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Why use Google, which will give you ten million irrelevant hits, when all you really want to do, is to find the juicy stuff on ScienceBlogs? Well, you can navigate to the ScienceBlogs home page, and search there, or go to any of the blogs and use the search boxes there.  Or, to simplify things a bit, use can use a Firefox extension. First, you have to get Firefox, if you don't have it already.  The install the "Add to Search Bar" extension ( href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3682">install here).  Once it is installed, you have to restart Firefox. Then, go to the…
I don't know whether it's that the Australian just hires journalists with really thin skins or that the water there contains some skin thinning chemical, but they always seem to overreact to criticism. The latest is from Caroline please preference Malcolm Overington. You see, Gam blogged about Overington's "only joking" endorsement of Malcolm Turnbull with this comment: How did she manage to type that with the Member for Wentworth's member in her mouth? Overington didn't seem to get the joke because she phoned Gam and tried to bully him into removing the statement and even threatened to sue…
O excellent! I love corpus callosum better than figs. Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from? Get your own quotes:
Steve Milloy's Junk Science has now endorsed Climate Audit in the Weblog Awards, telling readers to vote for Climate Audit instead of JunkScience. I know that the we shouldn't take the awards seriously, but other people will. Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy is a much better science blog and the best chance for beating them. Please vote for Bad Astronomy. You can vote once every 24 hours. In other Weblog award news, Sadly No! has an unbeatable lead for Funniest Blog, so vote for the always reasonable Jon Swift. And since he was desperate enough to ask for votes in my comments, vote for Hot Topic…
I don't like the way the Weblog awards are decided. Because you can vote once per day per computer you have access to, to win bloggers need to post every day and shamelessly exhort their readers to vote. This felt wrong to me, so when I was a finalist in 2005 and 2006 I ignored the whole thing. But this year I'm not a finalist, so I'm asking you to vote for a couple of blogs. In the Funniest Blog category, a truly vile blog called DUmmie FUnnies must not win. There was an on-line appeal to raise money to pay for medical care for someone called Andy Stephenson, who was suffering from…
Sorry about the mistake on the last post's headline. (Vengeans? Sort of like vengeful vegans?) Spell-checkers have turned my brain to mush.
Omni Brain met its fundraising goal of $1000 for music education programs through DonorsChoose. Thank you to everyone who's donated. You rock! Now 30 kids will too. But it'd be okay, you know, permissible (haha) to exceed our goal if you'd still like to help a Lisa Simpson. A few of the programs Omni Brain earmarked are still seeking fulfillment. Here, an Indianapolis music teacher describes his/her wish to teach kids science and music together: I want to set up a program for fourth through sixth grade having students work on the scientific method of experimenting with sound. The resources I…
Last week I groused about having trouble with MySpace, which led others to leave some nasty comments of their own. In the interest of full disclosure, I should now report that I figured out the problem: I was not entering my password correctly. I apologize to the folks at MySpace for blaming them for my own blundering. Of course, you wouldn't know that I'm back on MySpace by looking at my page, which is as dull as ever, but that's just because I haven't had the time to figure out how to embellish it. (Suggestions welcome!)
Good news--I've just won the National Academies 2007 Communication Award. Each year the prize is given out jointly by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institute of Engineering, the National Research Council, and the Institute of Medicine in three categories. The category I entered was writing for newspapers, magazines or the Internet. I decided to submit stuff I've written for newspapers, magazines, and the Internet. Here are the stories I submitted (with links to my blog posts about them): "A Fin Is A Limb Is A Wing." National Geographic, November 2006. An article on the…
This is an open thread (and your last chance to get into the 500,000th comment contest).
