Omphaloskepsis

Where are the female bloggers?

2008-04-20T18:31:00.002-05:00

MissLaura at DailyKos writes

There's this question that the traditional media likes to ask:

"Why aren't there more women blogging about politics?"

or

"Why are most of the big political bloggers men?"

It's an interesting question - why aren't more of the prominent political bloggers women? When I started reading political bloggers in late 2003 or early 2004 I don't think there were many of them. But that hasn't been the case for a long time. Marcia Wheeler, Barbara O'Brien, Digby and Jane Hamsher (to name a few) are prominent female political bloggers. Seven of the leading bloggers at dKos are women: SusanG, McJoan, MissLaura, Georgia10, Plutonium Page, Scout Finch and BarbinMD. There's Arianna Huffington. And just because Michelle Malkin is a horrible person doesn't mean she isn't a prominent female political blogger.

Is there a deficiency of women among the prominent political bloggers? MissLaura concludes

Megan Carpentier wrote a really stupid piece for Glamocracy, and her failure to quote Markos rejecting her premise makes you wonder how many other people she left out because what they said didn't fit her narrative. But she didn't pioneer this kind of stupidity. She was rerunning a hackneyed story the traditional media has been telling about blogging for quite some time. There are lots of different stories to write about blogs and gender -- never mind "prominent" bloggers, why does it seem that state bloggers are so disproportionately male? How do women and men blogging together at group blogs get treated differently by readers or the traditional media? Is it the case that men started the earlier blogs, and if so, at what rate have women been catching up? Whose blogging is more likely to lead to paid work as an institutional or campaign blogger, as a journalist, as a consultant? Do meat-world credentials play a different role in how male and female bloggers are received? These questions don't get asked, going unmentioned to leave room for the fortieth retread of "why are the three bloggers the laziest journalist can think of all men?"

I have no idea if there are fewer prominent female political bloggers than there "should" be. But I don't see any reason to assume that there is a dearth of female political bloggers. There are lots of good questions related to why men tend to be early adopters of technology. But the question of why there aren't more prominent female political bloggers is only valid if there are fewer prominent female bloggers than would be expected. Are there?

Expelled Exposed

2008-04-16T11:03:00.002-05:00

Tangled Bank #102

2008-04-02T12:58:00.000-05:00

Tangled Bank #102 is up at Further Thoughts. Berry Go Round #3 was published a week ago at Greg Laden's blog.

Blogging Heroes

2008-03-18T23:31:00.002-05:00

Bora got an email from Amazon recommending Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers. He points out that it should really be subtitled "Interviews with 30 of America's Top Tech Bloggers".

While Bora had an idea as to who he would have considered the world's top bloggers, I realised that I had no idea who I would consider top bloggers. Markos Moulitsas, of course. Josh Marshall. Juan Cole. Volokh. Hindraker. Drudge. Malkin. Andrew Sullivan. PZ Myers? Seriously though - outside of politics, I wouldn't have a clue. And more importantly, I wouldn't know how to rank them.

How do you rank the top bloggers? Traffic? Impact? Recognition outside of their corner of the blogosphere?

Blogs meet Old Media

2008-03-01T01:52:00.003-06:00

At the heart of Web 2.0 is the idea of user-generated content. While the vast majority of blogs probably are crap, some of the more popular ones play an important role in the dissemination of news. As a result of this, their relationship with the older media sources has been a rocky one. But as blogs have become more popular, "old media" has tried to bring new media into the fold. The result has been a clash of cultures.

In her article about blogs which I keep referring to, Sarah Boxer criticised the paid bloggers attached to newspapers and magazines. Part of the problem with these ventures into blogging lies in a cultural divide - asking reporters to blog tends not to work, while "organic" bloggers are unlikely to be a good fit in the newsroom.

