Blogging
oracknows | May 21, 2007I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I recently noticed that one of my favorite medical bloggers, Flea, had completely deleted his blog. There's nothing there. It's gone, except for a blank Blogger blog. Apparently, too, Flea's not alone, as Kevin, MD points out.
I'm going to miss Flea, but I understand why he might have done it. As he had documented in the weeks leading up to the disappearance of his blog, he was being sued for malpractice. Indeed, I was amazed at how honest he had been about some of the pretrial preparations he was undergoing. It was great reading, but probably ill-…
ddobbs | May 3, 2007This makes me think of the old line about fading actors or writers when death brings them renewed attention: "Good career move." My post about leaving Seed's Scienceblogs and the conflict between blogging and more serious work got picked up and pondered by Andrew Sullivan at his Atlantic blogging home, as well as some other blogspots. Apparently this strikes a chord -- dissonant, and apparently in a minor key. It also shot my page-hits up to near-record highs; the only time I got more hits was when I wrote about sex. We won't explore here the possible links between writing about sex and…
oracknows | May 1, 2007I'm a bit late on this, given that the blog went live yesterday, but far be it from me not to welcome denialism blog to the ScienceBlogs universe. It's a promising new blog that in its couple of months of existence has already made an impact in the skeptical blogosphere. Also, Mark Hoofnagle, one of the bloggers responsible for it, has become a regular commenter around here.
I may not always agree with Mark and Chris about specific cases of what constitutes "denialism" (most of the time, but not always), but I do like their blog. Besides, if I ever agreed with everything a blogger wrote, I'd…
oracknows | April 12, 2007The answer is no, given his position on the Kathy Sierra case and the death threats she received and the online savaging to which she was subjected.
Kos attacks calls for a bloggers' code of conduct. This is actually the one point where I tend agree with him. It wouldn't help the situation and would be a muzzle on free speech, although I can understand why Sierra might have called for such a code. Unfortunately, it would not have stopped what happened to Sierra. If Kos had stopped there, I might actually have found myself in the uncomfortable position of actually agreeing with him on…
oracknows | March 29, 2007Apparently the guys over at Denialism.com have irritated Bill Dembski and his band of merry sycophants over at Uncommon Descent. All I can say is: Uncommon Descent, meet the Galileo Gambit. Oh, you've already met the Galileo Gambit, I see.
That must be the explanation for why you do the Galileo Gambit whine so well...
oracknows | March 25, 2007In case you wondered, yes, ScienceBlogs is just a big cabal, and, as evidence, I present the following photo from a week and a half ago, when I managed to meet, drink, and conspire to take over the science blogosphere at the Toledo Lounge in Washington, D.C. with Tara Smith of Aetiology, Evil Monkey of Neurotopia, and Chris Mooney of The Intersection. The locale was appropriate enough, given Tara's and my Toledo connection, and a good time was had by all.
Does Orac normally look like that? Well, remember, around this time, Dr. Egnor was at the height of his foray into making still more…
oracknows | March 24, 2007Here's wishing a belated blogiversary to Holocaust Controversies! On its first blogiversary, Nick has posted a cautiously optimistic analysis on the reason why Holocaust denial is losing its potency and increasingly being abandoned, even by the far right, as the completely ludicrous lie that it is.
I have no illusions that Holocaust denial is going away any time soon, but it does seem to have lost some of its influence, and here's hoping that, as long as deniers spew their lies, Sergey, Nick, and Andrew over at Holocaust Controversies and organizations like The Holocaust History Project will…
oracknows | March 10, 2007I didn't realize it, but today's the first anniversary of my first (and, as far as I know) only admitted blogchild, Good Math, Bad Math. Head on over and wish Mark a happy anniversary. He's filled a vitally needed role in the skeptical blogosphere, taking down questionable claims that rely on bad math for their rationale. (One of these days, I have to get him to host The Skeptics' Circle; maybe he can put a mathematical spin on it.)
It turns out that Mark may well someday surpass me (these days, some weeks his traffic passes mine, something that seems to happen with more and more frequency).…
oracknows | March 9, 2007I'm told that today is P. Z. Myer's 50th birthday and that apparently he's requested poetry, now that he's hanging out with bigshots like Richard Dawkins, who actually did write him a poem. Cranky and contrary box of blinking lights that Orac is, you probably already know that Orac won't go along with the crowd on this one. Oh, he'll wish P.Z. a happy birthday, but poetry isn't his thing. (Remember, this is the same computer that spend endless amounts of time analyzing jokes and limericks because he couldn't understand why humans liked them. Do you really want to see him attempt actual poetry…
oracknows | February 27, 2007Kristjan Wager points out to me that Respectiful Insolence was listed as the Blog of the Day by the L.A. Times on Monday.
