yet another good year of blogging, including the establishment of some ongoing series. And also a useful reality check.
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This great blog re-read project has been useful for a couple of reasons. First, it's reminded me that there have been long stretches of time when I produced a lot of good stuff for the blog. When I initially considered this, I was a little afraid that the whole thing would be depressing, and I wouldn't have anything good to point to. If anything, though, I've had the opposite problem-- cutting things down to a manageable length (assuming these…