Blog housekeeping
oracknows | December 12, 2007Let's see, the ScienceBlogs collective started out in English. Earlier this week, our German partner Hubert Burda Media soft-launched ScienceBlogs.de, a German version of the ScienceBlogging collective that you've come to know and love (or, in some cases, hate).
Now, our benevolent (well, most of the time, anyway) overlords at the Seed Collective Mothership in New York ask:
What language shall we tackle next?
Personally, I vote for French, but that's just because French is the only language other than English that I used to be able to speak and can still understand to some extent.
oracknows | November 21, 2007It's that time again.
Oh, it's a day early because of the Thanksgiving holiday, but it's here nonetheless. It's time for the 74th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, this time hosted over at Med Journal Watch. I can't figure out why Christian is being heckled by skeptics, though, as he gives his address.
Don't forget that it won't be long before the next Skeptics' Circle comes around the pike. In fact, it will be longer than usual, thanks to the early appearance of this edition. The next meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will appear on Thursday, December 6 and will be hosted by Pro-Science, a blog…
oracknows | November 7, 2007
I demand the sum of.....two MILLION visits! Muhahahahahaha!
Yes, I know I did that bit before, but I liked it so much that I wanted to do it again.
Sometime yesterday, this blog hit another milestone. Sometime yesterday morning, Respectful Insolence⢠recorded its 2,000,000th visitor. Unfortunately, "sometime yesterday" was while I was at work, and, due to pesky duties like meetings, I was unable to record the 2,000,000th visit for posterity, as I did for my 1,000,000th visit.
That was on January 22, 2007. To reach the 1,000,000 mark took 2 years, 1 month, and 11 days. To go from 1,000,000…
oracknows | November 2, 2007Don't forget, once again the time is fast approaching.
Soon yet another installment of the Skeptics' Circle will be upon us. In fact, it's less than a week away and due to land at the Holford Watch on Thursday, November 8. Skeptical bloggers, there isn't much time left for you to get your entries done and submitted.
Finally, if you're a blogger and want to host an edition of the Skeptics' Circle yourself, drop me a line. For some reason, the Circle doesn't have as many hosts lined up as far into the future as I would like. Indeed, the wait to host is shorter than I can remember its ever being…
oracknows | September 20, 2007In today's earlier post, a commenter stated:
You sure do like that "long run for a short slide" phrase.
I wondered: Is that true? Do I use that phrase too much? So, like any good blogger, I did a search. And what did I find? I found that, in the entire history of this blog since it's been on ScienceBlogs (a year and a half now), I've only used the phrase a grand total of two times;. (Granted, it was two times in less than two days, which may have given the impression that I'm overly enamored of that phrase.) In the history of my old blog, there was not a single use of the phrase.
I therefore…
oracknows | September 14, 2007As some of my commenters may have noticed, the ScienceBlogs server has been acting a bit strangely, often being really slow to post comments and sometimes even producing error messages. This has led to some double and even triple posts of comments, as readers understandably try to repost something after getting an error or when it appears that the server's hung up.
Try to resist the temptation. At the very least, before trying to repost, reload the page with the relevant post and make sure that your comment didn't already show up. That will help cut down on the number of double comments, not…
oracknows | August 24, 2007
Around the time you read this, barring any flight delay agonies, I will have touched down at Heathrow Airport to spend a week in London. It's the first real vacation that my wife and I have taken, possibly since our honeymoon. Certainly it's been the first time I've been out of the country since my honeymoon and the first time I've been to London since Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and I was too young to appreciate it properly.
After the last couple of months, I desperately need some R&R, and this will hopefully fill the bill. This trip means a couple of things. First, the blog…
oracknows | August 3, 2007So what do you do when you didn't have time to write something new? Well, you could leave the blog blank, which is anathema to me) or you could do the time-honored space-filling technique valued by bloggers everywhere once they reach a certain level of traffic.
Yep! It's one of the very rare times for an open thread on Respectful Insolence. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I did one of these.
Don't let Orac down. Take advantage of it and speak your piece! Or don't, and let the tumbleweeds roll through the ol' blog this afternoon, metaphorically speaking...
oracknows | July 12, 2007Here's the reason why:
Actor and voice artiste Peter Tuddenham has died at the age of 88 after a short illness.
His vocal talents were used in Doctor Who for The Ark in Space, The Masque of Mandragora and Time and the Rani, but he will also be well-known to cult TV fans for providing the voices of Zen, Orac and Slave in Blake's 7, which was created by Terry Nation.
In addition, Tuddenham was in the Kaldor City audio spin-offs Occam's Razor and Death's Head, which were Doctor Who/Blake's 7 crossovers produced by Magic Bullet.
Tuddenham's voice of Orac was perfect for the character. Combining…
oracknows | July 6, 2007A bit of blog housekeeping here...
Normally, I find out about new comments on my blog through e-mail notifications that get sent to me shortly after you, the reader and commenter, post your comments. I find it much easier simply to scroll through the e-mails and see what the reaction is to my posts and to note any comments to which I think a response from me is warranted. In addition, usually about once a day, I check the "Junk Comments" folder on Movable Type to see if there are any comments that fell victim to the spam filters that I need to retrieve and publish. (As an aside, the most…
oracknows | July 1, 2007For your Sunday afternoon edification, the latest version of Pediatrics Grand Rounds has been posted over at Breath Spa for Kids.
In addition, Change of Shift, the blog carnival for nursing-related blogs, has also been posted at NursingLink.
Enjoy!
oracknows | May 11, 2007As many of you may have noticed, we're having some technical difficulties, with prolonged posting times for comments, errors, etc. I assure you that, however much it might annoy you to watch your browser chug away slowly and seemingly endlessly after you've composed your pithy and erudite comment and hit "Post," only to deliver an error message at the end, it annoys me infinitely more because it's happening to me nearly every time I try to edit or save a post or comment and has been for several days now.
I've learned that what's going on is tha apparently traffic at ScienceBlogs has finally…
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 | 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 | 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 18, 2007The 52nd Edition of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted at Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist. It's a little late in coming (and I'm a little late in announcing it), but as usual another host has come through with a fine collection of skeptical blogging. So go pay him a visit. It also marks the end of the second full year of the Skeptics' Circle. Unbelievable. We're entering our third year, and it just keeps getting better.
Next up is Slicing with Occam's Razor (another great blog title), who will be hosting two weeks hence on February 1. So be sure to supply him with the blogging material…
oracknows | January 16, 2007On our backchannel discussion forum, we ScienceBloggers have been discussing a rather interesting idea that we could use to provide extra value to our readers. The idea is to do short articles about basic concepts in science. It's an intriguing idea, and, while I could try my hand at posts about a number of basic concepts in science, I think that, given my background, my strongest contribution would be basic concepts in my areas of expertise. These could include questions such as:
What is cancer?
What is a randomized clinical trial?
How does chemotherapy work? (Certainly The Cheerful…
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…