Weblogs
pharyngula | February 5, 2007Some people have taken blogroll amnesty day the wrong way—or perhaps it has been used in the wrong way. Jon Swift registers the impression that this was an undemocratic purge that simply re-enthroned the same old elites and tossed the little guys on the scrapheap.
But the more I learned about this Amnesty Day, the more I realized that it was a very strange amnesty indeed. The amnesty he granted turned out to be amnesty for himself [Atrios]. He wanted to assuage himself of the guilt he might feel at kicking blogs off his blogroll instead of granting amnesty to others to swarm across the border…
pharyngula | February 4, 2007At last, a science blogger who lives somewhere even more remote and colder than Morris.
pharyngula | February 3, 2007Atrios has declared today to be Blogroll Amnesty Day, a time to purge those tired old links to sites that you've always got up on your page, but that maybe contain a few blogs you've grown tired of, or lacks the sites that you've been browsing recently. It's a fine idea; if you feel like clearing boring ol' Pharyngula off your list, go ahead, I won't cry too much. It would be nice if you replaced it with some fresh new place that you like very much, of course.
I personally police my blogroll about once a week—I build it from the opml file from my newsreader, so I'm regularly adding new sites…
pharyngula | February 1, 2007Well, heck, Darren Naish has been posting here for a week, so it's past time to give a belated welcome to Tetrapod Zoology, the latest addition to the Scienceblogs family of fine sci-punditry.
pharyngula | January 31, 2007He must be a smart guy: he just picked Amanda Marcotte to run the John Edwards blog. And since Amanda will be slightly distracted, she's brought in five (it takes five people to take Amanda's place?) new people to keep Pandagon humming…and one of them is Chris Clarke. Everything's shuffling around! I'm getting confused! I think I'm willing to vote for Edwards so far, as long as Amanda keeps him in line and makes sure he doesn't start pumping up the war talk or professing for creationism.
pharyngula | January 31, 2007You all recall the Beagle Project that I recently mentioned was trying to raise money to reconstruct the Beagle and sail off to Patagonia (with me hiding belowdecks, of course). Miss Prism had a terrific idea: she's knitting a Darwin puppet that she'll sell off to some lucky commenter on Darwin's birthday, with all the proceeds sent off to build the Beagle.
I should get in on this, although I have no talent for knitting. Any suggestions? Is there some little personal Pharyngula tchotchke I could convince people to bid on, knowing that their pennies would go to the construction of a boat? I…
pharyngula | January 30, 2007One of the great developments I'm seeing is the emergence of specialized weblogs that focus hard on a specific issue, and here's an example: the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. There's good science there on a topic of considerable importance. Let a thousand flowers bloom, I say.
pharyngula | January 25, 2007I'm going to be interviewed tonight by Karl Mogel for his Mindcast podcast. I'm not sure how this is going to work; I think it'll just be made available at some later date. Maybe he'll pop in and explain how you can listen to it. I do know you can find past episodes in the iTunes store.
He promised me he'd ask some hard questions, and also some hard questions of his other guest, the illustrious Ken Miller. We won't be on the same segment, sorry…there could be some vigorous argument if we were, and poor Karl might not be able to get in a word edgewise. It is an interesting combination, though…
pharyngula | January 25, 2007Chris Clarke has a new banner on Creek Running North, so of course he has to give us a grand tour of the Pleistocene. It's a Carl Buell original, you know — it's becoming quite the coup to get some Buell art on your blog.
pharyngula | January 22, 2007Scienceblogs are being reviewed by Some Guy, and Orac criticizes the critic. My disagreement with the clueless critic comes from a fundamental flaw in his approach: he's basically coming along and announcing that Blog X should be about Y, and if it isn't Y-ish enough for his taste, he pans it. He, apparently, is the Content Dictator of the Blogosphere.
One thing everybody needs to understand about blogs is that they aren't about what you think they're about. Good blogs are about the author, not your perception of what the subject should be.
pharyngula | January 18, 2007Check out The Happy Tortoise. An undergraduate at a liberal arts college writing about science…what's not to like?
pharyngula | January 15, 2007You may recall a ferociously hardfought battle between myself and the Bad Astronomer over the Weblog Awards a while back—a battle I won easily, of course, by the overwhelming majority of approximately 1%—and that we had bet each other various horrendous penalties if the other was the victor. Phil has begun to pay up with a new article on astrobiology, and this coming weekend he'll be singing my praises at The Amazing Meeting (anyone else here planning to attend? Make sure he does a good paean, and report back to me).
What is it with this weekend? I'm attending ConFusion, Phil will be at The…
pharyngula | January 11, 2007One of the lesser diaries on Daily Kos is calling for a boycott of Scienceblogs and is asking readers to email the gang at Seedmedia and tell them to spank one of our colleagues here. All this because Dr Charles thinks John Edwards is a piss-poor presidential candidate. Now I happen to disagree on Edwards worth as a candidate, but I do agree with some of the criticisms: Edwards sure is awfully rich, and good lawyerly arguments are often very, very bad scientific arguments. But anyone who had actually read much of Charles' site would know that he's a liberal humanist who actually wants Barack…
pharyngula | January 10, 2007Janet says it is National Delurking Week 2007— if you've been reading Pharyngula but haven't been making comments, this is the thread where you're supposed to make your existence known and say hello. The rest of you chatterboxes should sit back and let someone else have a turn saying something.
pharyngula | January 8, 2007Greg Laden makes a simple analysis of what triggers comments on Pharyngula: it turns out the least interesting subject is me (my self-esteem is being battered lately), with science close on my heels, but that you love to chatter about creationists and godlessness.
Now I wonder how strong the response will be if I say this post is about none of those things: it's about you.
pharyngula | January 7, 2007Chris Clarke (whose blog sure is a lot prettier all of a sudden) has revealed that the Koufax award nominations are now open. Go nominate your favoritest blogs!
I do not want anyone to nominate Pharyngula, and if nominated in any category I'll ask to be removed. You see, I've already got one. It's a nice honor, but I don't need any more, and I'd rather see the glory spread around. So this year I'm planning to campaign for someone else; I'm not sure who, yet, but we'll see what kind of exciting science-oriented blogs show up in the list this time around.
pharyngula | December 28, 2006Everyone should go say "Howdy" to Developing Intelligence, the latest addition to the Seed stable.
pharyngula | December 25, 2006You all know about the Koufax awards, the best weblog awards around because they're non-commercial, non-weird, and sincerely try to reward the best of the progressive blogosphere (I don't just say that because I won one). One of the unfortunate side effects of being non-commercial, though, is that they're running on a shoestring, requiring a heavy investment in sweat and out-of-pocket expenses by Mary Beth and Eric Williams and Dwight Meredith every year, and they don't get rich off of this—it costs them money. It's time to help them out.
Chris Clarke has organized a blogswarm to benefit…