personal
terrasig | July 16, 2010
Pardon me for taking up science blogging space today to send out special wishes of love and congratulations for my Mom on the occasion of her birthday-of-special-note.
The artwork provided by her granddaughter above (©2010 PharmKid) contains a subliminal message about the significance of today's birthday. I will have the pleasure of delivering the original work of the artist to the birthday girl this weekend.
For those of you who don't know PharmMom, she's nothing short of incredible having raised my sister, then deciding when we were in elementary school that she wanted to serve the greater…
pharyngula | July 15, 2010You may have been fooled by my youthful vigor and childlike exuberance, but I'm actually an old guy — I've got entirely grown up kids who have moved out and have nothing to do with me anymore. They're so old that they aren't even threatening to move back into my basement any more! I'm just going to mention what the two boys men have been doing lately, so maybe you can help them out.
My oldest son, Alaric, is currently working as the deputy campaign manager for the DFL candidate in District 15B, Zachary Dorholt. You want to vote for him, if you're living in that part of St Cloud. If you don't…
drorzel | July 15, 2010We've been doing weekly Baby Blogging (now Toddler Blogging) for a long time now-- this is week 101-- but it occurs to me that we've been shortchanging someone in all these pictures: Appa. He is, after all, a sky-bison, so it's about time we got a picture of him in flight:
SteelyKid says "I could totally do that, if Mommy and Daddy would let me."
(We've-- well, all right, I've-- started playing a game where I get Appa across the room from SteelyKid, say "Yip-yip!" and toss him across the room to her. Lately, she's started saying "Yip-yip!" as well, which makes it much cuter.)
(Kate is way…
drorzel | July 15, 2010If you're in Broome County or environs, the biggest political event of the year is today: John Orzel is officially launching his campaign for the New York State Senate. This will apparently involve a number of events around the 52nd state senate district, ending with a rally and cookout in Scenic Whitney Point:
"What does it take," you're thinking, "to obtain the highly exclusive-- rarely granted and even more rarely sought-- Uncertain Principles endorsement?"
Well, for one thing, he's my uncle. I'm not saying you have to be a blood relative to get my political endorsement, but it helps.…
pharyngula | July 12, 2010Jeremy Messersmith gives the post con wrap-up of Convergence, the recent sf convention in Minneapolis. These things are wonderfully fun, you should go sometime!
There is a picture of me in the article, but I think he just threw it in to reassure the readers that not all the attendees were freaky weird geeks. Yes, I AM THE NORMAL ONE.
Let that sink in for a while.
jdupuis | July 12, 2010For now, at least.
My natural inclinations about this whole mess are probably closest in nature to either Chad Orzel's or Jason Rosenhouse's, so reading them will probably give you a pretty close idea of where I stand. Bora, not surprisingly, has collected a lot of the reaction.
I also really like what Christie Wilcox has to say:
Let me make it clear, though - I don't blame anyone for leaving. I don't hold it against them. While I may not have had the same visceral reaction they did, I also haven't been here that long. I haven't dealt with this kind of mismanagement and gotten fed up about…
oracknows | July 11, 2010I may be in Las Vegas as The Amazing Meeting winds down today, but still I'm a bit sad.
Has it really been two whole years today?
Yes, we have a different dog now, but does the presence of a new friend make you forget a friend who's died?
terrasig | July 10, 2010In the midst of all of the PepsiCo #SbFAIL events of the week (here and here are my two contributions), I totally missed checking in on my blog traffic statistics this week. But every Saturday morning I get my weekly e-mail report from SiteMeter, the service I use to track how y'all get to the blog, what search terms you use, etc.
Yes, sometime during the week we drew our one millionth pageview since starting up here at ScienceBlogs four years ago last month. It's small potatoes compared with other bloggers at the network, some of whom draw a million page views every two weeks or two months…
drorzel | July 8, 2010I got sufficiently engrossed in writing a ResearchBlogging post for tomorrow that I almost forgot today's Toddler Blogging. To make up for it, though, today's post is using those three-dimensional effects that are all the rage these days:
Look out! There's a ball coming right at you!
What's that? The 3D isn't working? Are you wearing the glasses? Well, there's your problem...
As you can tell from the picture, SteelyKid is getting pretty good at throwing things these days. Catching, on the other hand, remains a bit of a problem:
(Alternate caption: "Telekinetic toddler moves balls with her…
drorzel | July 8, 2010I suppose I have to say something about the Great Pepsi Blog Controversy, because it's sucking all the oxygen out of science blogging right now. I'll try to keep this short and self-contained.
At this time, I have no intention of leaving ScienceBlogs over the paid PepsiCo blog. I'm very sorry to hear that several of the other bloggers here have decided to leave, but they have their reasons, and it's their decision.
Ultimately, I suspect that the reason I am relatively unperturbed by this whole mess comes down to a fundamental split between how I view blogging and how they view blogging.
The…
mmckenna | July 7, 2010I'm taking SUPERBUG offline while the Pepsi mess plays out.
I dislike and resent having to do this: I was flattered to join Sb and I have great respect for my Sciblings.
