Blogospherics
Category archives for Blogospherics
Seasonality of Spider Infestation Measured By Blog Page Views
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2014 
A while back I wrote a blog post on how to get rid of spiders in your house. I had a number of reasons for writing that post, which are implied in the post itself. I wrote the post some time ago but in July 2012 I upgraded it to have a better SEO factor,…
Weblog Awards Drops Science, Science Denialists Still Game System
Posted by Greg Laden on March 2, 2014 
Remember the bloggies, aka The Weblog Awards? Over the last couple of years, climate science denialists gamed the system to ensure that most of the nominees, and the top “winners,” would be recognized by the Weblog Awards as the top science site. Rumor has it that they cheated to do this, but I don’t know…
Trolls = Sadists?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 12, 2014 
I don’t have time to dissect or expand on this, and I don’t have the original paper, but I thought it worth noting: Trolls just want to have fun Erin E. Buckels, Paul D. Trapnell, Delroy L. Paulhus Abstract In two online studies (total N = 1215), respondents completed personality inventories and a survey of…
Outing A Pseudonymous Blogger
Posted by Greg Laden on February 10, 2014 
A few weeks ago, senior Nature Editor Henry Gee “outed” “Isis the Scientist,” an anonymous pseudonymous blogger. I say “anonymous pseudonymous” because “Isis” is a pseudonym but she was also anonymous in that her true identity was not known. Apparently, Isis’s identity has been known to the Internet since 2012. But whatever. Gee took a…
The News From The Great White North
Posted by Greg Laden on January 25, 2014 
Science Bowl First, I’m very proud to announce that the Wayzata Science Bowl team won in the statewide tournament last night and will be going to Washington DC for the nationals. I mention this because my wife, Amanda, is the coach for the team. This is the only season she’s been their coach, so that’s…
Bora Zivkovic: The good, the bad, and the ugly FINAL UPDATE(4)
Posted by Greg Laden on October 16, 2013 
Final Update: From Scientific American: Bora Zivkovic resigns from Scientific American STATEMENT FROM SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN October 18, 2013 Bora Zivkovic resigns from Scientific American Following recent events, Bora Zivkovic has offered his resignation from Scientific American, and Scientific American has decided to accept that resignation. The Scientific American Blog Network is a vibrant group of…
A Comment On Bora’s Comment On Commenting Threads
Posted by Greg Laden on January 28, 2013 I was recently engaged in a blog battle with Anthony Watts over his insufficiently skeptical (in my opinion) treatment of a discredited report of a meteorite of Martian origin bearing the remains of microscopic organisms. As this argument progressed, some dude on Twitter noted that the credibility of a blog post was determined by the…
Blogger: Be more twitter friendly
Posted by Greg Laden on December 9, 2012 Dear Blogger, You should have a “tweet this” button on each blog post. It should open a window with the title of your post and a shortened URL to it. Extra stuff on there is OK but not necessary. Here is what the button with the bird on it (indicating twitter) should NOT do: 1)…
Who reads this blog, anyway?
Posted by Greg Laden on September 15, 2012 Who are you? When National Geographic branded Science Blogs, they also deleted our big giant collective Google Analytics Account and gave us each individual Google Analytics accounts. The bad news is that I then lost the ability to analyze use of my blog over the last few years, which was only of marginal value anyway,…
The Costs and Benefits of Bad Ads and What You Can Do About It
Posted by Greg Laden on March 13, 2012 The problem: You are reading your favorite blog and there is an ad along the top banner or on a sidebar that seems to conflict with the contents of the blog you are reading, perhaps even disturbingly so. Why does this happen and what can be done about it?