Blog housekeeping

Today is the last day that ScienceBlogs will exist. Sometime today the site will go into read-only mode. A few days later, it will disappear completely from the Internet. It's a sad thing to contemplate after all these years. Whatever happened later, I will always be grateful for the start in blogging I got there. But that's the past. The future is here: respectfulinsolence.com Some work remains to be done with the site, and I am not ready to produce new posts for it yet while these odds and ends remain to be taken care of. Due to a confluence of events in addition to still having to tweak…

Here's a brief update on the move, announced last week. Things are progressing, and most of my old material has been transferred to the new blog, which is located at respectfulinsolence.com. Of course, there are still some things to tweak and fix, which is why, given how insanely busy this week is going to be, given my impending trip to CSICon on Thursday afternoon, I've decided to hold off on writing new material for the new blog until sometime next week, probably November 1 or 2. I'm just gratified that there are so many of you who are still checking back and commenting. Please be patient.…

Well, QEDCon is over, and this box of blinky lights is on its way back across the pond to its home in the US, having had an excellent time imbibing skepticism from its (mostly) British and European partners in skepticism. Before I left, I made a somewhat cryptic remark about "major changes" to this blog coming up. Well, the cat's out of the bag, so to speak. Basically, Scienceblogs is shutting down at the end of the month. I still remain grateful for the opportunity Scienceblogs offered me. I wouldn't be as prominent as I am now without it. However, unfortunately, Scienceblogs has barely…

As you probably noticed, I didn't manage a post yesterday. Nor did I manage one today, other than this. That's because I was busy preparing for QEDCon, where I will be on a panel and giving a talk, and, of course, putting together my talk. As I write this, I'm horrendously jet lagged; so I probably couldn't write much that's coherent anyway. Consequently, there likely won't be any new posts until next week. I will take a moment, however, to mention that there will be significant changes to this blog in the near future. It's a process that will likely take a couple of weeks, and I'll update…

As you can see, I don't have a new post ready for today. I attribute that to having been so busy at NECSS over the weekend that, by the time my wife and I got back on Monday late afternoon, we were pretty much beat. So I decided to do the American thing and take July 4 completely off, which means no post today. I'd like to thank the NECSS staff for managing to put together a fantastic conference under very trying conditions. There was a fire in the basement of the building where the hall where NECSS was scheduled to be held is located, which caused some smoke damage to the air conditioning…

So far, our vacation has been going quite well. We've hit two European cities, with today and tomorrow left where I am now and then on to the last one on Tuesday. Obviously, I haven't been paying nearly as much attention to this blog (or political news out of the US) as I normally do. It has been lovely. I'll be bummed out to have to go back to work on June 19. Unfortunately, the remaining powers that be over at Sb seem to have done something to the blog. Search functions don't always work right, and—I'm not sure about this—some of my posts from years ago appear to have disappeared (or to be…

By the time you read this, I will have arrived at an undisclosed location somewhere in Europe. My 25th wedding anniversary is today, and to celebrate my wife and I planned a nearly two-week vacation flitting about Europe. I won't announce where exactly, given that I've irritated a couple of European cranks in recent months, but those of you who are Facebook friends or who follow me on Twitter will likely soon see mentions and/or photos of where we're vacationing. As this day approached, I contemplated what to do with the blog. I thought about just shutting it down for two weeks, but hesitated…

In case anyone's interested, the reason that there was no post today is because we had a rather massive windstorm here in the Detroit area that left 800,000 without power. Unfortunately, that number included my wife and me. I valiantly tried to take care of my blogging addiction last night, as the temperature in the house plunged to the 50s. With nothing but residual battery on my laptop and mobile hotspot from my phone I ended up giving up in order to save battery charge, particularly on the phone. Given that the power is still out and I'll be surprised if we get it back before tomorrow or…

Happy Holidays to all from everyone's favorite box of blinky lights. See you all on Monday. I'll still be checking occasionally for comments that need to be released from the moderation queue but won't be particularly active otherwise. Until then, I leave you with Tim Minchin:

Wow. I guess time really does fly when you're having fun. In fact, it flies so fast that I don't even notice when a major anniversary (or, if you will, blogiversary). Remember how I've been mentioning that I can't believe it's been almost ten years since I started doing this? I've been droppoing these little remarks here and there over the last few months not out of any sort of plan, but rather because I really couldn't believe that I had been at this almost ten years. In fact, I couldn't believe it so much that I actually missed my tenth blogiversary. No, seriously. I really did. It was…

