Weblogs

Yes,. I'm still down for the count with a dead laptop, still only able to get on to the web in a limited way. Since I have just been reminded that I am behind on the bestowing of the Molly awards, it seems appropriate that I just turn it over to you all to make your nominations right here in this thread. And with that, I'm off to the airport, flying home by way of the famous Apple Store in the Mall of America, in hopes that some genius there will manipulate the fabric of space-time and restore my lost video.
Dinochick says that one of our own is up for a blogging scholarship: Brian Switek of Laelaps. All you need to do to pick a winner is … vote in an online poll. Ironic, I know.
I'm afraid I just can't take this seriously. Army intelligence analysts are concerned that terrorists might tweet each other. Or text each other. Or put Islamic wallpapers on their cell phones. Oooh. Yes, they could. So? We're living in a world where communications technologies are advancing rapidly and where people can talk to each other constantly over long distances. This is a neutral technology; bad guys can use it, and so can good guys, and so can boring ordinary people who just want to chat about the weather. Latest threat: Air. Terrorists could use this medium to respire and fuel…
Old hands at the usenet group talk.origins will recall Chris Nedin well — and now he has entered the blogosphere with his brand new blog, Ediacaran, a blog about paleontology and all the other things that waft through the mind of a science geek. Go say hello! (via another TO alumnus, Wilkins)
Many of us were fans of Possummomma and her blog, Atheist in a Mini-van. She was a passionate writer, struggling to make ends meet with her family, coping with lupus, and also having to deal with a lot of anti-atheist-bigotry in her community and online. Well, they finally got to her: she's gone offline and has put her blog under password protection, all because of some extreme harassment and accusations from, believe it or not, Christian fans of a dopey reality TV show. It's a long, sordid, complicated, ugly story which I'm not going to repeat here, sinc The Calladus Blog has covered it…
Right here: Skepticast #168.
Kevin Hayden, the maestro of the American Street blog, is packing up and moving across the country from Oregon to Massachusetts. Along the way, he's going to be interviewing people and composing a written and video portrait. He needs help, though: he's looking for people along his route who would be willing to be interviewed, or who would put him up for a night, and he's also looking for contributions. He still needs more help, though. Take a look at his project, and if you think you can chip in, do so!
Just to clarify the ScienceBlogs 1,000,000 Comments contest: the millionth commenter didn't win anything. Everybody who makes a comment on Scienceblogs up to 30 September is automatically entered in a drawing to win a fabulous trip for two to New York. If you slept through the moment when the millionth comment was entered, you didn't miss anything and you didn't lose, necessarily. So keep on talking. But shhhhh, don't tell anyone: you only need to make one comment to be entered, and more comments don't increase your odds.
I'm jealous. RichardDawkins.net is banned in Turkey. Turkish viewers who attempt to read it get a blank screen with the words "Access to this site has been denied by court order" across the middle. The Turkish courts outlawed the site for this shocking post. What do I have to do to get equal ire? *OK, at least one up.
Palin scares me, but what worries me more is that we will screw up again and hand the executive office over to another gang of losers, and we can't afford that anymore. Now look at the open thread I set up last night, and you'll see why I'm concerned. What did people do? They got distracted by irrelevancies, such as the opportunity to exercise a little macho sexism, and then that turned into a nasty, full-blown knife fight with everyone snarling at each other. This is exactly what the Republicans want, writ small on this little tiny island of the blogosphere. That's not how we're going to…
Scienceblogs.com is about to hit one of those arbitrary round-number milestones: sometime soon, someone will make the one millionth comment. Our generous Seed overlords wish to mark this event with celebrations all over the world, and are planning to bestow upon us small sums of money for the purpose of purchasing refreshments at gatherings of bloggers and readers near the places where our physical forms abide. In other words, we get to have a party and Seed will pay for the beer. So Greg Laden and I are going to organize a joint party — if I tried to have one in Morris, the contrast with my…
His blog is three years old, which as we all know means he has at last emerged from the terrible twos and has reached that period of maximal cuteness. He's a bit disappointed that the California legislature didn't issue an official proclamation, so he'll have to settle for a mere pharyngulation.
Another willing victim has been absorbed into the empire: Blake Stacey, the guy I want by my side in a gunfight (we're still waiting for Ben Goldacre to release the embarrassing photos of that incident), has brought his blog into the SciencBlogs fold. Check out the new Science After Sunclipse.
We must all welcome Bitch Ph.D. to the ranks of bloggers who have twisted Bill Donohue's panties. Congratulations!
Say hello to the newest member of Scienceblogs, Built on Facts. It's about physics! I guess that's OK, even if it isn't biology.
Finally, after months of silence, my old server at pharyngula.org lives again. It turns out that all my head-desking was for nought — the reason it was offline is that it had been intentionally blocked on suspicion of harboring illicit p2p activity. They just forgot to mention it. Anyway, all anybody will really care about there is that my daughter's blog, Lacrimae Rerum, is back online now.
Since some people were envious that I singled out one blog earlier today, here's your opportunity: leave your url in the comments here, say a little bit about why your blog is worthy of my attention, and I'll toss it onto the blogroll. Attention for everyone! Caveats: for technical reasons, your blog must have an rss feed/syndication. I reserve the right to ignore your blog if I don't like it. Even if you get on my blogroll, I do turn it over regularly, so there's no guarantee I'll keep it there for long.
OK, OK, I noticed. This will only work once, you know, and subsequent notices will require more!
If you're looking for more members of my tribe, here's a a list of The Top 100 Liberal Arts Professor Blogs. There's no indication of how they determined that these were "top" blogs, or what a "top" blog is (there is some sexual innuendo we could indulge in there), and strangely, Aetiology is classified as a psychology blog…it was probably compiled by a liberal arts professor. Anyway, you can find some interesting blogs here!
If you've been wondering about the mysterious presentiments and portents at The Loom and Bad Astronomy, wonder no more: just head on over to blogs at Discover Magazine page, and lo, there they are. It looks like every print magazine in the universe is realizing that they need a stable of bloggers to provide continuous, dynamic content, and Discover has poached our very own Carl Zimmer, which is sad to say for us. They got Phil, too, but that isn't such a big deal. I'm sure he came cheap. Still, this is a good thing overall — I'm all for expanding the universe of science blogging. (via Tangled…