Blogging
emjohnson | December 16, 2009Congratulations on four years of blogging to Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology (he's also the reigning deity behind Four Stone Hearth) and Abel Pharmboy of Terra Sigillata (who celebrated his yesterday). Here's to many more!
emjohnson | December 16, 2009
The blogosphere's best (and only) anthropology blog carnival has just been posted at Anthropology in Practice. Krystal has collected together some fascinating posts that are sure to titillate the intellect and get those cultural juices flowing.
aardvarchaeology | December 16, 2009Today is my fourth birthday as a blogger! (Here's my first entry from 2005.) I see myself as the proprietor of and main contributor to a small daily paper on subjects that interest me. And I am enjoying myself! Trafficwise, the mean number of unique readers per day has been as follows.
2006: 157 daily readers
2007: 852 daily readers
2008: 937 daily readers
2009: 714 daily readers (update 3 Jan)
These stats might suggest that the blog is ailing, but actually the mean values for '07 and '08 are skewed by huge spikes on a single entry each for those years (here and here). If we looked at the…
emjohnson | December 15, 2009This week may be sporadic as I focus on my graduate work, so here are the top ten posts from November as chosen by readers:
#1 - I Am Extremely Terrified of Chinese People, But I'm Not Racist
This cracks me up, in more ways than one.
#2 - Reciprocity and the Anthropology of Organ Transplants
Thanks to the readers of Mental Floss who found this one of interest.
#3 - University of Illinois Graduate Students Vote to Strike
By the way, they won.
#4 - Breaking the Chain: Ardipithecus Is Not A Missing Link
This would have been my top choice, but what do I know?
#5 - The Gay Animal Kingdom Should…
clock | December 12, 2009Last year, at ScienceOnline09, it appears that the overarching theme of the meeting emerged, and it was Power, in various meanings of the word.
This year, looking at the titles and descriptions of the sessions on the Program, the keyword of the meeting will be Trust. Again, in various meanings of that word: how do you know who to trust (e.g., journalists, scientists and press officers), and how do you behave online in order to be trusted. The debate over recent hacking of e-mails concerning climate change also hinges on the trust and how language affects the perception of who is trustworthy.…
emjohnson | December 10, 2009Sharon Astyk is a writer, teacher and small farmer living in rural upstate New York and now writes at Casaubon's Book, after the character in the George Eliot novel Middlemarch who attempts to put everything in history within a single narrative. She writes and speaks frequently about peak oil, climate change and depletion issues. Here is a sample from one of her latest posts. In bemoaning the so-called "Danish text" that would allow rich nations to produce twice the carbon pollution as poor ones she writes:
This should not surprise us - at every level our energy and environmental process…
sciencewoman | December 9, 2009When I began to blog almost 5 years ago, I wanted to share stories of my graduate school experience with other women scientists in the hopes that we could form a virtual support network for each other. Back then it took me weeks to find even one other woman doing the same thing with a blog. Today, there is a whole community of women blogging about their experiences in science and engineering, from undergraduates to tenured faculty. A google search of "woman science blog" or similar will point to some prominent blogs and from there a newbie blog reader can use blog rolls and comment threads…
laelaps | December 8, 2009Long before I signed up with ScienceBlogs.com I started blogging on the website ProgressiveU.org as part of the "Blogging For Progress" scholarship contest. I was one of the winners selected for the fall of 2006, and some of the folks at ProgressiveU recently caught up with me about what I have been up to since then. Science blogging, the public's fascination with dinosaurs, "Ida", Written in Stone, and more covered in the two-part interview, which can be viewed here and here. Enjoy!
emjohnson | December 7, 2009The twice monthly premiere science blog carnival has just been posted at Mauka to Makai. Many of your favorite science bloggers have been included (as well as yours truly). Make sure to stop in and prepare to be amazed.
laelaps | December 7, 2009
Via PHD comics.
Blogging might be a little light here over the next few days. I have only one week left to tune-up the initial draft of Written in Stone before sending it off to my editor for comments, so the pressure is on. The entire manuscript will be finished by the end of January (and then it will be time to finish those papers I have been working on and the proposal for book #2).
Photos of the day and little tidbits will pop up now and then, but every time I get the compulsion to write a new essay I am going to turn that energy to editing Written in Stone instead. Posts at Dinosaur…
laelaps | December 6, 2009No doubt you have heard the news by now. ScienceBlogs is teaming up with National Geographic "for a big, sciencey love-in." We ScienceBloggers will get access to some NG photos and video while NG will get some cross-promotion here, though I am not sure when all of this will start to be put in effect.
I am of two minds about the partnership. On the one hand I am looking forward to picking through the material NG makes accessible and the potential writing opportunities the partnership might provide. At the very least there will be more to blog about.
On the other hand, however, I am concerned…
clock | December 4, 2009If you follow @ScienceBlogs on Twitter, you may have seen a cryptic tweet yesterday, just saying:
ScienceBlogs will soon be making a very exciting announcement - so stay tuned!
SciBlings (who by then knew what the news was going to be, but were asked to keep it under the wraps until the official announcement) had some fun teasing everyone else - here are some examples:
RT @ScienceBlogs: ScienceBlogs will soon be making a very exciting announcement - so stay tuned! (We are ALL Belle de Jour)
RT @ScienceBlogs: ScienceBlogs will soon be making a very exciting announcement - stay tuned! (We plan…
aardvarchaeology | December 4, 2009The eighty-first Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Spider Monkey Tales. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Krystal at Anthropology in Practice. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is in less than a month, on 30 December. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.
jdupuis | December 4, 2009Announced today:
Dear Readers,
It is our great pleasure to bring you news of an exciting new partnership, starting today, between ScienceBlogs and National Geographic.
ScienceBlogs and National Geographic have at their cores the same ultimate mission: to cultivate widespread interest in science and the natural world. Starting today, we will work together to advance this common mission through new content, applications, and initiatives. We will bring acclaimed voices from National Geographic into our rich discussion on ScienceBlogs, and National Geographic will invite their worldwide audience…
aardvarchaeology | November 30, 2009The 81st Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Spider Monkey Tales tomorrow, Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to me or Michelle, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The carnival needs hosts. It's a great way to get some traffic and visibility in the anthro/archaeo bloggyspheroid. The next open slot is on 30 December. Drop me a line!
clock | November 29, 2009
The nicest post about ScienceOnline2010 to date was penned yesterday by Arikia Millikan, the former Overlord of Seed Scienceblogs.com (the image above is by her as well).
At the conference, Arikia will co-moderate the session on Web Science and I already introduced her here.
In her awesome post she compared the meeting to the Bonnaroo concerts. w00t! She writes:
For those on the forefront of the development of the Web, the World Wide Web conference was an event that educated, inspired and forged partnerships by connecting people whose paths would otherwise never cross…
clock | November 28, 2009The application deadline for the NESCent blogging competition and travel award to ScienceOnline2010 is December 1, 2009. So hurry up - see the contest conditions and entries so far and meet the judges.
So, hurry up. Write (or choose an existing) post in the area of evolutionary biology and send it in. Two lucky winners will get travel grants to ScienceOnline2010. Yes, we are full, and there are 101 people on the waiting list. But the two NESCent winners have their spots saved just for them!