Near as I can judge, Pharyngula is the third most popular blog in the entire state of Minnesota, as measured by traffic and inbound links. This is a good and distinguished place to be, and I’m both pleased and surprised that this obscure little collection of rants has ranked so highly.
Except…
It’s a distant third behind the top two in the state.
The top two are right-wing kool-aid drinkin’ blogs, Powerline and Captain’s Quarters.
Whenever people refer to the Minnesota blogosphere, they get so boggled by the spectacle of lunacy in the top two that they never quite manage to count down to #3. It’s embarrassing. If only they’d judge us by Pharyngula rather than those other two, they’d realize that a) we aren’t Texas, and b) we’re much weirder than they imagine.
Look at this, for instance: Roger Ailes laughs aloud at Captain’s Quarters. You see, Captain Ed believes that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, justifying the war, but that the Bush Administration is trying to hide the fact. That isn’t Minnesota; Minnesotans aren’t that crazy. We voted for the other guy.
Then there’s TBogg. TBogg mocks us cruelly with the Marge Gunderson stereotype (hey, those earflaps are useful) and our Powerline blog. We have a little ongoing scandal in the US Attorney’s office here; we had an unqualified, rather full-of-herself Bush appointee in the top slot, and most of her staff resigned in protest. Powerline squeaks mightily about the unfairness of picking on poor Paulose, and that gets all the attention again; but Paulose was a Gonzales polyp, while it was the four top staffers who resigned who are the good Minnesotans.
Now come on, bloggers! Don’t judge us by the kooks at the top—at least mention that there are lots of smart progressive blogs here, too. If Pharyngula is too bizarre to be representative, at least try to bring up Minnesota Monitor or Norwegianity or The Power Liberal or Blog of the Moderate Left. For balance.
If we have to, we could all get together and do a Marge Gunderson impression*, you betcha. Would that help?
*Except for Norwegianity. Mark try to do Marge…<shudder.> There are things man was not meant to see.
Your blog would draw much more attention if you would (a) command your cyber-cephalopod armies to eat people who displease you more frequently, and (b) post videos of the carnage.
(b) being the crucial part of llewelly’s recommendation.
PZ, a totally unrelated question:
Do you have a larger version of the octopus in the bottom right corner of all your posts?
I’m only asking because I want an octopus tattoo to commemorate the cephalopod that made me a vegetarian, and this little guy looks promising.
Thanks.
“obscure”? There’s modesty, and then there’s disingenuous.
(I could probably make every word of that sentence a link to a different magazine in which PZ has been featured, but I’m too lazy to track them all down.)
I live in TX. It’s not thaaaat bad.
There’s an equal proportion of stupid people everywhere.
Here’s a great big copy of that octopus.
Austin TX is not too bad. It’s worse elsewhere…
As an Iowegian, I lack the necessary speech impediment(s) needed to speak Minnesotan.
Sadly, the food’s about the same, and growing up two-thirds of the TV stations (2 out of 3) were from Minnesota, but they didn’t talk funny. I guess Austin and Rochester aren’t much like Brainerd and Alex.
Hey, Joe Bob, what say you and I put together an Austin coalition, and go on up there to Morris and box that PZ fellow about the ears, the next time he puts down our fine state?
;-)
I’m in Houston, which is the less-cool cousin to oh-so-hip Austin. We’re also a bit more ghetto.
I have to admit it does annoy me when PZ takes cheap shots at TX. It’s lazy stereotyping. We have our fair share of smart progressives too.
Anyway, it’s not like we’re all hideous inbred mutants- like in Tennessee.
Warm up the wood chipper. You could become #2.
as a Minnesotan in exile, I can’t help but wonder, where the fuck did Captain Ed and the Powerline fucks come from. Are they the same kind of imports as former Rep. Arlon Lindner. They certainly don’t represent the best of what Minnesota has to offer.
Almost time to put in my bratwurst order from Schmitt’s Meat Market in Nicollet. Can’t get anything decent in Boston.
wow… schmitt’s meat market. i grew up in gibbon, not too far from there, and we always sent our deer meat there to get processed… my folks still do… good to see they have national support.
Yeah, PZ, knock it off with the cheap shots against Texas. Just because we gave the nation George W. Bush and Tom DeLay, and we lead in the execution of mentally incompetent people (well, OK, mentally competent people, too), that does not give you the right to disparage our fair state. I think many of us share Molly Ivin’s view that Texas is like Mississippi, but with better roads.
As far as having our share of smart progressives goes, here in College Station there’s me and one other guy, and I’m not real sure about him.
My parents live in Nicollet. The only bratwurst available in Boston are the atrocities known as Johnsonville. I have my parents ship brats out here a couple times a year. It’s kind of funny to watch all the Bostonians start asking if Jeff is bringing bratwurst–even the part-time vegetarians.
Jeff, I am told that decent bratwurst can be found here. Am I being lied to? :-)
Here’s an interesting bit from an article on the blog-o-verse from Discover Magazine:
This blue blob represents a balanced sociopolitical discourse. The prevalence of blue in this area shows that most of these links are reciprocal, suggesting a sort of metadialogue between bloggers who hurl headlines at one another.
Guess who is at the center of this reciprocal link fest?
The brightest light belongs to syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin.
So – just as the fact that a Regnery book may be listed as a best-seller doesn’t mean it really is, having lots of reciprocal links doesn’t indicate real bloggy popularity either.
#1 sane blog in the state!
Two words come to mind. Jesse Ventura.
Kseniya,
Haven’t checked out Wirth, yet. I’ve gotten a bit spoiled with having the Schmitt’s brats i have sent out here. Might have to check ’em out (I know exactly where it is on Stuart).
First, this must make you easily the top science blog in the state.
Second, the problem with being with #1 is that after that there is no way but down.
Of course, the fact that a site’s popularity is so heavilly measured by links is a poor measure of popularity. After all, in cases of blogs like Powerline, one can safely assume that a fair number of the links are people pointing and laughing…..
Another thing with the right-wing scream factory is they make their own news. Powerline screams something, LGF echoes and links it, etc. There’s no outside news input. All they do is scream links back and forth. That’s why their link count is so high.
You’re not only much weirder than they imagine, you’re much weirder than they can imagine.
Mercy, please! Some Texans know that there IS an Austin MN. Some of us regret that the Dimwit In Chief managed to assume a Texan Cowboy outfit by paying a lotta money for it. Travis County is a “blue” lifeboat in a poisonous ‘red tide’ of reaction against reality. We host Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim communities (etc) without friction. Less than 37% voted for the last DOMA and there isn’t a “gay ghetto” because it is dispersed. Our “out gay” state legislator retired. We’d rather have an out gay than a closeted paedoGOP subject to blackmail. Think kindly of Austins.
As someone born in Rochester and now in exile in Iowa, Rochester and Austin aren’t much like Brainerd. I’ve never been to Alex, but that seems like a safe bet, too.
PZ, never assume your opponent is automaticaly an idiot. It’ll come back to chew out your ass.
Was Bush the wrong man for the job? They both were. We’d be a lot further along had Gore only treated Bush fils as a serious opponent. We’d be out of Iraq by now, while Iraqi and American forces would currently be getting Syria and Iran establshed as bonafide democracies.
George W. Bush got hung up on the wrong rationale for invading Iraq. Then he forgot to include us in the matter. I suspect we’d be more supportive of the effort if we were called upon to make some actual sacrifices.
In short, we’re given to understand our government thinks we’re the enemy. That doesn’t help matter any.
Well anyway, just remember that not everybody who disagrees with you is an imbecile.
John Hinderaker of PowerLine is the cretin who wrote this:
PowerLine is more popular than Pharyngula because PowerLine is an absolute comedy freak show. PZ’s blog, on the other hand, is a refined and dignified salon of intellectual discourse (although some of us are not quite as brilliant as Ass-Rocket thinks Bush is).
