To celebrate the successful (!!) upgrade of ScienceBlogs to MT4, here is a dragon:
Thanks, as always, for your patience.
Category Archives: Housekeeping
ScienceBlogs upgrade this weekend.
You’ve probably already gotten the news that ScienceBlogs is getting a backend upgrade to MT4 this weekend.
While this is going on (from Friday 1 PM Eastern until sometime Saturday, we hope), you’ll still be able to read the ScienceBlogs posts that are already up, but Sb bloggers won’t be able to publish new posts and you won’t be able to leave new comments.
(Actually, I’m hearing rumblings that the comments might already have been disabled. Hold that thought! Jot it down on a Post-it or something, ’cause I want to read it when the comments return in MT4)
During our radio silence, you might want to pass the time by checking out some of the excellent blogs listed in the blogroll in the left sidebar. For particularly good reading, let me recommend:
ScienceBlogs survey, and an invitation to introduce yourself.
First, from the Seed Overlords:
You may have noticed some pretty yellow banner ads around the site this week. They’re advertising a huge reader survey that we’re conducting right now. Anyone (excepting Seed employees) who fills it out can enter to win an iPod and MacBook Air.
The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete. Here’s the survey page:
http://www.erdossurvey.com/sb/survey/
Then, following the lead of Ed, Bora, DrugMonkey, and Alice, I’d like to invite the readers of this blog, from regular commenters to committed lurkers, to check in.
Tell us who you are, what brings you here, and what brings you back. What do you like reading about here? What topics would you like to see more of?
I’m looking forward to hearing from you!
Inescapable trade-offs?
Because the three-dimensional world has had me in a headlock (and a heat-wave), I’m tardy in passing on the news that ScienceBlogs is hosting a new blog, Next Generation Energy, that is slated to run from July 9 to October 9. On this blog, Seed editors, ScienceBlogs bloggers, and outside experts will be discussing future energy policy and alternative energy solutions.
Among other things, the folks at Next Generation Energy will have a weekly question they’ll try to answer from their various perspectives. This week’s question asks for predictions about the viable non-oil (and non-corn-ethanol) energy sources that might in the pipeline (figuratively, if not literally). It looks like there’s a potential for some really engaging discussions here.
And this brings us to the trade-offs.
A few observations on the difference between ethics and the law.
There is a rather vigorous exchange (although one that fails my test for a “dialogue” in a number of ways) going on in the comments on my post about Kay Weber’s efforts to keep going forward with her lawsuit against Fermilab. Since this particular ethics blog is my ethics blog, I’m taking this opportunity to butt in with some comments of my own.
Blogiversary programming notes.
Hey, today is the third anniversary of my first post on “Adventures in Ethics and Science” at the original digs. I can honestly say that when I started the blog as a virtual extension of class discussions in my “Ethics in Science” I didn’t imagine that it would continue past the end of the semester, nor that it would get scooped up to become part of ScienceBlogs.
A few notes before the cupcakes:
Blogroll Amnesty Day
By way of Abel and DrugMonkey (among others), I see that today is Blogroll Amnesty Day. Jon Swift has the must-read post on the origins of the day and what it means now:
The idea that links are the capital of the blogosphere seems so obvious that you would think an economist like Atrios of Eschaton would have realized it long ago. And as he is a progressive who has accumulated quite a bit of link wealth, you might also think he would be in favor of redistributing some of that wealth instead of just letting it trickle down. So when he announced last year that he was declaring February 3 Blogroll Amnesty Day, and other bloggers followed suit, I assumed he meant that he was opening his blogroll up to the masses…
When February 3 rolled around, many bloggers discovered to their horror that instead of adding new blogs to his blogroll he was throwing many off, including some bloggers who were his longtime friends. Blogroll Amnesty Day, it turned out, was a very Orwellian concept. Instead of granting amnesty to others he was granting amnesty to himself not to feel bad for hurting others feelings. Though Atrios has stubbornly refused to acknowledge that he made a mistake, some bloggers who initially joined him, backtracked. Markos of the Daily Kos instituted a second blogroll that consisted of random links from diarists. PZ Myers of Pharyngula now has real Blogroll Amnesty Days where he invites anyone who has blogrolled him to join his blogroll. And in the wake of the bloodletting quite a number of smaller blogs, like my friend skippy the bush kangaroo, changed their own blogroll policies and now link more freely to others.
Ironically, Blogroll Amnesty Day had a net positive effect for the blogosphere as a whole. I discovered a number of great blogs and made new friends and I am sure that is true for others as well. And so instead of remembering February 3 as a day that will live in infamy, let’s turn this day into a celebration of the power of smaller blogs. Let’s recognize that building an inclusive community of diverse voices is what the blogosphere should be about, not creating a new elite to replace the old mainstream media elite.
Programming note.
I’ll be offline until Sunday evening (California time). This means comments you submit between now in then will dangle in the aether until I’m back online, but please don’t let that put you off from commenting if you have something to say.
Hope your weekend is a good one!
New York Articles ‘collects’ content from another (sic) sites, sells ads, clogs cyberspace.
As you might guess, my site is one of the sources of content. If you’re reading this post at New York Articles (or at “Articles”, whose tagline is even more grammatically incorrect) rather than at my actual site, you are partaking of a suboptimal experience.
I’m not going to give you the URL for the lesser, because there is no value-added to speak of, unless you count the pennies that come in to the leech that grabs the RSS and sells the Google Ads.*
Does such a site do anything to improve an already crowded blogosphere? Does anyone treat a sloppy feed aggregating site of this sort as a regular destination (or really, as anything but an accidental destination)?
Pathetic.
There has to be a less slimy way to make money off the internets, don’t you think?
Rules of engagement.
To address an issue that came up in discussion of posts on other blogs, I want to make clear the principles I follow when dealing with real-world scenarios here or via email: