I can guess what that all means—it’s from a description of the Panda’s Thumb and Pharyngula in a Polish newspaper. The rest of the article…eh, I don’t have a clue.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I ran the title and subtitle through one of those online translators:
There, doesn’t that clear it up? I had to substitute square brackets for the angle brackets.
I understand only little polish, but i think it translates into something like that : “scientists leave their ivory towers and come to internet. That causes it to fill with sientific disputes and conflicts.”
Actually it says the following (excuse my poor English):
The science meets the blogs. (the title is really a wordplay on a quote from Polish literature and therefore hard to translate accurately).
The scientists abandon the ivory tower. The cause is the internet, teeming with scientific discussions and disputes.
Apart from that, the article really does not say much about biology blogs. It has one sentence on Panda’s Thumb, but mostly covers various ways in which science is popularized on the Internet. It mentions a few physics/astronomy blogs and arxiv.org scientific papers site.
There’s not much of substance in the article, as I’ve come to expect of the author, Piotr Cieslinski. His articles are usually similarly flawed and inaccurate as the pieces on science in the mainstream US press, which PZ mentions here from time to time.
It’s an article on how science blogs became a new tool to communicate with other scientists and to reach out the public. But honestly, I think it’s too brief and completely fails to present how valuable the phenomenon is.
Anyway interesting stuff happens here now, as Polish creationists started to crawl out of the shadows and just recently we could hear from our deputy education minister Miroslaw Orzechowski that “The theory of evolution is a lie”, and from prof. (sic!) Maciej Giertych, a member in the European Parliament, lobbying for teaching creationism, (who by the way is a father of our education minister), that Neanderthals live among us (he saw a photo of some boxer that proves it) and also that dinosaurs used to live together with humans (stories about dragons and Loch Ness monster are the proof). And yes, this is all that pathetic. Fortunately Polish Academy of Science immediately responded to all this with a statement on what they think about it. Nature has some story on it:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7114/full/443890c.html
The article presents author’s list of most interesting science blogs on the Internet. Pharyngula is one of these.
I was considering translating the whole thing (I have too much time on my hands), but it’s really not worth it; it’s yet another “hey, look at this weird minority phenomenon I just found on the internet, which I researched for all of five minutes and now consider myself an expert on” sort of article.
It’s fluffy and misleading. It doesn’t really give a good overview of science on the internet, implies that the handful of specific examples given is all there is to see, and concludes that there isn’t much happening, because the Polish scientists that the writer polled don’t read blogs, or even know what they are.
Totally off topic, but damn funny
http://www.thinkin-lincoln.com/
I have to say, I felt my first-ever twinge of sympathy for creationism when I saw what it translates too in Polish. “Kreacjonizmem” is just too darn cute, in that “ugly dog with a squashed face and a zillion folds of skin” way.
Um, make that “translates TO in Polish.” I swear I am not quite as stupid as my shoddy orthography and ridiculous comments may make me seem.
Where’s Roman Werpachoski when you need him?
Speaking of creationism in unexpected places, I was over at McGill to pick up an alumnus library subscription. On my way back I noticed an ad for a talk coming up on campus (in the student center, so I assume this is a club thing) by someone from Creation Ministries International. I hope some biology or otherwise informed students show up …