Hey, everyone should remember that George W. is NOT FROM TEXAS!
Gee-dub is a blue-blood Connecticut Yankee, and I’m still waiting to learn who taught him his ridiculous redneck accent. He never deigned to talk or otherwise communicate with anyone not in his immediate circle, so the only explanation for his faux patios is patently political. Papa Bush hired someone to teach his little dipshit how to sound like a Proper Texas Dipshit, and the entire world is now paying the price for jackass Americans deciding that a man who seems so ignorant must really represent America.
Kseniya @ 16:
Jeff, I am told that decent bratwurst can be found here. Am I being lied to? :-)
Kseniya, do I correctly remember you once saying that you are in New York? If so, here’s your bratwurst connection. They even make Weisswurst, and sell the sweet mustard that goes with it. Head there on any given Saturday and you will find most of NY’s expat German community stocking up on feed for the monkey.
It is hard to separate satire from the real thing at times, isn’t it Zeno?
As far as Powerline’s popularity, it is now featured as one of the AOL blogs. I don’t know how the pompous ass over at CQ got so popular.
As far as Texas goes, it does have a lot to recommend it. I lived in Dallas and was able to find many liberal friends and really liked Austin South. And having moved to Texas from Oklahoma, I can attest heartily that there are worse places for a liberal to be than in Texas. But, c’mon guys, have you ever looked at the platform of the Texas GOP? You must get those guys out of there!
Man! I haven’t laughed so hard for months. Years possibly. :-D
Man! I haven’t laughed so hard for months. Years possibly. :-D
Don’t act as if there were a right rationale. Come on!
Don’t act as if there were a right rationale. Come on!
Hey, everyone should remember that George W. is NOT FROM TEXAS!
Then why’d you guys elect him governor and then vote for him for president twice? The people of Texas had several opportunities to send George back to Midland, and squandered them all.
Dubya did spend a good chunk of his childhood in Midland, so that accent isn’t entirely fake; it did thicken considerably once he went into politics, though, and only reached ridiculous when he ran for President.
Was Bush the wrong man for the job? They both were. We’d be a lot further along had Gore only treated Bush fils as a serious opponent. We’d be out of Iraq by now, while Iraqi and American forces would currently be getting Syria and Iran established as bonafide democracies.
Oh dear. Are we seeing another one of those Republicans who grudgingly admits Bush might indeed be an idiot but who tries to claim Gore would have invaded Iraq, too? I think I smells me a concern troll.
Yes, please share with us the ‘right rationale’ for invading Iraq, and explain how exactly Iraqi and US troops would be making Iran and Syria deocracies.
I was kind of surprised Lileks wasn’t up there. I read him for a few years; at first the wacky retro cataloging, apple-fanboying and househusbandry outweighed the right-wingery. At first.
“Except…”
That you make posts so often, and so many people comment, that it is impossible to follow a discussion.
Hi Mrs. Tilton,
Nope. I have been to New York, but have never lived or been schooled there. I’m a New Englander. (I went to Jacob Wirth’s with my parents a very long time ago when I was quite small, so I barely remember it – but I know it by reputation.) Regardless, I will file your recommendation for future use. Thanks!
Re: George W. Bush’s Texas Accent
As others have pointed out, it’s not entirely faked. He’s lived in Texas a long, long time. Pharyngula’s favorite Texan, Molly Ivins, spoke of becoming acquainted with Dubya in Texas when they were both quite young – college-aged perhaps. (Aside: Ivins, who never cut Dubya any slack on his politics, openly admited that she always found him to be a likeable, affable guy. Make of that what you will.)
However, his good-old-boy personna is, in part, an artifice. After losing a race for a seat in the US House of Representatives to Texas native Kent Hance in 1978, he vowed never to get “out-southerned” again. He certainly made good on his vow by significantly out-southerning Tennessee native Al Gore in 2000.
(Citations: None. I heard Ivins speak about Bush on an NPR radio program several years ago. Bush’s vow never to be out-southerned was reported in a magazine article, published in 2000, in either Rolling Stone or Time. I can’t remember which. Sorry!)
