Blogroll Amnesty Day

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Both Jon Swift and Skippy are spearheading a regular event, Blogroll Amnesty Day, in which we recognize and acknowledge the breadth and depth of blogtopia (yes, we all know who coined that term!). It’s today! You are encouraged to scout out new blogs, get out of old ruts, and explore new or otherwise unfamiliar blogs, add them to your bookmarks, or if you have a blog yourself, add them to your blogroll.

It feels strange to admit this, but Pharyngula seems to have somehow become a moderately big fish in the blogosphere — it was, once upon a time, just a little frivolous exercise I was running on my personal computer, and now it has become a big frivolous exercise running on a professional network. And how did it get there? Nobody succeeds in the blogosphere without making connections, lots of connections, and joining in the spirit of profligately linking to sources everywhere … and getting linked to in return. All the big dogs get that way by growing from small beginnings with the help of a community of readers — and once you’ve grown large, that does not mean your obligations to that community end.

So in that spirit, I make it easy to join the Pharyngula blogroll. Just leave a comment on this post with a link to your page, and I’ll toss your syndication link into my newsreader. There is no requirement that you link back to me.

There are a few restrictions.

  • A blog must have syndication — RSS or atom. Almost all blogs do nowadays, so it’s not much of a limitation. I do all of my blogreading with a newsreader rather than a web browser, so this is essential.

  • I actually read the blogs on my blogroll, so if you’re some right-wing creationist nutcase, I may look once or twice for the amusement value, but I won’t keep you on the list for long. Really, my blogroll may be open, but I do have some standards.

  • I am ruthless about pruning the blogroll, too. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if you don’t update more than once a month, you get culled. If you turn into a right-wing creationist nutcase, a kiddie porn purveyor, or just get really, really boring, you will get removed.

  • I get a lot of requests, so I’m going to be picky and insist that you enroll by leaving a comment on threads that announce an open enrollment. Requests get lost in my mail flood, otherwise, and it helps if I’ve got them all in one place.

  • Blogs will get added immediately to my newsreader and enter my reading lists right away. However, the public blogroll that you can see on the web only gets updated intermittently. It’s actually a bit out of date right now; the scripts I use to convert my newsreader file to html broke when I updated my laptop to Mac OS X Leopard. Have no fear, though, I’ve got curl sucking away in the background as I type this, bringing in a php upgrade.

  • Be interesting to me.

See, that’s not hard! Go ahead, leave me a link in the comments.

An unholy Frankensteinian fusion

We’re about to witness a monstrous event here on Scienceblogs.

Omnibrain: weird neuroscience from an inveterate smart-ass.

Retrospectacle: Parrots and hair cells with Shelley passing out the cookies.

Both are young graduate students in neuroscience, and both have decided to shut down their blogs…and

restart them as one freaky hybrid. They aren’t going away, they’re anastomosing.

There is one obstacle. They don’t know what to call this brand new twisted experiment in blogging, so they’re running a contest to name the new blog (they don’t mention it, but they’re also going to need a redesigned banner), and they’re giving away prizes for the best name: a free subscription to Seed, books, and a hodge-podge of other random science stuff.

I’m no good at the blog-naming biz — look at what I came up with for this one! — but all this talk of Shelley and Frankenstein brought to mind some obvious epithets: “abhorred monster”, “hideous progeny”, etc. I think they like their proposed merger, so those won’t do. So I searched on a full text version of Frankenstein and found the only place where the brain is mentioned in the whole book:*

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body. In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should he impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain.

Maybe I’m just morbid, but I think “Food for the worm” is an excellent name for a blog.

Somehow, I don’t think I’ll win any prizes. You people better take over.

*By the way, the next chapter contains the account of the revivification of the monster. It’s not very dramatic — no lightning bolts, no creaking chains in an old castle, no grisly stitchery of corpses. Frankenstein just does it, leaving the method unexplained.

The petites sauvages of Pharyngula: old Mollies, new Mollies, and open enrollment

The always perspicacious Chris Clarke is talking about us, in a post where he talks about the pleasures and perils of managing comments on a blog.

I’d be lying if I said I never appreciated a good bar brawl of a comment thread. And some blogs make the free-for-alls work: Pharyngula comes to mind as an example of a wonderful, worthwhile blog with a laissez-faire comment policy. But few blogs have that winning Pharyngular combination of high traffic, sharp focus, distinct blogger personality, and devoted constructive regulars. The chance of a typical low-to-mid-traffic blog ripening into another Pharyngula is, as the blog world matures, decreasing.

He’s got it right — managing comments is tricky stuff, and there are the issues of setting the tone, of culling the more egregious violators, of keeping the place from descending into random madness. Probably the best example of a blog pulling off the delicate balancing act of of getting a convivial and smart continuing conversation going is Making Light; I think Pharyngula has a fine comments section that at least aspires to that level, less the “convivial” part. Chris accurately describes the situation here as a laissez-faire free-for-all.

[Read more…]

Question of the day

I get to do some more traveling this morning, so I’ll leave you with an off-the-wall question: since Denyse O’Leary has taken over most of the posting on Uncommon Descent, and since most of her posts link to some other in her network of poorly trafficked, repetitious blogs (and sometimes she links to a post that links to one of the others!), does this mean UD is now officially a link farm?