Administrative
pharyngula | April 30, 2010I've so late in tallying up the Molly nominations lately, that I thought for a change I'd get the March Molly award done on time, and a little early even.
This one was easy: it was a landslide for Josh, Official SpokesGay. Every blog should have an official SpokesGay.
Now, start nominatin' for the April Molly by leaving a comment here.
pharyngula | April 18, 2010I have been reminded that I neglected the last round of nominations for the Molly. Forgive me! I have gone back and quickly tallied the last set of votes, and the Molly for the month of February goes to…AJ Milne. Belated fireworks and applause and hugs and kisses!
Now it's time to leave your nominations for the best of the month of March right here in the comments.
pharyngula | April 6, 2010Some of our stats have been released to the press today.
ScienceBlogs.com, the leading social media site in the science category, today released traffic figures for 2009 and the first quarter of 2010 (Source: Google Analytics).
Visits for the quarter ending March 31 grew by 41% year-over-year to approximately 13 million, and page views topped 25 million. Monthly unique visitors grew to 2.4 million worldwide and in the US surpassed 2 million for the first time this March.
Total visits for 2009 grew by 55% year-over-year to 45 million and average monthly unique visitors climbed 49% to 1.9…
pharyngula | March 14, 2010Words are the great ju-ju — some apparently believe we have the power to call up Satan and summon the lightning with the choice use of language. One of the common quirks of many Christian and Jewish sites on the internet is the insistence on writing G_D, as if including an "o" turns the word into a Rune of Power, is an expression of disrespect, or perhaps instills some strange fear in the writer. It's God as Voldemort, and all I can say is F_CK THAT.
There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.
Mark Twain
God damn it.
I was…
pharyngula | March 5, 2010I noticed people were getting a little anxious for the latest Molly award, but I usually try to hold off to a weekend. It's worth waiting a few days, right? Anyway, the Molly for January 2010 goes to Paul W. You're all expected to follow his example and write treatises in the comments from now on.
Now you have to get to work and leave votes for the February Molly in the comments here.
pharyngula | February 2, 2010Hey, look, I'm not too late with the Molly awards! The Molly for the month of December is split between John Morales, who seems to turn up in the list of candidates every month, and Leigh Williams, who stirred up some controversy in the voting because she is a Christian and we are, after all, a godless horde. I figure hanging out with us at least makes her an honorary atheist, since so many of her fellow co-religionists will damn her to hell anyway.
Now think back to January 2010. Which commenter should get the award for that month? Leave a comment here.
pharyngula | January 17, 2010But let me correct that and catch up with some more administrative tidying up here.
The winner of the Molly Award for the month of November is Aratina Cage! As is traditional, he now owes you all a drink at the bar.
Now we have to find the most popular commenter for December of 2009: leave comments with your nominations right here in this thread.
pharyngula | January 16, 2010The buggy software is better now, but some people are still completely unable to comment — and the primary complaint I'm getting is that the confirmation email needed to register never arrives. One possibility is that somehow, your domain or name or something is blocked by some systemwide filter.
If that's your problem, send me a note using the same email address you used to register. I'll forward those to the people in charge so they can dig through the system and discover why ScienceBlogs hates you. Then we'll slap it silly and tell it to love you instead.
pharyngula | January 11, 2010A crack team of programmers swept through the commenting code over the last several days, and cleaned up a bunch of stuff of an unspecified nature. Now the real test is in performance: is registration working any better? Let us know here.
pharyngula | January 3, 2010Comment registration will be switched back on in the next hour.
I truly, deeply, fervently hate spammers.
pharyngula | December 15, 2009The comment registration system here is still a PITA. I know; I get so many complaints from so many people, yet at the same time, I need the dog-damned thing in order to manage the horrendous pile of spam and troll-trash spilling over into the comments.
So I'm going to compromise a bit. I will occasionally switch off the comment registration requirement for random periods of time, just so people who are locked out by its clumsiness can get a word in; but I will also sporadically switch it back on whenever the noise gets to me. Which might be every day. Or every couple of days. Or every…
pharyngula | December 13, 2009The Molly for the month of October goes to Lynna by a landslide.
Now you've got to cast your memory back to sometime around Thanksgiving, and leave nominations in this thread for the Molly to be awarded in the New Year. We've got our holidays all confused around here, I know.
pharyngula | December 10, 2009Some people are still encountering bugs when trying to register for commenting, and a few of them have been emailing me. I don't know what to do! I've forwarded your email to the powers-that-be, and we'll see if something gets fixed some more.
Otherwise, if anyone out there has suggestions, leave them here. Is there one registration service that is more reliable than the others?
pharyngula | December 8, 2009I hate to tell you this, but tomorrow I'll be switching required registration back on. There are far too many spammers and trolls hitting the place right now.
pharyngula | December 4, 2009This is pretty cool: Scienceblogs and National Geographic have joined forces to create a mighty partnership to conquer the interwebs. I think. I'm not sure on what exactly we'll gain just yet, but the people with vision at the top have hinted at some juicy things.
Here's the press release:
National Geographic Digital Media (NGDM) and ScienceBlogs.com today announced that they have formed a strategic partnership spanning technology, advertising, business and content development. Through this partnership, Nationalgeographic.com and ScienceBlogs.com will create and exchange content through…
pharyngula | November 18, 2009Nah, I know you didn't…but I finally got around to tallying up the votes, and the winners of the Molly award for the month of September are Desert Son [New complementary close under construction] and Feynmaniac. You may now give them the traditional champagne shower.
While you're at it, start nominating commenters for the October Molly. You have forgotten October, I know, and are thinking November and Thanksgiving and all that, but you're going to have to try and recollect before the big push in the War on Christmas comes along and all other issues have to be neglected.
pharyngula | November 16, 2009I know that Seed and SixApart have been busily tinkering with the comments section to "improve" things, but I don't know exactly what they're doing. It's gotten weird, though, and many of you are sending me complaints that you can't comment any more — I haven't banned anyone recently, I swear.
It seems to be in a transitional state. Some of the problems may be a result of parts of the html or css being cached on your computer, and the server is getting confused. Try reloading/refreshing the page to force a full update; it might work. It might not. I was initially locked out myself, and it…
pharyngula | November 2, 2009People keep writing to me to complain that the goddamn stupid comment registration system doesn't work, so they can't comment. Yes, you can. Just ignore registration and fill in the blanks with name and email (which isn't shown), and you can comment.
This is especially irritating since I turned off the comment registration system some time back, and have been dealing with all the spam that's been pouring in for the last two weeks just so people would be able to freely comment. I'm still plowing through all the comments that accumulated over my long weekend away, too…and was thinking I should…
pharyngula | October 28, 2009It's rather pathetic when banned loons like "help ma boab" come crawling back, begging to be released from the dungeon…especially when their apologies are this insincere. It just reaffirms why he got tossed in there in the first place.
I'm Sorry
I'm sorry that I trod on someone's arrogant, over-inflated, preposterous ego. Can I come back onto your blog? I promise I won't do it again. Pretty please?
No.
pharyngula | October 21, 2009Scienceblogs grows a little more, with the addition of two new blogs.
We now have Pamela Ronald talking about food and farm science at Tomorrow's Table. That should fill a gap in the coverage here!
The other entry might be of more interest to readers here, because of the topics covered. We've drawn David Sloan Wilson away from the awful Huffington Post, and he'll be posting on Evolution for Everyone. He's a very big name in evolution, and I've commented on his work before: I think he's provocative and interesting, but disagree strongly with him on some parts of his ideas about religion. I'll…