I’ve decided that the “intersession” we have between semesters is a cruel hoax. Though it promises a few weeks in which one might actually get some writing done, what it delivers is an endless list of tasks (many spawned by bureaucracy) that one must scurry to accomplish before the next semester starts. Feh!
As I’ve been scurrying, I’ve accumulated some items I’d like to share:
1. The Science Blogging Anthology is unleashed on an unsuspecting public!
Owing in no small part to Bora‘s vision and energy, you can now scoot over to Lulu.com to purchase (as a download or on dead trees) The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2006. I was one of the folks Bora recruited to rate the submissions (more than 200 of them) to come up with the 50 to go in the anthology, and I want you to know how astoundingly good they were — do be sure to check here for the excellent posts that didn’t make it to the top 50.
2. Seven days of all science, all the time — or are you chicken?
RPM at Evolgen issues the Week of Science Challenge. The short version: for the week of February 5 through February 11, participating science bloggers will post only on science and at least one science post per day. The goal seems to be to stop letting anti-science folks set our blogging agendas for us.
What this would mean in a little more detail:
Bloggers who self-identify as scientists and science writers should post on:
- Published, peer-reviewed research and their own research.
- Their expert opinion on actual scientific debates – think review articles.
- Descriptions of natural phenomena (e.g., why slugs dissolve when you put salt on them, or what causes sun flares; scientific knowledge that has reached the level of fact)
Bloggers who claim to be philosophers of science (or have been accused of so much) should post on issues, ideas, and debates in philosophy of science that are not frequently used or dictated by anti-scientific groups. The demarcation problem, for example, should be avoided unless it can be discussed without reference to anti-science movements.
And bloggers who are not scientists – focusing mainly on public and policy debates on scientific issues – should post on issues that are legitimately controversial for scientific reasons. Topics that are controversial simply because of anti-science movements should be avoided.
What do you folks think? Should I accept the Week of Science Challenge? (I promise that it won’t interfere with Friday Sprog Blogging if I do!)
3. Basic concepts wishlist.
Keep those suggestions coming for basic concepts you’d like me to explain. I’ll try to have the first post responding to your queries up sometime next week.
4. “So, I have this friend with an ethical dilemma …”
In response to Lab Lemming’s query, I’m also happy to do the ethicist-advice column thing and give you my analysis (and advice) on hypothetical or real situations. If you email me the details, just let me know which ones I should anonymize while blogging about your situation so that I can protect the identities of the folks involved.
5. Book reviews coming soon!
I’ve read a bunch of books lately that I plan to review (or at least use as a point of departure for my thoughts) here. First up: The End of Faith by Sam Harris. (My capsule review: meh, at least in part because of some of the issues of consistency raised here.) After that, a book about which I’m much more enthusiastic: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan,
I have a few more things to nail down before I head off to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Wish me luck.
I’ve mentioned as much on a few other blogs that have brought this up, but I fully support science week. I stopped reading a few very good blogs because I got tired of only reading anti-anti-science posts. I’m really excited, unfortunately I’m guessing traffic will go down since it’s the controversial stuff that people can argue about that draws them in.