Weblogs
pharyngula | February 1, 2008Everyone should go say hello to our new scibling, Green Gabbro. What is this? Rocks? Next you'll tell me there are scientists who study clouds, or oceans, or flaming balls of gas.
pharyngula | January 28, 2008We're about to witness a monstrous event here on Scienceblogs.
Omnibrain: weird neuroscience from an inveterate smart-ass.
Retrospectacle: Parrots and hair cells with Shelley passing out the cookies.
Both are young graduate students in neuroscience, and both have decided to shut down their blogs…and
restart them as one freaky hybrid. They aren't going away, they're anastomosing.
There is one obstacle. They don't know what to call this brand new twisted experiment in blogging, so they're running a contest to name the new blog (they don't mention it, but they're also going to need a redesigned…
pharyngula | January 25, 2008Sure enough, we actually have a new scibling in the borgosphere: DrugMonkey. It's OK if you encourage them.
pharyngula | January 17, 2008One of our regulars here is Hank Fox, and some of you may have noticed his website has been rather static lately. Check again! He's back at it, and in case you're looking for a professional proofreader and editor, he's offering his services online.
pharyngula | January 15, 2008I beat poor Phil Plait in another of those "best science blog" awards. Of course, we both creamed Ars Technica, Gizmodo, and Endgadget — those guys must not have even noticed the competition. Hey, I barely did.
pharyngula | January 14, 2008The always perspicacious Chris Clarke is talking about us, in a post where he talks about the pleasures and perils of managing comments on a blog.
I'd be lying if I said I never appreciated a good bar brawl of a comment thread. And some blogs make the free-for-alls work: Pharyngula comes to mind as an example of a wonderful, worthwhile blog with a laissez-faire comment policy. But few blogs have that winning Pharyngular combination of high traffic, sharp focus, distinct blogger personality, and devoted constructive regulars. The chance of a typical low-to-mid-traffic blog ripening into…
pharyngula | January 5, 2008It's another meaningless internet award thingumabob—Pharyngula is up for Best Science Blog against my perennial nemesis, Bad Astronomy. It's also up for most controversial blog, against some rather ugly company. Vote or don't — I'm just marveling that I'm in the same category with Perez Hilton.
pharyngula | January 4, 2008…the newest Scienceblog, A Good Poop. If you've like weird medical science and all the strange things that go into and out of people, it's the blog for you.
Cue the obvious jokes in the comments…
pharyngula | January 3, 2008I get to do some more traveling this morning, so I'll leave you with an off-the-wall question: since Denyse O'Leary has taken over most of the posting on Uncommon Descent, and since most of her posts link to some other in her network of poorly trafficked, repetitious blogs (and sometimes she links to a post that links to one of the others!), does this mean UD is now officially a link farm?
pharyngula | January 2, 2008There's a group blog for battling creationists (The Panda's Thumb), a group blog for fighting the climate change denialists (RealClimate), and now there's one targeting quacks: Science Based Medicine. Add it to your bookmarks and newsfeeds!
pharyngula | December 28, 2007Jon Swift asked for various blogs to submit a "best of" post for his end-of-year list, and it's a clever way to get an idea of a blog's content and introduce yourself to some interesting blogs. My entry is a science post, but even that one consigns me to an eternity in hell.
pharyngula | December 21, 2007Those canny publicizers at Seed have come up with a ScienceBlogs Latest Posts Widget — if you've got a blog, you can put this bit of code on it and advertise Scienceblogs for us!
pharyngula | December 21, 2007I already mentioned that I'm not a big fan of traffic rankings for blogs, but despite the focus on traffic numbers, this is at least a subjectively filtered list of popular liberal/progressive blogs. The ranking isn't as interesting as the fact that it's a good list of politically copacetic blogs.
I also see that all I have to do is increase my traffic 10 or 20 fold to catch up with Daily Kos!
pharyngula | December 21, 2007So go give them to her. Little Miss Shelley is almost out of the larval stage, and is well over half my age now.
P.S. I hope Karmen is bringing cookies to the party.
pharyngula | December 20, 2007There's this new service, Wikio, that is trying to rank various blogs. It's very pretty, but I have to say that ranking is entirely the wrong approach — it simply perpetuates a falsely hierarchical view of the web and acts as a positive feedback system to reinforce popularity; blogs are promoted as popular because they are popular, making them more popular. It's nerds with computers realizing that gosh, traffic and links are easy to measure, so let's provide a pigeonholing service that sorts by the simplest, most basic tool we can invent.
This one at least tries to add a qualitative estimate…
pharyngula | December 18, 2007Everyone should congratulate the Scientific Indian and spouse on the birth of their daughter — and on their excellent taste in names!
pharyngula | December 17, 2007The 2007 Medical Weblog Awards are accepting nominations — and they're giving out prizes to the winners this year. Get over there and tell 'em who your favorites are.
pharyngula | December 14, 2007I guess the science bloggers won't be getting Time's Blog of the Year Award then (which is nice, considering that other Minnesota blog that won, once upon a time.)
I'm fibbing, anyway. Michael Lemonick doesn't really hate us, I think he was just trying to get a rise out of us. Success!
pharyngula | December 11, 2007Our puissant overlords are considering further directions in which to expand after their opening of ScienceBlogs.de, so now they're running a poll: let them know what languages you know and what language the next Sb should be in. They appreciate your input. It simplifies the assimilation.
pharyngula | December 10, 2007Scienceblogs is expanding in a new direction — they've opened a new counterpart, Scienceblogs — Wissenschaft, Kultur, Politik. Take a look; it's got the familiar Scienceblogs layout, and it's got a new collection of bloggers, and it's all in German. Very cool! I can only stumble through the titles and get the rough gist of what they're talking about, but I think there are a few readers here who are much more comfortable with the language and can have a grand time over there.
And if you find anything especially good, let me know — I'd like to see some more international cross-linking going on.