Blogging
awild | February 2, 2009Where do all the cool kids hang out?
The Nature Blog Network, apparently. NBN hosts a directory of science/nature blogs sorted by category and traffic rank.  It's a great place to trawl for new reading fodder.
sciencewoman | February 2, 2009The February Scientiae is up at Fairer Science. Pat picked a great theme for this month's carnival "Our Dreams for a Better World." Go check out all the great ideas and then let's get to work turning them into reality.
And now for an exciting announcement, DNLee of Urban Science Adventures is kicking off a new monthly carnival focused on Diversity in Science.
Blogs of every genre are invited to write a special feature post about a person who is a pioneer and/or innovator in any of the amazing fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Tell us all about him/her?
How…
sciencewoman | February 1, 2009Another valiant attempt to combine motherhood, teaching prep, and watching the superbowl. Last year I made it to the third quarter before giving up (i.e., Minnow needed my attention for the rest of the evening). Let's see if this year goes any better.
6:22 pm: The TV has been on for about 15 minutes with the various pre-game antic. We shut it off because it's distracting Minnow from eating dinner.
6:29 pm: I'm changing a poopy diaper during opening kickoff. Minnow decides she wants to wear underwear for the next round.
The over-turned first touchdown: I'm dishing up home made apple pie and…
ddobbs | February 1, 2009In an interesting essay at Slate's The Big Money, Jill Priluck argues that book authors must "transcend their words and become brands" if they're to sell books. Andrew Sullivan agrees :
My own view is that the publishing industry deserves to die in its current state. It never made economic sense to me; there are no real editors of books any more; the distribution network is archaic; the technology of publishing pathetic; and the rewards to authors largely impenetrable. I still have no idea what my occasional royalty statements mean: they are designed to be incomprehensible, to keep the…
clock | January 31, 2009Hubs on Nature Network are multiplying. First, there was a Boston hub, then a London hub, and now a brand new New York City hub. Toronto and Berlin are itching to be the next.
On the other hand, the Research Triangle group is still pretty small. I think it's due to a different geography. Boston, London and NYC are huge cities with lots of people, including many scientists and bloggers. The areas outside of those cities - the 'countryside' - are really not that relevant to the sizes of those hubs - add a few people here or there.
On the other hand, North Carolina is a large state, in area and…
clock | January 31, 2009
skippy and Jonn Swift and Blue Gal are spearheading the Blogroll Amnesty Day (read the detailed instructions in there) again this year.
This weekend, a long weekend starting today and lasting four days, you are supposed to use the above logo, link to the Blogroll Amnesty Day post and link to five blogs that have either smaller traffic or narrower reach than you, or at least are new and unknown to your readers. Then e-mail your permalink to skippy.
Let's promote the new and smaller voices that you think should be known by a wider audience!
I could, of course, list 50 or 500, but I'll stick to…
aardvarchaeology | January 30, 2009The fifty-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Very Remote Period Indeed. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 11 March. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. No need to be an anthro pro.
clock | January 28, 2009Stephanie Willen Brown, aka CogSci Librarian is moving to Chapel Hill!
Blogger meetup!
clock | January 27, 2009I think that my banner is the best banner ever and it's not going anywhere. But perhaps you can help Miriam or Scicurious and Evil Monkey if you feel artistic and are good with Photoshop....
clock | January 26, 2009Ain't it nifty?
Not to mention the brand-new scienceblogs.com shop (about which DrugMonkey is very excited).
So, what do you think? Pros? Cons? Likes? Dislikes?
awild | January 26, 2009Owing to a volume of incoming specimen requests, I've added a tab in the top menu for Myrmecology News to hold items like specimen requests and miscellaneous ant-related announcements so they don't scroll off the bottom of the blog too quickly.
If you've got something to post, please email me, alexwild -at- illinois.edu (but replace the "-at-" with @, of course).
clock | January 25, 2009How many of you have been blogging since June 1997?