I acknowledge that Sb's management, Seed Media Group, made some concessions today, but I am dissatisfied that those changes came only after community protests, when they addressed issues that should -- could -- have been foreseen.
I'm also not convinced they go far enough, since the central issue of a corporate-sponsored blog that appears (still, functionally) indistinguishable from the independent blogs here has not been…
mmckenna | July 7, 2010I'm late to the party: I was in Europe, and before that I was in Los Angeles, and before that Colorado, and I am time-shifted and sleep-deprived (hate it: Takes away energy, intellectual nimbleness -- yeah, I got some --Â and any ability to multi-task). And that's enough with the lame excuses.
Constant readers may have noticed by now that my Sciblings here at Sb are in a justified uproar about the inclusion of a new blog, Food Frontiers, sponsored -- that means "paid for" -- by Pepsi Co. Sb runs on advertising, but this paid space is not in the ad rails and banners, but in the main column.…
sb admin | July 7, 2010As I said yesterday on Twitter, a big conflict of interest and transparency problem has arisen on ScienceBlogs. Like several other bloggers here, I'm now on a hiatus, however like like David Dobb's and Blake Stacy's, my hiatus from ScienceBlogs will be permanent. I've been contemplating a move from ScienceBlogs for a while for several reasons, but PepsiGate has sealed the deal for me. Several of my ScienceBlogs colleagues have summed up the situation well, including PZ Myers, GrrlScientist, and Brian over at Laelaps. For a full recap of the issue and other ScienceBloggers' responses, see…
rskloot | July 7, 2010As I said yesterday on Twitter, a big conflict of interest and transparency problem has arisen on ScienceBlogs. Like several other bloggers here, I'm now on a hiatus, however like like David Dobb's and Blake Stacy's, my hiatus from ScienceBlogs will be permanent. I've been contemplating a move from ScienceBlogs for a while for several reasons, but PepsiGate has sealed the deal for me. Several of my ScienceBlogs colleagues have summed up the situation well, including PZ Myers, GrrlScientist, and Brian over at Laelaps. For a full recap of the issue and other ScienceBloggers' responses, see…
jdupuis | July 7, 2010So, PepsiCo has started up a new blog here on ScienceBlogs called Food Frontiers.
From the profile:
PepsiCo's R&D Leadership Team discusses the science behind the food industry's role in addressing global public health challenges. This is an extension of PepsiCo's own Food Frontiers blog.
This blog is sponsored by PepisCo. All editorial content is written by PepsiCo's scientists or scientists invited by PepsiCo and/or ScienceBlogs. All posts carry a byline above the fold indicating the scientist's affiliation and conflicts of interest.
From the introductory post:
On behalf of the team…
laelaps | July 7, 2010Important Update: The time has come to close things up here. I will no longer be blogging for ScienceBlogs.com. I am not sure where Laelaps will end up - perhaps back on Wordpress, perhaps elsewhere - but you can be sure that I will keep on writing about saber-toothed cats, whales that walked, early humans, and other cool bits of paleontology. With any luck, I will be able to confirm my plans in a few days. Keep your eyes on my author website or follow me on Twitter to find out where I'll be headed next. This is not farewell - just a brief break in transmission.
By now you have probably heard…
jstemwedel | July 6, 2010Today ScienceBlogs launched a new sponsored blog, Food Frontiers. The sponsor is PepsiCo. Here's the description of what the blog is going to be about from its inaugural post by Sb overlord Evan Lerner:
On behalf of the team here at ScienceBlogs, I'd like to welcome you to Food Frontiers, a new project presented by PepsiCo.
As part of this partnership, we'll hear from a wide range of experts on how the company is developing products rooted in rigorous, science-based nutrition standards to offer consumers more wholesome and enjoyable foods and beverages. The focus will be on innovations in…
pharyngula | July 6, 2010I just saw the TrophyWife™ to the door, where she's leaving for work. And from there, she's going to Minneapolis to spend the night. And then in the morning she's flying off to The Amazing Meeting 8, and I'm not. She's going to spend almost a week away, while I'm just a hyper-focused drudge with a keyboard for a while.
I'll be fine, I'll just be single-minded for a while. But how many of you are going to TAM? Keep an eye out for the TrophyWife™, and keep her out of trouble. I've seen what she's going to wear to the Skepchick party, and I'm a little concerned — why couldn't it have had a…
drorzel | July 5, 2010SteelyKid has some molars coming in, which led to some intermittent generalized fussiness this weekend. When she gets that way, she can sometimes be calmed down using videos on the computer, such as the "Wheels on the Buss" DVD my mom has. In order to spare the sanity of the adults in her life, though, we supplemented this with kid-friendly YouTube clips, eventually running across this:
I have very distinct memories of this when I was a small child watching Sesame Street-- I hesitate to call them happy memories, because I think I recall being upset when the singers are carried off. But I…
pharyngula | July 5, 2010Look for me in Canada, eh, on 30 July, at which time my book will be done and I'll look much less harried and may even be nice and polite and a little less bitey snarly mean, so that I can blend in better with the natives.
That's my plan, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.