Just what the world needs, right?
There are already carnivals for medical-type follk, general science folk, the godless, philosophers. There are already carnivals about birds, cats, dogs, general multicellular animals, invertebrates. But something is missing. Oh, yes. Those poor little creatures that are ruthlessly killed every day of our lives--the underappreciated, the underloved, the oft-maligned--the animalcules. This grave injustice will now be corrected.
Submission guidelines
One, the post must focus on a microbe--bacteria, parasite, virus, fungus, etc. Prokaryotic or eukaryotic, we don't discriminate. The posts can be light-hearted or serious, research-heavy stuff. New info on a pathogenic virus? A soil bacterium being put to a new use? More microbial toys? Send it along.
Two, the post should be well-written, informative, entertaining, and substantial--that is, more than just a link to a story or another site with a half-dozen words of commentary.
Third, the host reserves the right to decline entries that don't meet the guidelines.
Fourth, for now at least, we'll try this thing every other Thursday, beginning this Thursday, February 9th. Sure, it's short notice, but I hear through the grapevine that most of y'all send your links at the last minute anyway. I'll host it here for now, and depending on how/if it takes off, I'll take other volunteers to host it.
Fifth, one entry per person for each edition of the carnival.
Sixth, rules are subject to change at my whim. Woman's prerogative and all that.
Entry submission
Send me a message (aetiology AT gmail DOT com) with a link to your post and "Animalcules" as the subject line by 11 PM EST Wednesday prior to the carnival. Assuming I get some submissions, I'll assemble 'em and post them on Thursday.
Questions/comments? Send 'em to me at the address above (or, y'know, just use the little comment feature below...)
Schedule and archive
Volume 1, Issue 1: February 9th, 2006 hosted at Aetiology.
Volume 1, Issue 2: February 23rd, 2006 to be hosted at Aetiology. "No free lunch" theme.
Volume 1, Issue 3. March 9th, 2006 to be hosted at Aetiology. PZ birthday edition.
Volume 1, Issue 4. March 23, 2006 to be hosted at Science and Politics.
Volume 1, Issue 5. April 6, 2006 to be hosted at Complex Medium.
Volume 1, Issue 6. April 20, 2006 hosted at The Biotech Weblog.
Volume 1, Issue 7. May 4, 2006 hosted at Discovering Biology in a Digital World.
Volume 1, Issue 8. May 18, 2006 hosted at Aetiology.
Volume 1, Issue 9. June 15, 2006 to be hosted at Aetiology.
Volume 1, Issue 10. July 13, 2006 to be hosted at Science Matters.
Volume 1, Issue 11. August 17, 2006 to be hosted at Snail's Tales.
Volume 1, Issue 12. September 14, 2006 to be hosted at Viva la evolucion!
Lovely, lovely! Are there niches if nobody is filling them? Hell yeah! And you just filled one obvious one.
I hope you pick a really cool name for the carnival (not the "Carnival of...") and have somebody design a cool logo we can use as buttons (several other carnivals have them made on World Of Blog).
postsmustalsobetinywithnowastedspace.
Oh, BTW, since it is the first edition and the time is short, are old posts eligible just this one time?
Tempting...I may get dragged back into blogging after all!
coturnix--sure, old posts are fine. And I was thinking of just using "Animalcules" for the title. Too obscure?
PZ...don't tempt me. Absolute power corrupts--you never know what I might do! Bwa ha ha ha...
*Ahem*
Paul---*drag, drag...*
How about: "The Dancing Animalcules".
"I then most always saw, with great wonder, that in the said matter there were many very little living animalcules, very prettily a-moving. The biggest sort. . . had a very strong and swift motion, and shot through the water (or spittle) like a pike does through the water. The second sort. . . oft-times spun round like a top. . . and these were far more in number." In the mouth of one of the old men, Leeuwenhoek found "an unbelievably great company of living animalcules, a-swimming more nimbly than any I had ever seen up to this time."
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html
Tara,
Animalcules is the running title of Bernard Dixon's column in Microbe (used to be ASM news). I have no idea about copyright law, but i'd go with a slightly different name.
I'll write something for it, but no promises of quality...
Huh. I read that regularly and never noticed that.
There is a fine line between a post about a microbe and a post about a disease caused by that microbe (in case of microbes that cause diseases). Sometimes the disease is even named after the microbe (or vice versa). What's the policy? Is the disease enough, or does the post have to say something about the organism istelf?
I think it's going to have to be something we play by ear a bit, but I'll say that it has to say something about the actual organism. Like today, my post on bird flu in Nigeria--nay. A post describing the molecular biology of the influenza virus? Yay.
Hi.
Do you require the host of the festival be an actual science blogger, or can I step up? All I've got is a rarely-used (with the exception of the friend's list) livejournal that I have not yet dared to science-blog in, as I'm only a poor little Biology/Microbiology undergrad, but I'd love to play host if you need me.
Hi Tala,
Your journal looks fine. As long as you can create links to the post and it's on a site that's publically accessible, you're good to go. Just let me know a date preference.
April 6 or June 1 will likely work best. Whichever you need more, I suppose. :)
I like "Carnival of the Animalcules" (with either props or apologies to Camille Saint-Saens)!