Hank at Scientific Blogging commented on an article published by Neil Thurman¹ in the journal New Media & Society in which Thurman looked at the adoption of web 2.0 concepts by the British news media. Thurman found that, as of 2005, only the Guardian had really done much to incorporate user-generated content. While they all saw users as a source of information, they preferred to incorporate it into older paradigms - bulletin boards, polls and restricted areas for feedback. Hank wrote

I read things like this and I shake my head in wonder. Web 2.0 today is like the WWW of 1999 in many ways. People thought if they threw up a website to sell dog food, it would somehow be better than buying dog food down the street. In the past 8 months I have had phone calls from various journalists or media reps who have wondered why our brand of Science 2.0 has worked well and others have stagnated.
The answer is simple; let people write.

Some of the areas of conflict that Thurman writes about are cultural: a reporter works to deadlines, with editors, and is taught to fact check. Bloggers are more like columnists, writing when they feels like it, about whatever catches their fancy. To make matters worse, they are constrained by stereotypes.

There is a stereotype of blogs as being misspelt, semi-literate rants. Like any good stereotype, it has an element of truth. But it isn't necessarily true. Wikinews, which is classic user-generated content, is a decent news source and is generally well written. Like any wiki, it's possible for better writers to correct and polish content added by others.

Other stereotypes are that blogs don't contribute anything new, they simply work of the reporting of established news media and, as mentioned in the Thurman article, the fact that a blog tends to be more about the blogger than about the story - the personality gets in the way. Again, there is some truth to these assertions, but they aren't necessarily the case. Most notably different is Talking Points Memo (and its associated projects). While TPM is the creation of Josh Marshall, his personality never overshadows the news (except for the occasional pictures of his son). TPM has done original investigative reporting and recently won a Polk Award for their coverage of the US Attorneys firing scandal.

Bloggings (as both a medium and a style of writing) has most to offer to traditional media when it is incorporated into the system. TPM has done it very successfully.

When is comes to science writing, science blogging can be superior to conventional ways of reporting on science. While there are excellent science journalists, there are also many who lack the necessary understanding of the material they are covering. Science bloggers, because they have a depth of knowledge of the field about which they write, are excellent sources for the communication and dissemination of science. And very often, they can be incorporated into traditional media.

Thurman, Neil. 2008. Forums for citizen journalists? Adoption of user generated content initiatives by online news media. New Media Society 10(1): 139-157 doi:10.1177/1461444807085325

Berry Go Round #2

2008-02-28T14:47:00.001-06:00

The second edition of Berry Go Round, the plant-focussed blog carnival, is up at my main blog.

Should science bloggers just blog about science?

2008-02-27T11:19:00.003-06:00

Anonymous Coward (his/her chosen name, not a descriptor) at Bayblab has complained about the state of modern science blogging. S/he wrote

Why do we blog about science? For us at the bayblab, it was just an extension to our conversations about science that tended to take place in the "cool" bay of the lab, the only place with a decent sound system. It wasn't initially intended to be public, it was just an efficient way to share stories among us so that we could have some conversation fodder. In fact, back when we started, blogging in general was mostly about personal journals and pictures of pets, and the science blogs were few and far between.

Now there are thousands of blogs dedicated to science, yet only a few are popular. And strangely the popular ones are only loosely related to science.

I don't find it all that strange. Putting aside, for the moment, the issue of how they define "about science", it seems absolutely predictable that the most popular blogs are going to be the ones that have the broadest appeal. While the blogosphere is swarming with graduate students and junior faculty, the truth is that most blog readers aren't going to have advanced degrees in science. The more narrow your focus, the more narrow your appeal.

AC characterises the top 5 science blogs as follows

Pharyngula (mostly about creationism)
Cognitive Daily (psychology research)
Living the Scientific Life (personal journal)
Sandwalk (some evolutionary genetics, and creationism)
Aetiology (pop science)

Setting aside a few quibbles (about methods and definitions) for the moment, what does this say about science bloggers? AC laments the fact that, of the top five, only Cognitive Daily consistently talks about peer-reviewed science and asks

Why is that? Perhaps there is less appeal in discussing recent papers than bashing creationists.

It's an interesting question, but I believe it's the wrong question. The question isn't why do the top science bloggers not blog more about peer reviewed research, the question is why are these people the most popular? Now, here's the methodological complaint. The ranking is based on Postgenomic's list of the top science blogs.

