And now for something completely different. Well, not exactly. It's just that I have an announcement to make that is for your benefit. Our (usually) benevolent overlords have informed us that they are going to be moving ScienceBlogs over to a new server beginning sometime after midnight tonight:
ScienceBlogs will be moving to a new server environment on Wednesday, November 20th. Although the site will be available throughout the transition, you should not post, edit, draft, comment, or do anything else in WordPress after Tuesday evening, or your work may be lost. Once the new server environment is live on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, I will post an update and business can resume as usual.
A day off! The timing is actually quite good, because I have a talk to give tomorrow evening, and I'm not quite done with my slides yet. I'll let you know when the all-clear has been given, but because this talk is in the evening and I'll driving about 90 miles to give this talk tomorrow late afternoon, I might be later than Wes in giving the all-clear. So if you're really antsy, and can't wait to get back into the commenting fray (and you know who you are), you might want to monitor the official ScienceBlogs Page 3.14, where the announcement will appear first.
You'll also have to forgive me if I have a bad feeling about this. I've been with ScienceBlogs for nearly eight years now, and I've never seen a server migration go without a hitch. Something always happens. I sure hope this time is different. Hopefully by early tomorrow afternoon, the migration will be complete, and we'll know. If anything happens, I will activate the mothballed original Respectful Insolence with the hideous template (what was I thinking at the time?) until this blog is up and running again.
In the meantime, smoke 'em if ya got 'em. I mean, you only have around three hours before the migration starts, and any words of wisdom you post to this blog after that run the risk of disappearing into the ether when the migration is complete.
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Orac: Drive carefully! The world needs you.
A server migration? Oh, those always go perfectly smoothly! Nothing to worry about.
:-P
Have a safe trip and wow 'em with your presentation, Orac.
Does this mean it's true that it is only possible to master one server?
I do so love IT pseudotechnical blob-word posturing, especially when prefaced by English constructions that assign agency to an abstraction. Will ScienceBlogs be hiring movers? Did it finally get sick of the landlord at its old place, where the clocks were always wrong and the plumbing constantly overflowed?
Well, more power to it then. If I were ScienceBlogs, I wouldn't even leave a forwarding address for those guys.
In other news, Jake Crosby has announced that the NVICP Congressional Hearing has been cancelled.
http://www.autisminvestigated.com/nvicp-hearing-cancelled/
As is to be expected these days, he's blaming Mark Blaxill.
This will probably be lost, but meh...
Rebecca, if that's true, maybe, MAYBE, members of Congress listened to reason (I know I wrote to my rep), and that's why it was cancelled, rather than because of the circle-jerk of conspiracy that Jake wrote about. Although it is funny to see them fracture from the inside out.
If it's true.
I've been on two message boards that have had server migrations, and it always
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NO CARRIER
Maybe the committee would instead try to do something constructive. Like maybe explore the role of FDA in vaccine safety.
I haven't given time to explore it, so I wonder: does FDA simply approve an application for a new vaccine and then leave the manufacturer to get on with it? Or do they regulate or conduct any kind of post-marketing surveillance?
You would think there was a pretty good argument for an additional level of scrutiny for vaccines, given who receives them and the social benefit involved.
I know that Neil Halsey and others have long argued that CDC has an institutional conflict of interest, and that there should be separate monitoring of vaccine safety. I would have thought FDA ought to have a unit, but maybe it does and I've just never heard of it.
Jeff, this has all been covered already. Please, please do more than watch that awful Rob Schneider video.
@Jeff - the FDA & CDC work in tandem on post-market surveillance (including manufacturing safety, plus monitoring for adverse reactions).
To say that there isn't an intensive focus on the safety profile of vaccines, is not to understand how they are created, regulated and monitored.....and parrots nothing bu a typical anti-vax talking point.
"is to not" damn, I can't type.
Aha! I see the migration happened and... this entry lost about 2/3 of the comments. Could have been worse!
Is it safe to come out yet?
@ #4 Chris
It's my experience that punters live to be appreciated, so here goes:
GROAN!!!
That was "punners"
(Autocorrect strikes again)
What a shame, Krebiozen made a funny.
Give it time; they've been expertly flipping the switch back and forth for hours, so it's been as likely as not that the old version will show up.
The "migration" appears to have broken G——le searches of the "site:scienceblogs.com/insolence" form, so there's that.
It's not as though anything of great importance happened and was discussed during the past 24 hours. :-)
It must have been very successful, as the comment tallies on the subject-tab pages made it through safely broken.
Well, since this is being treated as an open thread
http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2013/11/21/natural-cures-to-face-sa….
A sample of the article.
Have you tried opening up the hatch and blowing on it? It worked with the Nintendo...
"Have you tried turning it on and turning it off again???"
"Just restart services"
"No, its not a bug, its a new feature!!!"
How long until they collapse the wavefunction and we know which eigenstate this blog is in?
feature: n. bug with seniority.
Oy, and we're still missing comments from the last server migration...
or better yet....
"so, what are all these bolts for?"
Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2510966
Today's Google Doodle is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.
@Mark - I wonder if she saw that one coming?
@Lawrence: clearly not. She predicted she would die at age 88. She was 77. So - out by more than a decade.
I see that the IT monkeys have at least taken the trouble to reset the "slow down"-o-meter to a level, in the finest IT-monkey tradition, appropriate to those who don't actually use the platform.