Blogging
aardvarchaeology | October 27, 2008The fifty-second Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Greg Laden's blog. Archaeology and anthropology, and all dedicated to the memory of Bertrade de Montfort!
The oft-married Count Fulk IV of Anjou was married to the mother of his son in 1089, when the lovely Bertrade caught his eye. According to the chronicler John of Marmoutier, "The lecherous Fulk then fell passionately in love with the sister of Amaury of Montfort, whom no good man ever praised save for her beauty. For her sake, he divorced the mother of Geoffrey II Martel..." Bertrade and Fulk were married, and they became the…
clock | October 26, 2008The latest press release from ComScore - Huffington Post and Politico Lead Wave of Explosive Growth at Independent Political Blogs and News Sites this Election Season - has all sorts of interesting statistics about relative traffic, etc., of the top independent (i.e., unaffiliated with MSM) websites and blogs. One tidbit I found particularly interesting:
Looking at the demographic profiles for the top three sites, HuffingtonPost.com, Politico.com and DrudgeReport.com, one can conclude that visitors to these sites tend to be older, wealthier, and more likely to be male than the average U.S.…
sciencewoman | October 22, 2008I find it so refreshing that a bunch of guys are debating the value of anonymity/pseudonymity/identity and its relationship to trust as pseudonymous Abel Pharmboy and decloaked Dr. Pal prepare for their session at ScienceOnline09. I think that sometimes pseudonymity is considered a women's issue, because of concerns about harassment or easy identifiability of a woman blogging in a male-dominated field. I think Abel is raising some interesting questions about pseudonymous health blogging and how readers know whether to trust what they read.
But here's what going through my mind when I read…
clock | October 20, 2008This I first posted on June 24, 2004 on www.jregrassroots.org, then republished on August 23, 2004 on Science And Politics. I love re-posting this one every now and then, just to check how much the world has changed. What do you think? Was I too rosy-eyed? Prophetic?
In the beginning there were grunts, tom-tom drums, smoke signals, and the guy on the horse riding from village to village reading the latest King's Edict. That is Phase I in the evolution of media.
Phase II was ushered in by Gutenberg. Remember the beginning of Protestantism? Luther nailing copies of his pamhlet on the doors…
clock | October 20, 2008...you may not know that you can also find me on:
FriendFeed
Facebook
LinkedIn
Dopplr
Nature Network
Stumbleupon
Flickr
YouTube
clock | October 20, 2008Remember the College Blogging Scholarship? The one that Shelley almost won two years in a row? Well, it is happening again. The prize is $10,000. The deadline for submission is very tight - October 30th 2008, so you need to hurry up.
Among else, you need to know that each entrant has to be:
# U.S. citizen or permanent resident;
# Currently attending full-time in post-secondary education in the United States;
If you are an undergraduate or graduate student, sign up. If you read and like a blogger who is a student, sign her/him up.
Of course, I would like to see a science blogger win this…
clock | October 18, 2008I am back from the 4th ConvergeSouth, the do-not-miss Greensboro conference about the Web, blogging, journalism and community (and the model/inspiration for our own science blogging conferences, including the third one) . Big kudos to Sue Polinsky, Ed Cone and the cast of thousands for putting together the meeting again, making it better and better every year. And of course, thanks to Dave Hoggard for hosting the legendary BBQ with (even more legendary) banana pudding.
I rode to Greensboro with Kirk Ross and came back home with Anton Zuiker, having interesting conversations with each.
Dave…
clock | October 17, 2008Back from ConvergeSouth. Energized but exhausted. Time for bed. Forgot I had a camera with me so I only had one picture taken - this one, with Robert Scoble and myself, trying to make the FriendFeed logo with our fingers:
More ConvergeSouth microblogging on FriendFeed can be found here.
clock | October 16, 2008I am off to ConvergeSouth where there will be a fascinating Program.