Rankings are based on the number of incoming links from other indexed science blogs and some secret Postgenomic sauce.

While this may be a good proxy for "most popular", it's really a measure of "linked to by other science bloggers".

Unfortunately, this makes it really difficult for me to make the point I wanted to make. So setting aside the facts, let me wander off into my own diatribe...

What makes a popular blog? Quite frankly, if there was a blog dedicated to dry forest ecology, I would be reading it every day. But me and how many other people? Not an awful lot, I suspect. A really good, carefully focussed science blog which only discussed the peer-reviewed literature on a certain topic probably wouldn't get a lot of traffic. And it would take a lot of effort to write. It would, of course, make a nice experiment.

Most science bloggers have other commitment apart from blogging. As one person said, the only way the justify blogging is by calling it outreach. And outreach should go beyond the people who would normally read peer reviewed science. Outreach involves reaching out to the people with a casual interest in science. Outreach involves producing content that would be of interest to people who don't normally read about science.

Outreach is also about public education. While AC laments

It's been said before, you can't reason somebody out of a position in which they didn't reason themselves into. And it worries me because to the lay audience listening to PZ Myers (the 800lb gorilla), it would seem that science's purpose is to attack religion.

writing about creationists and kooks is important - when scientists say "intelligent design isn't science", the public needs an explanation. And debunking the latest nonsense is valuable. There was a time when people could wait for books to be published or for talk.origins to be updated. But blogging has become the medium of choice. This is even more important for a blogger like Orac - the amount of quackery in medical fields is overwhelming. A site like Translating Autism is great in that it bridges a gap from technical journals to the public, it only gets things halfway there. Orac is another step, but we need more to reach the Oprah crowd.

Downside of paid blogging - you can get fired

2008-02-27T00:48:00.003-06:00

In her article about blogs which I discussed a few weeks ago, Sarah Boxer says:

Bloggers are golden when they're at the bottom of the heap, kicking up. Give them a salary, a book contract, or a press credential, though, and it just isn't the same. (And this includes, for the most part, the blogs set up by magazines, companies, and newspapers.) Why? When you write for pay, you worry about lawsuits, sentence structure, and word choice. You worry about your boss, your publisher, your mother, and your superego looking over your shoulder. And that's no way to blog.

Apparently this isn't the only challenge faced by paid bloggers - "performance" standards, it would appear, are based on traffic. Via Hank at Scientific Blogging, Michael Learmonth reports:

Another day, another end to a Gawker employee's nasty, brutish and short career. Radar says media reporter Maggie Schnayerson, hired in September, was sacked for failing to generate enough page views.

Apparently the writer's traffic fell from 400,000 page views the previous month to 160,000, when the expectation was 670,000 page views.

So what's a blog post worth, anyway? Some function of the number of page views it can generate. In that regard, context is everything - it isn't the post, it's the publication.

Learning how little I know

2008-02-25T23:24:00.002-06:00

Since I am interested in blogging, I figured I could blog about blogging. It seemed like a simple enough idea. I realised how self-absorbed that really was, and named the blog appropriately. I quickly learned how little I know.

My first foray was into blogging ethics. And having jumped into it with both feet, I found myself uncertain how to proceed. Was I ready to jump into a fairly sophisticated topic?

Then there was the rest of the world. I realised that there are an awful lot of blogs about blogging - big names, top blogs. Science blogging is a niche endeavour - blogging about science blogging is a micro-niche. On the other hand, there was a lot out there that I don't know, there's an awful lot that I could learn. Perhaps, before I look inward, I should look outward. The problem that entails is that I didn't know where to start. What are the top blogs about blogging?

The best place to start might be Technorati. Technorati ranks blogs based on "authority",

Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.

Authority is an alternative to traffic measures - it says (should say) something about how much other bloggers value your blog.

So I searched for the term "blogging" under blogs (other options are "posts", "photos" and "videos"). At the top of the list was TechCrunch, which has a Technorati Authority of over 23,000. The name alone suggested that I had come to the wrong place, and a quick examination of their site seemed to support that idea.

