Weblogs
pharyngula | March 26, 2006The Koufax voting closes at midnight tonight, so this is your last chance: click through the links below and vote. Or, you can just copy and paste the list below and mail it to wampum @ nic-naa.net, with the subject "Koufax".
(Voting is now closed.)
Best Blog: Pharyngula
Best Series: Pharyngula
Most Humorous Post: Pharyngula
Best Single Issue Blog: Pharyngula
Best Expert Blog: Pharyngula
Best Post: Pharyngula
And really, it's encouraged to make an informed vote for the best candidate here, so I will not be at all chagrined if you vote for some other worthy blog. If I lose, though, the orgy*…
pharyngula | March 24, 2006Darksyde interviews one of those people who convinced me that philosophy actually has something to contribute to our understanding of science (you know, it's sadly true, but science education often belittles the value of trying to puzzle out how we know what we know)—that guy with extremely poor spelling skills, John Willikins Wilkins*. It's a good read.
*Rumors that he bears a familial or temperamental affiliation with a certain mayor of Sunnydale are entirely scurrilous, and therefore well worth spreading.
pharyngula | March 22, 2006Pharyngula has been nominated for a Cobb Award. No, actually, that's not quite right: you, the readers of Pharyngula, have been nominated for an award for Worst Community.
It sounds awful, but don't panic (they almost instituted a 'Most Super-extra Worst Professor EVAR-INFINITY' award, and then I might have been in trouble). Here's the description of the Worst Community award:
Worst Community is designated to honor left-blogs that for some reason don't allow comments, but also to single out for distinction blogs that genuinely have a lot of really dumb comments. Another purpose is to better…
pharyngula | March 22, 2006Just a reminder that you can still vote for Pharyngula in the Koufaxes (if you haven't already done so) in 6 different categories! You could click on the link and leave a comment that just says "Pharyngula!", or, since their server is rather heavily overloaded, email the name of the category and your choice to wampum @ nic-naa.net, with the subject "Koufax". Email has the advantage that if you do decide to vote for someone else, I won't be able to look in the comment threads over there and see it, you traitor.*
Best Blog
Best Series
Most Humorous Post
Best Single Issue Blog
Best Expert Blog…
pharyngula | March 21, 2006Apparently, it's going to cost me my credibility as bona fide liberal left-wing moonbat, but yes, I have seen Red Dawn. You know, the movie that that wacky new Washington Post blog touted as a talisman of righteous manliness.
Red Dawn? You must know it—the greatest pro-gun movie ever? I mean, they actually show the jackbooted communist thugs prying the guns from cold dead hands.
Saying it's the greatest pro-gun movie ever is like saying mucous and sawdust make the best sandwich ever—it either says your taste is something execrable, or you've just insulted every other sandwich on earth. It…
pharyngula | March 20, 2006Pharyngula has made it into the finals for several of the Koufax Awards. Just click on a link and leave a comment to vote for your choice…and remember, only vote once per category.
Best Blog
Best Series
Most Humorous Post
Best Single Issue Blog
Best Expert Blog
Best Post
You know, if I'm the only one who votes for me it is going to be incredibly embarrassing.
pharyngula | March 12, 2006Voting ends tonight, so this is your last chance to vote for or against Pharyngula in these categories:
Best Blog (non-professional)
Best Expert Blog
Best Single Issue Blog
Best Post
Best Series
Most Humorous Post
If you've already voted, ignore this: you only get to cast one vote. If you haven't yet voted, look over the field of candidates at the links above—I am up against some stiff competition, and it's definitely worth visiting the other sites.
You can vote by leaving a comment at Wampum, or if you want your choice kept private, email your preference to MB, EBW, or Dwight.
pharyngula | March 10, 2006I must purge the mailbox of a few worthy links…so here they are.
There are a couple of calls for submissions:
The Tangled Bank
Carnival of Liberals
I and the Bird
A few carnivals I failed to mention this week:
Carnival of the feminists
Carnival of Education
Freethought Filter is back up and running again!