Oddly enough, I hadn't noticed any traffic coming my way from the link...
oracknows | February 26, 2007It looks to me as though one of my favorite lefty bloggers, Majikthise (real name: Lindsay Beyerstein), dodged a bullet. In a Salon.com article, she describes how she originally was approached to blog for the John Edwards campaign. As you may recall, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon ultimately was offered the job and ultimately ended up having to resign as Edwards' political enemies quote-mined her blog for quotes that could be used against her, Michelle Malkin did a "dramatic reading" of selected excerpts from her blog, and that embarrassment to Catholics everywhere, William Donohue of the…
oracknows | February 23, 2007Listen up, everyone! It's fast approaching.
Yes, The Skeptics' Circle will be appearing next Thursday over at The Second Sight. EoR did a bang-up job the last time the Circle was held at The Second Sight; so I expect as great or even better this time around. But your best skeptical blogging is needed.
Instructions to submit your work to EoR are here. Guidelines for what we're looking for can be found here.
As EoR says, don't be a complete idiot; do it for Deepak. (Yikes! That last one is rather scary. I might have to save it for the next time I take on some Choprawoo.)
And, of course, I'm…
oracknows | February 13, 2007One year ago today, Orac was assimilated--I mean welcomed--into the ScienceBlogs collective. it's been a wild ride, a fantastic opportunity to reach more readers than I ever did on my old Blogspot blog. (My traffic has roughly doubled since I joined up.) I didn't show up with the first crop of ScienceBloggers mainly because of my hesitation due to my concern about getting permission for "outside employment" from my University. Fortunately, I overcame that, and the rest is history.
I want to take this opportunity to thank my readers for reading and the Seed Media Group for liking what I was…
oracknows | February 10, 2007...that Kristjan Wager started a blog.
Kristjan, as some may know, is a frequent commenter here, and has even guest-blogged for me about the Danish studies on two occasions.
Head on over and check out Kristjan's blog, Pro-Science. I'll be adding it to my sidebar the next time I get a chance to revamp my blogroll.
oracknows | February 2, 2007Skeptico announces it's his second blogiversary! Skeptico is one of the premier skeptical blogs out there, and, although he isn't posting as much as he used to, can still be counted on to provide some of the best takesdowns of woo there are.
Go on over and say hi and read his retrospective of the most notable unskeptical characters he's written about over the past year.
oracknows | January 22, 2007
I demand the sum of.....one MILLION visits! Muhahahahahaha!
Sometime while I was in clinic this morning, Respectful Insolence recorded its 1,000,000 visitor:
Hmmm. Durham, North Carolina, eh? Could it be that Bora or Abel put me over the top? Come on, boys, 'fess up! Were either of you taking in your daily dose of Respectful Insolence⢠around 8:52 AM EST?
In any case, it took 2 years, 1 month, an 11 days to reach 1,000,000 visits. Thanks to all my readers. When I first started this whole thing, I never expected to get anywhere near 1,000,000.
Now let's get cracking on 2,000,000.
oracknows | January 21, 2007It looks like someone over at BlogCritics is undertaking the task of reviewing each of the component blogs of ScienceBlogs. So far, he's not particularly impressed with anyone except Martin and, to a lesser extent, Afarensis. Although he makes a few good points in checking out the first five blogs (he's proceeding in alphabetical order) and I have to applaud an attempt to do a critique of nearly 50 blogs, he clearly needs a gentle (for the moment) beating with a clue stick about a couple of things.
For one thing, he's full of crap when he says this about Janet:
My major criticism of this blog…
oracknows | January 19, 2007The winners of the 2006 Medical Weblog Awards have been announced at Medgadget. Winners include our favorite pediatrician Flea (and if he manages to tick off the antivaccination loons, you know he's alright with me) for Best New Medical Weblog; NHS Blog Doctor for Best Medical Weblog; and Anxiety, Depression, and Addiction Treatments for Best Clinical Sciences Weblog.
Go here to find out who else won.
Congratulations to all the winners!
oracknows | January 15, 2007My dear mother pointed out the other day that my Sitemeter is rapidly approaching the 1,000,000 visits mark.
And so it is. I had noticed a couple of weeks ago that I was getting close to the zone, but it crept up on me faster than I had expected. With your help, I should be there in week or so. With a little judicious link love, I could be there even sooner.
That would leave one question. As Mr. Sun put it:
Once a blog reaches one million "page views," the blogger is placed in a sealed room with another popular blogger of the opposite ideology. There, in "Intelligent Blogging Apparel," they…
oracknows | January 10, 2007I learn from Janet, Bora, PZ, and Afarensis that this week is supposedly National Delurking Week. Lurkers, for those of you who aren't hip to the Internet lingo, are people who read blogs (or, for that matter, any form of online forum), but never (or only rarely) leave comments or posts. They are said to be "lurking." During National Delurking Week, we bloggers are supposed to ask lurkers to delurk momentarily and leave a comment. Given that Respectful Insolence averages somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 unique visits per day on most weekdays (a little more than half that number on weekends)…