Second on the list was Mashable with something over 13,000- at least I had heard of Mashable, even though I didn't know what it was. Mashable is "the world's largest blog on social networking" (which they explain as: sites like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, hi5, Piczo, Bebo and YouTube; YouTube didn't strike me as fitting into that initially, until I realised that it was a way of actually watching people speak and perform). Problogger (at 9,508), DoshDosh (7,842) and Copyblogger(7,039) rounded off the "over 4000") crowd.

Of course, poking around led me to one really interesting site: NeilGaiman.com

Defining science bloggers: Casey Luskin and BPR3

2008-02-05T14:12:00.000-06:00

Wikipedia has a policy page which outlines What Wikipedia is Not. While it is possible to define Wikipedia in positive terms (it is an encyclopaedia and an online community of people working to write that encyclopaedia), it's more useful to define it in negative terms - not a dictionary, not a soapbox, not a publisher of original thought... After Casey Luskin's recent (mis)use of the ResearchBlogging (formerly BPR3) logo on a post at Evolution News & Views, a debate sprung up over the issue of his use of the icon. The ResearchBlogging icon is supposed to be used for blog posts about peer reviewed research. I first came across the issue yesterday when Mike Dunford raised the issue - among the issues with Luskin's use of the icon was the fact that, instead of registering to the site, it was downloaded to the Discovery Institute's server and hosted there, with no backlink to ResearchBlogging.org.

There's a more fundamental question of whether Luskin's post meets the guidelines for its use. While some people raised the issue of whether a review article meets the requirement of "peer reviewed research" and questioned whether EN&V can be called a blog (since it lacks a comment section), two other issues were more important:

The post author should have read and understood the entire work cited.
The blog post should report accurately and thoughtfully on the research it presents.

Luskin's post does not appear to meet the second guideline - that the post reported "accurately and thoughtfully". There's the quote mining issue - that bits were picked out of the paper to support a specific agenda. Couple this with the fact that Luskin put words in the mouth of the author that weren't in the paper, and the end result was that the post did not accurately reflect the paper.

In trying to define science bloggers, I suggested that

Science bloggers blog about science because they find it interesting
Science bloggers are interested in communicating their field of interest to people outside of their immediate field
Science bloggers are frequently motivated by a desire to defend science against pseudoscience and denialism

In my opinion, Luskin's work can't be called science blogging - it's agenda-driven blogging which seeks to discredit science. Rather than making it more accessible to the public, Luskin leaves his readers with a misunderstanding of what the paper was trying to say. Given that my original set of criteria were based largely on intent, I think it may be more useful to recast them in terms of what science blogging is not.

Posts on this issue

Is this post following our guidelines? - Dave Munger, BPR3 blog. This is the central hub for discussion of the issue, and the how ResearchBlogging community should proceed with issues like this.
Blogging About Peer-Reviewed Research at the Discovery Institute - Mike Dunford, The Questionable Authority. This is the post where Mike introduced the issue (at least to me).
Luskin and the Peer-Reviewed Research Icon - the Saga Continues - Mike Dunford, The Questionable Authority. Mike talks about Luskin's "I didn't know, it's not my fault, I didn't realise it was copyright" reply.
Oops! Another Discovery Institute Abuse & Misuse - Kevin Z, The Other 95%. Kevin Z has a good analysis of Luskin's post in the context of the ResearchBlogging guidelines, and then goes on to discuss the Origel article that Luskin quote mined.
Dishonesty Institute - John Pieret, Thoughts in a Haystack.
Casey Luskin is a Douchbag - Mister DNA, CBEB's (whose icon I'm stealing). He points out the irony in Luskin doing this so soon after his use of cease-and-desist letters to get Les Lane to take down a picture of Luskin (irony is lost on this man, isn't it?)
BSpr3 -BullShit on peer reviewed research - SPARC, molecular B(io)LOG(y). SPARC suggests that we need a new icon for stuff like Luskin's paper.
More Discovery Institute Shenanigans - Jessa, Impolite Conversations.
Why I Love the BPR3 Icon and Hate Creationists for Abusing It - Greg Laden, Greg Laden's blog
Casey Luskin demonstrates "fair use" doctrine - Joe McFaul, Law Evolution Science and Junk Science. He makes some very interesting points about fair use (Luskin's use is not) and how Luskin's use "affect[s] the market" of the ResearchBlogging brand. Fascinating stuff.
Casey Luskin Demonstrates that ID Stands for Insidious Deception - Mike O'Risal, Hyphoid Logic. Mike makes a good point - while it's bad to use the icon inappropriately, the real problem is that he is unwilling to allow feedback. And, of course, it's a perfect encapsulation of the main problem with ID - their refusal to present their ideas for peer review.