I'm going to be appearing this weekend on the strangely addictive show bloggingheads.tv. If you're not familiar with it, it's a show composed of two talking heads staring out of your screen at you, holding forth for an hour on whatever topic they choose (politics, television, science...). Actually, each speaker is staring into a computer camera and talking on the phone to his or her partner in chat. On Saturdays, two of our most provocative science writers, John Horgan and George Johnson, take to the tubes. Horgan asked me to join him this week. I've known Horgan for several geological eras,…
A while back I mentioned I've gotten a Facebook page and a Myspace page. They've been fun to toy around with, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're a harbinger of how we will all trawl for online information in the future. But to those who are asking to be friends at Myspace, leaving messages for me, or just wondeirng why the page is just so lame, I'm sorry to report that I haven't been able to log in for a few days. If my kids were just a couple years older, I'm sure I'd have all the tech support I needed to deal with this. But for now, or at least until the MySpace minions come to my aid,…
Say hello to two new to ScienceBlogs bloggers, Coby Beck, of How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic fame, and Science Woman who writes about balancing family and an academic career.
The science blogging survey quickly met its goal of 1000 respondents, and is now closed. Thanks to everyone who participated. Keep an eye on the blogs here to find out when the results are published, but you'll hear for sure if you're subscribed to the ScienceBlogs Weekly Recap newsletter. Find out about the buzzes, most popular posts, best photos, and more. Be current with news and what's hot. Don't forget to enter the ScienceBlogs 500,000th Comment Contest, open to anyone in the world with a valid email address who leaves a comment before we hit that number. Try leaving one now? Tell me…
We want your opinion! This survey attempts to access the opinions of bloggers, blog-readers, and non-blog folk in regards to the impact of blogs on the outside world. The authors of the survey (from ScienceBlogs.com) are completing an academic manuscript on the impact of science blogging and this survey will provide invaluable data to answer the following questions: Who reads or writes blogs? What are the perceptions of blogging, and what are the views of those who read blogs? How do academics and others perceive science blogging? What, if any, influence does science blogging have on…
Artist Katelyn Sack emailed me earlier to clarify some info. She shares truth: The post you link to incorrectly states the series is composed of fridge magnets. While I can make prints, magnets, T-shirts, and even baby bubbles featuring any of my artwork, 'Baby, Be A Brain Surgeon!' as featured on The Science Creative Quarterly this Tues., Sept. 11 is oil paint on 4.25" x 4.25" ceramic tiles. You can see my original blog post on the artwork here, and I also list it for sale on my website here. In her original post, she describes the vision behind her designs. Nursery room decor for a…
Scienceblogs is running a contest where you can win a five-day trip for two to one of the world's greatest science cities. All you have to do to enter is post a comment one of the blogs here. So if you just read my blog without commenting, this post is your chance to delurk and maybe win a pretty nice prize. You can comment using a pseudonym, but you'd better give a real email address or you won't be able to collect the prize if you win.
Bright and early tomorrow morning, I'm leaving on vacation. I'll be spending the week in Yellowstone National Park. I'm not sure what the network situation is there, but I'm not expecting much. Unfortunately, this year I didn't have time to prepare some reruns of old posts before I left. If I manage to find a data connection, I'll try to schedule some interesting reruns. But don't hold your breath. See you in september!
Here are the top 5 lists of the top Australian blogs: Rank From Method 1 Janette Toral Blog Juice 2 Ratified.org Technorati + Feedburner + Google Rank 3 Craig Harper Technorati 4 Meg Tsiamis Technorati + Alexa 5 Australianblogs.com.au links counted by Yahoo Ranking of the lists was done by a completely objective criterion -- how highly they ranked Deltoid.
This weekend, Seed Media, our benevolent and beloved corporate overlords, sponsored a Scibling gathering: ScienceBloggers from all over the country (and outside) all gathered in New York, ate, drank, and partied. It made for quite an interesting weekend. I didn't end up being able to hang around nearly as much as I would have liked (I missed the drunken Karaoke! As someone who never gets drunk, watching my drunken sciblings singing badly would have been a kick!) Alas, as the father of two small kids, I'm subject to the schedule of family/babysitters, so I couldn't hang aronud. (Plus, to…