A recommendation

Try browsing Prides and Prejudices, the musings of a sardonic high school English teacher—that’s my favorite kind!—without getting sucked in. She writes everything from a paean to the woodlouse to
modern gift-giving etiquette. (I had no idea the iPod Shuffle was so déclassé, but then I’ve been away from the dating scene for a long time; the last gift I gave my wife when she was my girlfriend might have been a sweater.)

Webology and communication

The Next Hurrah discusses how information (and misinformation) is spread over the web, determined by tracking how a story about PETA and gay sheep circulated. A couple of interesting points are that he emphasizes that the way to persuade is to get out and make comments on other blogs—having a popular blog is not enough, I presume since the readers will typically be of a similar mindset, and you need to break through to people who might not be of like minds—and that MySpace and LiveJournal are important.

[Read more…]

Inverting the blogosphere into a kind of anti-beauty contest gives me hope

How about them boobies? I was traveling yesterday, and missed most of the astonishing uproar over being photographed while bearing breasts—so I won’t add much to the thrashing except to point out the bright side.

You see, the real resentment is over the fact that Jessica happens to be young and attractive, a couple of fortuitous and irrelevant features that don’t matter to the assessment of her writing. There are a lot of people like that in the blogosphere, like Amanda and Lindsay, and it’s not just the ladies—look at Ezra and Chris. They’re the competition. If we old and homely people can take them out by impeaching them on the basis of their looks and simultaneously elevating our raddled, decrepit appearance into a sign of gravitas and wisdom, we win! We need to constantly reinforce that pleasing “he/she-sure-didn’t-get-there-on-looks-and-sunny-disposition” source of false credibility, and divide the world into crotchety sourpusses you must obey and young kids with taut connective tissue you can ignore.

I suspect Ann Althouse must be cleverly thinking the very same thing.

Carnivalia, and an open thread

We just had one of these!

Well, just to flesh it out a little more with some random links, here are some photos. I was told the second one made someone think of me (warning: body modification!). And, jebus help me, for some reason I thought this photo was very sexy. Or appetizing. I don’t know, something in the midbrain flickered.

i-d72fa7f74d5055516ed62a55c6282b64-tentacles.jpg

Oh, and several of us sciencebloggers were interviewed for an article by Eva Amsen on “Who benefits from science blogging?” It doesn’t mention the benefit of people sending you pictures that tickle the cingulate.

Local news

Hey, this is a very good site for us Minnesotans: the Minnesota Monitor.

Minnesota Monitor is an independently-produced political news daily featuring original and investigative reporting.

As a coalition of long-time progressive bloggers, freelance writers, and professional journalists our aim is to enhance and expand the political dialogue in the Minnesota. By combining the immediacy of blogging with time-honored journalistic inquiry, Minnesota Monitor intends to provide a platform for overlooked stories, policy and campaign analysis, and unique local perspectives on the important issues of the day.

Our contributing writers subscribe to a Code of Ethics and the pursuit of truth-telling, fairness, and accountability.

If you’re interested in what’s going on in Minnesota, just a look at the top stories right now shows a lot of stuff the regular news media aren’t even mentioning.

A suggestion for the comments

The comment section at Pharyngula is becoming a bit too wild west lately. I am all for vigorous, unhindered language and the expression of strong opinions, and I think dumb ideas need to be dealt with harshly, but we also need to allow opportunities for those ideas to be fully expressed. Too often, the conversations are beginning to go like this:

Stranger: I think…
Old hand: [Pulls out six-gun, shoots stranger down]I do believe I didn’t like your accent, stranger, and you were a bit cross-eyed.

I’m not at all keen on this. It makes the comments a very hostile place to new people (I like seeing new people here, don’t you?) and if it keeps up all we’re going to have left are the twitchiest, most psychopathic contributors. To encourage a little more restraint, I’m going to ask everyone to voluntarily impose a 3 comment rule on themselves. What that means is that if someone comes along and says something, no matter how outrageous, engage them in polite conversation first, give them a chance to clarify and expand on the idea, and then if it’s still utterly insane, you can cut loose.

For example:

Stranger:1I think all women are chattel.
Old hand: Pardon me, friend, but are you using humor, irony, sarcasm, or satire? Are you perhaps about to expand on a deeper philosophical point?
Stranger: 2No, I just think women are meant to serve my needs.
Old hand: This sounds like a most unfortunate and disagreeable belief. Why should you hold such a demeaning attitude?
Stranger: 3Because the Bible, which is the literal word of God, tells me so.
Old hand: [Smashes whiskey bottle over stranger’s head. General brawl commences.]

See? Isn’t that much better? You can still have your fun in the general melee, but let’s just slow the onset down a little, hold fire for a few minutes, and see if we can get a few words through the macho murk first.

I will also add that, aside from a few persistent trolls, most of the regular commenters here share at least some of our goals, although there are of course routine differences of opinion on subsidiary matters, and it isn’t in our best interests to reflexively knife one of your fellow commenters because he is a Christian or opposes abortion or once voted for a Republican city council member. You certainly can argue about that stuff, but treating it as good cause to spit in their eye gets a little tiresome.

Note to metaphor-challenged literalists: there aren’t actually any Colt pistols or broken beer bottles in the comments threads here. It’s a metaphor (look it up.) I do, however, have the power to throw individuals out of the saloon through plate glass windows.