Bloggity Blog
mikethemadbiologist | September 1, 2011I've dropped some hints in the past that my relationship with ScienceBlogs would be...altered.
Well, I've decided to leave. Mostly, it had to do with the issue of pseudonymity, although I'm very excited to hang out my own shingle once again. I don't want to rehash the issue of pseudonymity, since others have done that quite well, but revealing the Mad Biologist's Top Sekrit identity just wasn't in the cards.
I want to make something clear. ScienceBlogs/NatGeo really did try to keep me. For some crazy reason, they seem to like the writing--I won't get into the details, but that really…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2011As some of you might have heard, National Geographic has decided that pseudonymous writers (other than Mark Twain) aren't going to be part of their online presence. I usually don't discuss ScienceBlogs inside baseball stuff, but I'm not getting any response from them (I've received emails telling me how much they want to talk to me, followed by no response). The odds are really, really good I won't be here for much longer, but for now, I'll still be posting here, if for no other reason than my contract requires a certain number of posts per week.
Once that's sorted out, unless I can be…
mikethemadbiologist | July 16, 2011As a fellow card-carrying member of the Ancient, Holy and High Hermeneutic Order of the Shrill, I mean that as a compliment:
There aren't many positive aspects to the looming possibility of a U.S. debt default. But there has been, I have to admit, an element of comic relief -- of the black-humor variety -- in the spectacle of so many people who have been in denial suddenly waking up and smelling the crazy.
A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. "Has the G.O.P. gone insane?" they ask.
Why, yes, it has. But this isn't something that just happened, it's…
mikethemadbiologist | March 29, 2011I'm a big fan of Brad DeLong's blog even when I don't agree with him. But one of the things that's bothered me is when he reprints posts in full. For bloggers, professional or amateur, links are currency. Reprinting the post in full means people won't be inclined to click through to your site. When asked about this, DeLong had an interesting answer:
The answer is simple: Linkrot.
Go, say, to a webpage of mine from the first half of the 2000s at random... Let's pick one: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/001202.html.
See how many of the links I include lead to "…
mikethemadbiologist | March 26, 2011A few weeks ago, Glenn Greenwald gave a speech where he discussed the climate of government intimidation in the U.S.:
I received a lot of comments from people via email, from people in person telling me at my attended events, from people in my comment section, American citizens who said the following: "I understand and agree with the idea that Wikileaks has a lot of potential to do good, but I'm actually afraid of donating money, because I'm afraid that I'm going to end up on some kind of a list somewhere; or that eventually I will be charged with aiding and abetting, or giving material…
mikethemadbiologist | March 22, 2011If you remember some months ago, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon held a press conference announcing that they had discovered a bacterium that uses arsenic in place of phosphorus. The paper, when released, had compromising methodological problems (for good coverage, read here, here, and here; and snark). At the time Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues were upset at the treatment the paper received on the internet, and initially refused to respond in any forum other than published journals (this policy didn't seem to stop her from giving a TED talk without any forum for critical feedback. Kinda…
mikethemadbiologist | March 9, 2011For some of you, access to ScienceBlogs has been wonky. It's not because our Seed Overlords have neglected to feed the hamsters that power the Blogerator 9600. Turns out it's a denial-of-service attack:
We have been forwarding reports from bloggers and users to our hosting service, Rackspace, over the past few days. After monitoring our traffic and these reports, Rackspace has determined that ScienceBlogs is experiencing a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and has blocked a range of IP addresses involved. While this means that ScienceBlogs is now loading correctly for most users,…
mikethemadbiologist | January 18, 2011Not me. I said a good blogger. I've been remiss in many things blog-related, but an important thing I've been meaning to do is drumming up some support for Lance Mannion. He's a superb writer, and brings a much-needed human perspective to blogging, which is, for the most part, technonerd-driven. Here's what I mean:
Metaphors for the weak and frightened
"He is not absent-minded. He is just present-minded somewhere else."
