Blogging

As some sharp-eyed reader may have already spotted, the SciencePunk blog has relocated to the Seed Media Group's ScienceBlogs. Let's take a moment to absorb these new surroundings. OK, done? Those of you who have already run back to check sciencepunk.com will find it too has changed substantially. Drama abounds! From today, the whole SciencePunk caboodle is getting cranked up a notch. Wave goodbye to the version 5 we all knew and loved, and say hello to version 6. (Ah, you always wondered what that stray /v5 signified, didn't you? Why not check out v4? Web 1.0-tastic!) The site has…

Good news! After an extended and distinguished stint as a coblogger on Denialism.com, blog bud PalMD has decided to resurrect his own blog, the place where he got started, White Coat Underground. The only difference is that this time he's doing it as a member of the ScienceBlogs collective. Head on over and say hi. Tell him Orac sent you.

Can't say "welcome a new SciBling" because he's not new! PalMD is now flying solo! He moved out of the fraternity house and rented his own house: White Coat Underground. Go say Hello, bookmark, susbcribe, update your feeds, whatever you like to do, but keep reading Pal.

First fellow ScienceBlogger Abel Pharmboy live-blogged (sort of) his vasectomy. That record could not stand, however. You just knew it wouldn't be long before someone tried to outdo him. Now Kev is live-Tweeting (live-Twittering?) his own vasectomy. He's at the surgeon's office right now, but tells us the surgeon is running a little late! Follow along, if you dare.

Unbelievably, it looks as though I've been nominated yet again for another blogging award. Really, folks, this is too much. How on earth am I going to live up to this level of accolades in 2009? Not that that would stop me from pointing out that I'm in the running for the Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog at Medgaget. So, if you like what I've been laying down, please vote for me here. If not, vote for Getting Better with Dr. Val, who would be my second choice if I can't win. Another blog I can't help but recommend a vote for is in the category of Best New Medical Weblog. It's Science-…

...for me as Best Medical/Health Issues Blog. At the very least, put me past Junkfood Science! While you're at it, vote for the Best Science Blog. There are two fellow ScienceBloggers (PZ and Greg Laden) in contention, as well as one of my blog buds, Steve Novella of Neurologica and another of my favorite blogs, Bad Astronomy. A tough choice.

The posts selected for the 2009 edition of The Open Laboratory, collecting the best writing on science blogs for the year, have been announced. My We Are Science post made the list, which is nice. Amusingly, this showed up in my inbox at the same time that the ScienceBlogs front page is featuring this Bloggingheads episode featuring George Johnson and John Horgan. Johnson, you might recall, riled everybody up a couple of weeks ago with a bit of a dyspeptic rant about science bloggers compared to science journalists. They spend a good fifteen or twenty minutes on the topic again this week, and…

I realize that I said I would take New Years Day off, but I saw this and felt a brief post was in order. I also realize that some will never believe that it's not false modesty when I express amazement that so many people show up here day in and day out to read my written meanderings. It's also not false modesty when I marvel that I actually am nominated from time to time for various blogging awards and even (on rarer occasions) win. So it is again that I've been nominated for Best Medical/Health Issues Blog of 2008 for the Weblog Awards. Cool. My thanks to everyone who nominated me. I also…

For once, I actually managed not to miss it. For once, this day hasn't passed me by, leaving me not to remember its significance for a couple of days. For once, I haven't forgotten my blogiversary. Yes, as hard as it is to believe, I've been at this more or less nonstop just as long as a Presidential term in office. It all began on a dank, overcast Saturday afternoon in December four years ago today. What whim struck me to sit down in front of my computer and use Blogger to create my original blog I have no idea, but I did. Maybe it was because I had become tired of sparring with Holocaust…

Well, it looks as though I've stepped into it yet one more time. Believe it or not, I hadn't intended to stir up trouble among the ScienceBlogs collective, both English- and German-speaking. Really. Oh, I'll admit that there are occasionally times when I actually do mean to stir up trouble. One recent example is when it was rumored that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might be chosen to be Secretary of the Interior or, even worse, Director of the EPA. Much to my surprise, I actually did manage to stir up a goodly amount of blogospheric reaction, too. Although I believed it to be a good cause, this…

Blog friend Dr. Val Jones has moved. She's no longer blogging at Revolution Health but has instead gone solo, blogging at Getting Better with Dr. Val. She's also doing a weekly gig at Science-Based Medicine now, and indeed has started out with a bang. Let's put it this way: There are few bloggers I know who have coined a term that is likely to become fairly widely used in the skeptical blogosphere, much less coined the term in their first post. Dr. Val's work is definitely worth checking out both at her own blog and her sideline gig.