Darksyde addresses the Fermi "paradox". I don't think it's a paradox at all, and that the answer from his list is the rarity solution.
pharyngula | March 5, 2006He's been nominated for some category or other in the Koufaxes—I think it's "Most consistently creative misspellings of a blogger's name"—but no one has voted for him yet. Somebody out there must appreciate philosophy and science and is willing to toss him a bone, right?
pharyngula | March 4, 2006Ummm, well…seven eight Koufax nominations is rather flattering. These are the semi-finals, though, so it may well be that none of them make it to the finals, and to then actually win one is an even more unlikely eventuality, but hey, here I am.
If you want to vote, all you have to do is follow the link and mention the entry or blog you like in a comment. This is a sensible left-wing blog, so unlike those weird wingers, you only vote once in each category, and all votes will be tallied manually and accurately by the hard-working team at Wampum. (and don't be tempted to cheat—they know what…
pharyngula | March 2, 2006Never mind me, I'm running around with classes and meetings today…here are a few quick links.
The 29th Skeptics' Circle.
The Tildification of Norwegianity.
The Terry Writing Challenge—there's real money involved.
An in-depth interview with PZ Myers.
I and the Bird.
Intelligent Design subverts itself.
An example of the research promise of ID.
Don't trust the NIH.
The Carnival of the Liberals.
pharyngula | February 26, 2006Update those blogrolls for Creek Running North, which is now located at http://faultline.org/. While you're fixing that one, remember to also set Pharyngula's new address to http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/—it's been over a month and I see via Technorati that the old address has about ten times as many links as the new one!
pharyngula | February 22, 2006Pharyngula is in the semi-finals for another: Best Single Issue Blog. I wonder what that single issue is?
pharyngula | February 21, 2006Some of the scienceblogs have been experiencing difficulties (unresponsiveness, sluggish commenting, and some of us can't even post), and part of the problem can be traced to spammers turning their attention to us and pounding at the door. We've been asked to increase the level of security in commenting to suppress some of that activity, so now comments here require a valid email address.
Switching the level of security has an unfortunate side-effect with some browsers—it confused my copy of Safari so much it wouldn't allow me to comment on my own blog. One solution, though, is to get rid of…
pharyngula | February 16, 2006The Wampum nominations for Best Expert Blog are up…and Pharyngula is among them. The coolest thing, though: about 20% of the nominees are science blogs!
pharyngula | February 13, 2006Respectful Insolence has moved.
I think this was a mercy move, actually. I think the blogosphere saw that hideous spacey theme he had on the old site, and a great cry rose out to find him a home that was less of an eyesore…and the designers at Seed, who were also offended, rose to the challenge.
pharyngula | February 13, 2006A little reminder: a look at Technorati shows me that a lot of people still haven't updated those blogrolls. I've stuck an automatic redirect on the old page, and I've also tweaked the .htaccess file to remap all the requests for rss and xml files to the new syndication file here, so it's easy to forget—going to the old site will still get you right here. Still, it would be nice if you adjusted the links, and changed "http://pharyngula.org/" to "http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/".
It's not a major problem since either address will eventually get you to the same place, but I'm sure the Seed…
pharyngula | February 12, 2006The Questionable Authority has links to sites that referenced Darwin today. It's good reading to get ready for the party—once Skatje gets home, we're breaking out the cake and ice cream.
pharyngula | February 7, 2006Whee! Another Koufax nomination for Most Humorous Post. I've moved the copy over here to the new site, in the post below this one.
This was an interesting post, though—it prompted something close to the record volume of hate mail for a single article, ever (I don't keep count, though, so I can't be sure—but man, were some people ever furious about it.) Joke about peeing on a bible, and people react like you'd expect them to if you threatened to imprison and torture and kill foreign civilians.
It'll be an experience if it makes it into the final nominations. More hate mail, oh boy!
pharyngula | February 1, 2006Now we'll really get to see how well this new server provided by Seed holds up. Pharyngula just get linked by Slashdot, and I've seen a thousand hits come roaring in in 5 minutes. My lovely old Mac G5 server would have been screaming and shaking at this point, and you wouldn't be reading this article, that's for sure.
If ever you were curious about it, here's a snapshot of the slashdot effect, taken at about 11:00 in the evening. This is just today's traffic.
The other astounding part of the phenomenon was that the average IQ of my commenters was cut in half (data not shown). I'm hoping the…