Now, my session is entitled "Conquering Fear - Overcoming Social (Networking) Anxiety". If you walked into a session with this title, what would you expect to hear, want to hear, want to say?
clock | October 16, 2008Andrew Sullivan, who blogs on the vastly popular Daily Dish (one of the few sane conservatives out there and very informative and entertaining to read) just published a long essay in The Atlantic - Why I Blog? Worth your time and effort to read - just a short excerpt:
From the first few days of using the form, I was hooked. The simple experience of being able to directly broadcast my own words to readers was an exhilarating literary liberation. Unlike the current generation of writers, who have only ever blogged, I knew firsthand what the alternative meant. I'd edited a weekly print magazine…
laelaps | October 15, 2008UPDATE: Many, many thanks to everyone who donated today. I am pleased to say that the "Throw Us a Bone!!" project has been fully funded! There are still a few other projects that need your contribution, but I am very grateful to everyone who responded to this challenge so far.
It has been about two weeks since I started my DonorsChoose drive, and so far only one person has made any donations. I definitely appreciate that person's generosity, but I was really hoping to get some of these other projects funded!
Now, as Janet has noticed, one particular challenge is down to the wire. Called "…
laelaps | October 14, 2008I'm tired of being prevented from reading academic papers because of subscription walls. Both as a student and someone who loves to dig into the history of science, I often cast a wide net when I'm searching for information on a topic I want to know more about. At this very moment, for instance, I'm taking a break from writing a chapter of my book about birds and dinosaurs. In doing research for the chapter, I have come across a number of references that have been hard to come by, one of which is Alick Walker's 1972 Nature paper "New light on the Origin of Birds and Crocodiles."
Rutgers,…
aardvarchaeology | October 14, 2008
Dear Reader, it's been nearly a year since I asked you to press any buttons. If you like Aard, and haven't already done so, would you please do me the favour of pressing a few buttons in the left-hand column, right below my profile? Good grades make blogger happy! Thanks.
And while I'm at it: if you click on the headline of an Aard entry, you'll find a version of the entry with a little button at bottom right labelled "Share This". Clicking on it, you'll find a menu of social bookmarking sites. If every once in a while you read something here that you really like, I'd be most grateful if you…
laelaps | October 13, 2008This coming January I will have the pleasure of speaking at two discussion at Science Online '09; one on the history of science, and the other about using the web to teach science in college. You can have a look at the wiki pages for both talks here (history) and here (college science), but they will certainly change during the coming days and weeks.
I want to make sure the things that I will be talking about with my esteemed colleagues will be interesting and relevant, so if you have any ideas about what you would like to be discussed during these sessions, please chime in via the comments.…
clock | October 13, 2008Tomorrow is the time to publish your blog posts for the Open Access Day competition.
And tomorrow night is the deadline for two good carnivals: Praxis (October 15th on The Other 95%) and the Giant's Shoulders (October 15th on Second Order Approximation).
And if you missed it, there will be prizes for the biggest DonorsChoose donors.
clock | October 12, 2008Every year, when I go to ConvergeSouth (and I still need your help with my session this year), I look forward to seeing again some of my good blogospheric friends. And somewhere very, very high on the list of people I am most excited about seeing again, are Dan and Janet, journalists and bloggers from South Carolina who are regular, annual participants there.
Their blog Xark has been one of my regular reads for a few years now. So, I was astonishingly flattered when I went there the other day and saw my own face on top of the page! Yikes! What have I done?
Oh, Xarkers just thought they…
clock | October 9, 2008Go say Hello to the newest SciBling - John Wilbanks (who is also the Vice President of Science Commons), you can see his former blog here.
clock | October 8, 2008
Social Networking in Plain English
Related:
Wiki for beginners
Blogs for Beginners
laelaps | October 8, 2008On October 8, 2007, Laelaps launched at its new home here on ScienceBlogs. 365 days; 1,326 posts; and 5,131 comments later, I am still at it and hope to continue writing here for some time to come.
I'll save the meta for later, though. Keep your eyes peeled for a big announcement here in the next 24 hours or so.
If you really can't take the suspense, why not check out the my DonorsChoose challenge and throw a few bucks to some teachers in need? Two of the challenges have only about a week left to raise money for their projects, so if you can donate, please do.