Apparently, among some circles today is some sort of holiday. Its virus has apparently infected some of my fellow ScienceBloggers. I do not understand this holiday. I never really have. I tend to doubt that I ever will. Consequently, there'll be no "arrrrr" here today, nor, most probably, on any future September 19. Consider me a conscientious apathetic objector to the whole weird thing. Either that, or a buzz killer.

In its quest to rule the science blogosphere, the Borg--I mean ScienceBlogs--Collective has assimilated yet another blog, it would appear. It's a good one too, and adding its uniqueness to us will only strengthen us. So please welcome blogger (not to mention frequent commenter on this very blog) Blake Stacy and Science After Sunclipse to the Collective. Go on over and say hi. Tell him Orac sent you.

If there is one thing I hate with a burning, red-hot passion in a website/blog/whatever, it's content that autoplays when I access a site. To have a John Philips Souza march start blaring unexpectedly or some video start suddenly and noisily is a jarring experience, and I consider such content to be an abomination, a blight on the web that must be eliminated. I particularly hate such content when it's an advertisement. That is why I must reluctantly but nonetheless angrily note that our usually benevolent Seed Overlords have seen fit to place just such an abomination on ScienceBlogs,…

Remember how I mentioned that the venue for the ScienceBlogs Readers Meetup was going to be changed? Well, the new venue has been announced: The new spot will be at a bar on the west side called Social. Seed has reserved a room in the back, and it's three floors in case we need even more room. Seed will buy the first round of pitchers (alcs and non-alcs). Details: 2pm-4pm on Saturday, August 9 Social 795 8th Ave (close to 49th St.) New York, NY 10019 Be there, Aloha.

Remember how I mentioned last Friday that the ScienceBlogs Reader Meetup is scheduled for 2 to 4 PM on Saturday, August 9 at the Arthur Ross Terrace at the American Museum of Natural History? There's apparently been a change in plans. Don't worry; it's not canceled, but apparently the venue is going to change. There were some major concerns about the number of people who said they were to show up and early weather reports for Saturday afternoon that do not look favorable (thunderstorms predicted). Because of these factors, our benevolent Seed Overlords have decided that a new location must…

I mentioned last week that I was going to be in New York the weekend of August 9, the better to commune with my fellow Borg at the Cube (no, not that cube, although I may have to make a stop there too) in Manhattan known as Seed Media Group. As part of the festivities, our benevolent overlords at ScienceBlogs wanted to host a reader/blogger meetup. It turns out that the date, time, and location have now finally been set, and here they are, courtesy of NYC Skeptics: Join New York City Skeptics and ScienceBlogs for a special get-together Saturday August 9 with over a dozen science bloggers,…

It's that time again, the time that comes around once a fortnight for skeptical bloggers and blog readers to gather together to celebrate that best that skeptics have had to offer since the last time they gathered. It's time for the 92nd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. This time, it's hosted by Martin over at The Lay Scientist and it tells the tale of Team Skeptic at the Ideology Olympics, starting with a press conference: Team Skeptic Manager Martin gave a rousing press conference today as his team moved into their training centre in advance of the Ideology Olympics, but concerns remain…

It's summertime, and the living is easy...well, not quite. It's been a hectic and depressing summer so far. However, I am going to be able to allow myself one weekend away from the drudgery of grant writing. You see, our Seed overlords are repeating the infamous blogger meetup that happened last year in August. Because they lack imagination (and because it's the time when the largest number of us can make it), they plan on doing it in August again this year. It also turns out that they want to put together some sort of "meet the bloggers" event--in someplace air-conditioned, of course, but to…

I have some bad news for the medical blogosphere. Well, actually Sid Schwab does. Apparently, he's decided to drop out of the blogosphere, at least for now. Sid's grown enormously as a blogger since he first started hawking his book a couple of years ago in the comments here. He got on my nerves at first, but I quickly took a liking to him and his blog, realizing that his early self-promotion came from his being new to the blogosphere and not realizing that too much of that sort of stuff is generally frowned upon. Now he's a well-respected medical blogger, and definitely one of the best. The…