Asperger's
There's always tomorrow for dreams to come true...unless you're a conservative, then all dreams will come true yesterday
Hostages to their fortunes
There's no…
mikethemadbiologist | November 22, 2010...Digby gave me a nice little mention last night. This is the post the Atrios quote came from.
mikethemadbiologist | September 7, 2010I'll be taking a much-needed vacation over the High Holidays, so if you contact me I might not get back to you very quickly (or at all). But don't worry, the blog will keep on blog rollin'.
mikethemadbiologist | August 31, 2010Lots of interesting science happening over at Dr. Shock's place. My utterance is this.
As the kids say, check the whole thing out.
mikethemadbiologist | August 30, 2010I'll be at the Human Microbiome Research Conference for a few days. But don't worry, this blog will keep on rollin'.
mikethemadbiologist | August 2, 2010There's a new science blogging collective in town: Scientopia. Some of the denizens will be familiar, some are new. Looks pretty cool though. I like that mathematics is a front page 'topic' (hint, hint, Seed Overlords).
Anyway, stop by and check it out. And kudos to them for getting it off the ground.
mikethemadbiologist | August 1, 2010...my ten word summary is as informative as a Science or Nature paper.
Ouch.
So Byte Size Biology tagged me with the "Blog of Substance" meme, originally developed by Bora. I usually don't participate in internet meme-ey things because I'm just too persnicketty to write about what other people want me to. I really don't like the concept of "meme" either. But this I can get behind:
Sum up your blogging motivation, philosophy and experience in exactly 10 words.
Unfortunately, this blog's raison d'être is nineteen words long:
Because it's marginally more productive than firing Nerf…
mikethemadbiologist | July 31, 2010I had been considering, over the weekend to write a navel gazing post about The State of ScienceBlogs and Its Relationship to the Mad Biologist. And then Virginia Heffernan of the NY Times wrote a quote picking article about ScienceBlogs, thereby screwing up my weekend blogging (so much stupid, so little Mad Biologist). At the end of the post, I'll describe how I see ScienceBlogs, but, first, let's talk about Heffernan's arrogance.
From Heffernan:
I was nonplussed by the high dudgeon of the so-called SciBlings. The bloggers evidently write often enough for ad-free academic journals that…
mikethemadbiologist | July 23, 2010I've been at a meeting, so I haven't been able to get around to this, but Scientia Pro Publica #35, a science blog carnival, is now live at Kind of Curious. There's lots of sciencey goodness over there (including this contribution by yours truly).
So head on over and read some good science.
mikethemadbiologist | July 8, 2010Update: Shortly, after writing this, ScienceBlogs pulled the Pepsi Blog
Thinking about it overnight, I'm back for now. The short version is that I think the changes are sufficient, although I'm still very disappointed in Seed. Basically, the changes in presentation seem to make it clear that the blog is advertising, not Sb content--and I realize others might disagree. This isn't a final decision on my part by a long shot. Frankly, I would much rather not have Food Frontiers at ScienceBlogs at all.
There has been a lot of verbiage flying around the intertubez about Pepsigeddon so below…
mikethemadbiologist | July 7, 2010You might have heard that ScienceBlogs has rolled out a new blog about nutrition sponsored by Pepsi and that will discuss some of the things Pepsi is doing (so far, I've seen responses here, here, and here). Never mind shattering the credibility of someone who wrote this:
...keep in mind that most of the problems we face, from healthcare, to information privacy, to environmental degradation, stem in part, if not entirely, from the imbalance between capital and labor, or between capital and the individual citizen.
After all, I run a shitty little blog, and my problems don't amount to a hill…
mikethemadbiologist | June 8, 2010I'm really thrilled that Maryn McKenna, author of Superbug (my review here), has joined ScienceBlogs. Stop by, and look around. I'm looking forward to lots of infectious disease goodness (or badness, I suppose...).
mikethemadbiologist | May 20, 2010I'll be at the ASM meeting in San Diego next week (so don't steal all my stuff). But don't worry, the blog, like the Might River Jordan, will keep rolling on. Email replies and so on won't be happening though.