Today, I'm winging my way to sunny Las Vegas. Yes, in the middle of summer, when southern Nevada's weather is most like an oven, I will be there. The reason? I'll be doing a workshop and a panel with fellow supporters of science-based medicine at The Amazing Meeting. I don't know how many of my readers will be there, but if you're there and see me hanging out at the Del Mar or in the hall between sessions, feel free to introduce yourself. For everyone else, I guess we'll have to consider this an open thread. Don't worry. I plan on doing some blogging while I'm away, but it might be more…

As seems to happen more frequently, Orac has had his attention wholly taken up by contemplating a black hole. (Actually, he's at a medical conference on quality care in breast cancer.) Consequently, after a four and a half hour drive to the hotel, dinner out with the conference staff, and preparing for his talk, he didn't have time to deliver the Insolence you all know and crave. So he's asking you—yes, you!—to create your own Insolence. That's right. It's open thread day, although I do want there to be a bit of guidance. Are there any particular topics or targets deserving of Orac's loving…

The title says it all. I was too beat last night after a hard day in the OR to get the Tarial cells fired up to produce a daily dose of the Insolence you all know and love (or, if you're an antivaccinationist or quack, hate). It happens occasionally, but, fortunately for the universe. not too often. So I guess it means it's open thread time. Oh, and there have been somethings happening that I've meant to comment on but somehow haven't gotten around to, which means I'm probably good for posts for the next few days, but if you think you can catch my attention with something else and knock some…

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…

As I mentioned yesterday, Orac is currently away at an undisclosed location that is someplace warm. He is there, taking a rare pre-solstice break, preparing for the Mayan apocalypse that is to come on the 21st of this month. (Actually, he's recharging his Tarial cell, the better to be prepared for the utter nonsense that is to come in 2013, given that there is, at the very minimum, going to be another Stanislaw Burzynski hagiography released early in the year.) In the meantime, as I mentioned yesterday, most, if not all, of the posts this week will appear...familiar. At least, they might be…

Something came up that made me think it would be a good idea to mention a couple of features of the new WordPress template, just in case anyone missed them when I mentioned them before. I apologize to any who might find this repetitive, but there do appear to be some newbies here; so I think it's worth a quick repeat. A commenter who borders on trollish wrote: One thing I forgot. I wanted to congratulate you and the team for closing ‘Evolution and Medicine’ just when you did, leaving the impression that I am EXTREMELY dangerous. Well, I’m not in the least little bit dangerous, but it’s…

I just thought I'd give a brief update on the transition to the new blog platform. After nearly a month, things have finally settled down, although I'm still bugging the powers that be about some of the problems that still exist. One thing I have noticed over the last day is that one of our "favorite" trolls has been trying to crash the party. Thanks to my turning on the setting "Comment author must have a previously approved comment," sockpuppet activity is way down because every time someone invents a new sockpuppet I have to approve it. And, of course, I don't approve sockpuppet comments;…

I felt a brief update on the blog status is in order because the National Geographic overlords have actually rolled out some improvements on Friday. First, the Last 24 Hours feed is reportedly working again, although, quite honestly, when I just checked it it appeared not to be working. The funny thing was, it did appear to be working yesterday. Oh, well. One good thing that is working is that the tags for the number of comments, Facebook "likes," Tweets, etc., are showing up on the main page of the blog, as they should. I am much happier about this now. Unfortunately, still missing in action…

The day is here. Time to throw the switch. What do I mean? I've been mentioning that I wanted to turn on the option that states, "Comment author must have a previously approved comment." What that means is that any new commenter's first comment will automatically go to moderation. I'll approve it (unless it's spam or I suspect it's a sockpuppet), and then you'll be able to comment normally. The reason I want to turn this option on is to make it more difficult for morphing sockpuppets to disrupt the conversation. I'm also tired of so much spam getting through. Never having used this option…

...the long-awaited migration to WordPress, promised ever since NatGeo took over: Notice: ScienceBlogs.com will be migrating to a new publishing platform starting on the evening of Monday, May 21 at 7 PM Eastern Standard Time. Please do not add any comments or posts between then and Tuesday afternoon. We will update this page when maintenance is complete and normal blog activity can resume. More recently, we were informed: Please plan to make any posts on the Moveable Type platform before 7 pm ET; otherwise they are unlikely to be moved to the WordPress platform during tonight's "catch-up"…