A year ago I took a look at the surrounding landscape here at Sb, investigating which of the blogs were active – defined as which ones had seen an entry during the month up to 19 Jan '16. Now I've looked at the month up to 24 Jan '17. The result isn't great. Four blogs have gone quiet and three have re-awoken, bringing the total down to 15.
A particularly significant loss from the roster is Josh Rosenhouse's EvolutionBlog. This was one of the original Sb blogs in May of 2006, and Josh's farewell entry is dated 18 October 2016.
Not one new blog has been added to the roster in the past two years. You may wonder what the Sb Overlords are thinking about this. I sure do.
Here are the currently active ScienceBlogs (apart from the one you're reading). Check them out and drop them a few comments!
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And sadly some of the 'active' blogs are only intermittently active. It is a shame, Science Blogs is a good resource.
Thank you for the time you put in to your corner!
My pleasure, Jazzlet! I enjoy blogging a lot, although these days I do "Pieces Of My Mind" roundups thrice a month instead of the many short blog entries I used to do.
Some of the blog networks which spun off from ScienceBlogs do not seem to be doing well either ... lots of personal politics and breakaways. scienceblogs punkt de seems to have some active blogs, including ones which focus more on science than political advocacy (yes, those are linked, yadda yadda, but there is a big difference between a blog which is mostly about communicating what we know and do not know about nature, and a blog which is mostly about inspiring people to take political action). People seem to find my blog and get something from it even if I don't have lots of angry posts encouraging readers to feel superior to some hated other!
Things are really bad for researchers in USA, as there is a very real threat to funding now that the Donald is cutting the money to "liberal" stuff like science. And appointing kooks to senior positions everywhere.
Under those circmstances I can understand that researchers become activists from self-preservation instead of waiting for the luddites to do their worst.
For instance, the funding for the next US census will suffer huge cuts. And the census provides the statistical basis for hundreds of billions worth of federal spending, making it a really idiotic case of "penny wise and pound foolish".
(OT) Anthropologists uncover art by (really) old masters—38,000 year-old engravings https://phys.org/news/2017-01-anthropologists-uncover-art-masters38000-…
Birger@4: There is a lot more than that riding on the US census. Electoral district boundaries must be redrawn every ten years based on census results--this includes Congressional seats for any state with more than one representative in the House, as well as state legislatures and in many cases county, municipal, and school district offices. These districts are supposed to have equal population. But if somebody games the count to undercount the urban population, that can skew the results. And that's before we get into details like gerrymandering.
Hi Birger,
I don't talk about foreign politics on the Internet on other people's blogs, but I will say that the changes I observed were complete before the most recent American election or the British referendum. I have some theories of what went wrong, but I don't discuss those in writing at all (especially since people in the US and UK have enough to worry about right now!)
One of the Old Ones has turned up in China!
"Bag-like sea creature was humans' oldest known ancestor" https://phys.org/news/2017-01-bag-like-sea-creature-humans-oldest.html
I do wish that the blogs that have gone silent would have one last post, sort of a "so long and thanks for all the fish" so we know they're done.
Many bloggers don't seem to make that kind of definite decision. See for instance the four blogs here at Sb that were dead a year ago but are now live again.
OT:
Ancient DNA reveals 'continuity' between Stone Age and modern populations in East Asia https://phys.org/news/2017-02-ancient-dna-reveals-stone-age.html
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Daily Mash: 'Legally I can kill him', Queen confirms http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/
THE QUEEN has confirmed that if President Trump makes a state visit, she can kill him with a sword and nobody can touch her.
Too bad this is satire and not real news. I'm sure the queer old dean is much better than President Scheisskopf at diplomacy. The latter has managed the dubious achievement of making Australians of all political stripes cheer for their current, heretofore unpopular, PM. (John Massey, if you're out there, do you have a comment on this?)
He's not out here, Eric.
If he were, he would probably say that if Australians continue to support the ANZUS Treaty after this, they must be absolutely barking mad. They should instantly pull out of the refugee deal that they negotiated with Mr Obama, and simultaneously tell Trump that ANZUS is dead and buried. Not one more Australian serviceman is going to die in some distant war created by America in which Australia has no earthly interest. Goodbye.
But then he would predict that it is 100% certain this will not happen, and Australia will continue to risk letting Trump drag the country into a military confrontation in the South China Sea with China, its largest trading partner, the country that saved the Australian economy from disaster in 2008 and in the aftermath (a disaster which was created by the USA), thereby destroying Australia's trading relationship with China forever and destroying the Australian economy in the process. Because Australians are all barking mad; for totally mysterious reasons they hate Chinese when in reality they should love them, and they don't know who their real friends and real enemies are. They are just too plain stupid to figure it out. Slitty eyed Chicoms bad, mad dog Americans good. The Battle of the Coral Sea was a very long time ago, and even then, the Chinese were Australia's allies; it's time Australians realised it. But they won't, because they're mad and stupid.