I have a theory about Minnesota’s right-wing wackos. Minnesota is a very progressive state with a long history of activism and producing great Democratic leaders such as Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone. We even had a socialist governor in the 1930s (Floyd B. Olson). We are the only state in the USA that never voted for Reagan or either Bush.
My theory is that our right-wingers are actually pushed to greater extremes due to their disempowerment. Now I understand that they currently occupy the governor’s mansion and recently held the majority in the MN House (now back in DFL hands). And the Republicans have one US Senator (and while Coleman is hardly a PowerLine extremist, he will be gone next year). Nonetheless, I think it is the right-wing in Minnesota that always has something to prove.
I suspect this same phenomenon exists in very conservative states — that their left-wingers can become more extremist in both views and tactics due to extended disempowerment.
There is also an “evolutionary” aspect to this phenomenon as well. When moderates in the minority party want to get elected, they can change a few positions on issues and join the majority party. This leaves only the people who refuse to compromise in the minority party. For example, there are a lot of pro-lifers in the Minnesota Democratic (DFL) party. The most extremist, one-issue pro-lifers are in the Republican party.
I looked up the Bush-Kerry stats on MN vs. TX the other day. Basically, the worst Congressional district in MN (Bachman’s, natch) gave Bush about 56% of the vote. Texas as a whole gave Bush 62%, as I remember. Only about 20 of Texas’s 220+ counties gave Bush less than 56% of the vote, and Kerry only won about 10 mostly urban counties.
Texas is pretty bad. A friend of mine who went to school in Austin said that he didn’t want to get off the Greyhound for smoke breaks farther than 40 miles from Austin (and he lived in Idaho, for Christ’s sake).
Mind you, the actual bloggers responsible for powerline and captain’s quarters might be mostly located in Minnesota, but just like Pharyngula, they’re getting plenty of traffic from other places, too (e.g. hello from the Netherlands.) I can’t bring myself to think my home state is the primary supplier of the popularity behind these rubes. All that traffic that they’re enjoying may at some point start in the North Star State, but it must be leading mostly to somewhere else.
I suspect this same phenomenon exists in very conservative states — that their left-wingers can become more extremist in both views and tactics due to extended disempowerment.
Indeed, rightwing lunatic and raving homophobe Michael Savege AKA Michael Weiner is based in San Francisco, and has lived in the SF Bay Area for 30+ years. Guess even in SF there’s an ‘angry white male’ audience to be tapped.
Except for the anomaly of Schwarzenegger, the GOP is pretty much completely disenfranchised in California, and as a result the only people left to run the CA Republican party are the rightwing nutters. It’s a vicious circle that keeps them marginalized (poor babies).
“It’s a vicious circle that keeps them marginalized (poor babies).”
Or moving to Idaho (grumble).
man, I am just about certain- the tards will always outnumber the smarties.
Yes, no doubt, but the point of origin hardly matters (cf #42). Savage is syndicated, and he writes books. I learned of Savage by way of a conservative blog originating in Missouri.
#33,
Saddam Hussein. Hussein was suicidal, and he wanted to be killed by American forces. He tried to get Clinton to invade, and failed. He tried to get Bush to invade, but failed in his aims until al Queda pulled off 9/11. Saddam Hussein did everything he could to piss of the United States, but had the incredibly bad luck to have a man of great forbearance like Bill Clinton in the White House for most of the 1990s.
That’s why he so thoroughly screwed up the defense of Iraq, and the subsequent resistance. And now we have Sunni militias fighting al Queda, while Shite militias battle American and Iraqi forces. Hussein was in a suicidal depression and exhibiting the “fuck you” attitude so typical of the suicidally depressed.
To put it simply, Saddam Hussein wanted his country to be invaded, occupied, and ruined. So he did everything he could to bring it about. It’s not his fault GWB etc. got hung up on something so inconsequential.
Gotcha. I’m adding the good ones to my blog roll, eh?