Not many, I think. But danah boyd has. And she's been studying online social networks almost as long, first starting with Friendster, then moving on to MySpace and Facebook as those appeared on the horizon and became popular.
Recently, danah defended her Dissertation on this topic and, a few days ago, posted the entire Dissertation online for everyone to download and read - Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics (pdf):
Abstract: As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began…
sciencewoman | January 24, 2009Thanks so much to Propter Doc for helping me moderate the Transitions session at ScienceOnline09. Our goal for the session was to draft a list of "best practices" for handling your online presence as you move through personal and professional transitions in the off-line world. Thanks to all the participants in the session for offering up their advice, stories, and wisdom and helping us come up with just such a list. Propter Doc has now got the complete list posted on Lecturer Notes, but I'll offer up a few highlights here.
Be ready with an argument to support your blog (why it benefits you…
skookumchick | January 24, 2009ScienceWoman and PropterDoc coordinated a session at ScienceOnline 09 that provided space for people to talk about different transitions they have blogged through, and how they navigated or negotiated those transitions. Both coordinators have gone through some job transitions which have manifested themselves in their blogs in different ways:
ScienceWoman has gone from being a graduate student to a junior faculty member and has blogged through her pregnancy and now two years of her daughter's life, while PropterDoc has also changed jobs but also changed countries at the same time, and is…
clock | January 23, 2009Frank Swain just moved in this morning, so the boxes are still unpacked. You can see his old work on sciencepunk.com, Guardian Science Blog and Sence About Science, but from now on, he'll be writing on Science Punk, so go there and say Hello!
clock | January 22, 2009Every now and then I bump into a brand new science blog that immediately grabs my attention for some or other aspect of total coolness (or is it 'hotness' these days?). And then I want to promote, promote, promote until everybody and their mother reads that blog. Here is the latest brilliant discovery I made - FYI: Science!
Check out some of the first posts, for instance:
Of pedigrees and people
....But those mutations have to come from somewhere... specifically, my parents.
So my parents had to know about all of this. I sat them down and explained everything to them. I drew them a pedigree…
awild | January 21, 2009Not much time to blog today. Instead, some links:
Roberto Keller has wonderfully detailed SEMs of the clypeal pegs of amblyoponine ants.
Douglas Adams' Jeremy Lee's view of Australia is spot on, except for the bit about snakes, which are worse than Adams Lee thinks. (h/t John Wilkins)
The New Scientist lists their most stunning images of 2008. (via Ainsley Seago, whose beetle cuticle comes in at #5)
Christopher Taylor ponders the evolution of insect metamorphosis.
Igor Siwanowicz is, in my eyes, the finest insect portrait photographer working today. Check out an ad campaign of his (h/t…
sciencewoman | January 20, 2009The real world intervened (i.e., I got a nasty cold) with my best intentions to provide more thorough blogging coverage of the wonderful conference (hi everyone!). Maybe someday I'll manage to work my thoughts from the sessions into coherent blog posts, but I know I'm pretty bad about promising and not delivering results (hello, the time-off post. It's 1/2 written even).
But here are some snapshots of the conference. And let me just say that Alice is even more wonderful in person than she is on blog. She is way cool. No wonder they gave her a trading card at the WISE event on Friday.
(Hey,…
laelaps | January 19, 2009
This blog has been a little quiet over the last few days, but I was simply having too much fun at the Science Online '09 conference to find the time to sit down and blog. I got to meet some of my favorite bloggers, too many to mention them all here (I would undoubtedly forget some if I tried to make a list), but I was certainly glad to catch up with old friends and make some new ones.
I didn't go just to hang out with other science writers, though. The primary reason I was at the conference was to co-moderate two sessions. The first, on using the web to teach college science with Andrea…
laelaps | January 18, 2009
It took about 8 and 1/2 hours, but Tracey and I made it back to New Jersey safe & sound. I have a lot to share about my experience at the conference, but for now I figured I would just share one of my favorite photos from the NC Zoo. More tomorrow...