Other people who mentioned the issue

Science Smackdown - Bug Girl, Bug
links for 2008-02-05 - Janet Stemwedel, Adventures in Ethics and Science
Skepchick Quickies for 2.05 - Amanda, Memoirs of a Skepchick

How many blogs does a person need?

2008-01-31T12:06:00.000-06:00

T. Ryan Gregory asked that question yesterday, as he launched his third blog at Nature Network. In the post, he mentioned his second blog, DNA & Diversity at Scientific Blogging. So I went over there to have a look - and realised that I had just registered at that site the previous day. At the time, I knew nothing about the site, but now I poked around some more, and it seems reasonable and credible. So I now have a sixth blog, Tropical Ecology Notes (ok, in reality it's my fifth, since I can't really count a blog I don't update).

Scientific Blogging seeks to be science-only. At the very least I can cross-post my tropical biology posts over there. It might be nice to put together a collection like that. Since everything gets a short while on the front page, let's see if anyone reads it. If so, great. If not, well, I'm not creating content specifically for that site, at least not yet, so the marginal cost of adding a post there is very small (unlike here, where I am blogging for almost no readers). We'll see - it could be fun. And it could fill a useful niche - there don't seem to be too many people blogging about tropical plant ecology.

Update: Gregory mentioned that Scientific Blogging was a way to reach a wider audience than he currently has at Genomicron (which is probably many times the readership that I have on my WordPress blog). Based on the one article I have posted there, I think he's right.

Defining science bloggers

2008-01-31T10:45:00.000-06:00

Jeremy Bruno of The Voltage Gate does an excellent job of tying together some of the ideas I was playing with in my post on the Boxer article and my post on responsibilities to readers. Commenting on Brian Switek's response to Boxer, Jeremy says

Brian goes on to say how science bloggers are different, basically that we haven't fallen for the dressed up dumbed down money trap, even since the move to Sb. I'd like to riff on this idea for a bit, coming from the perspective of a writer.

Jeremy points out that there are several reason why science bloggers are different from your average bloggers, at least when they are talking about science - in part, because the community is relatively small (there aren't that many people who are really qualified to talk about science), and at the same time, there are enough knowledgeable people out there that

If something is wrong in your blog post, expect that someone in the science blogging community will pick up on it and tell you why you're wrong...Fluid physics and phylogeny take an instructed understanding to discuss properly, while the ills of liberalism or war in Iraq can generally be commented upon by anyone. A political scientist or a historian might be more eloquent and be able to cite specifics, but in general, politics can be approached by anyone with half a brain.

(Which is reflected, I suppose, in the fact that science bloggers spend a lot of time commenting on politics, but few political bloggers spend much time talking about science - DarkSyde at dKos being a notable exception. Of course, that does raise the question again of "what is a science blogger?" Is DarkSyde a science blogger on a political website, or a political blogger who writes about science?)

The contrast between ScienceBlogs and other paid bloggers may reflect a difference in where they are coming from. Jeremy agrees with Boxer that professional journalists who blog at blogs set up my newspapers and magazines tend to fall flat (or, to use his far more evocative language "forced, boring and stink of the inverted pyramid"). But these are people who got the job because they are journalists, not because they are bloggers. The people at ScienceBlogs earned their reputation as bloggers. It isn't like Seed went out and recruited people based on their reputation as scientists. That is likely to be the reason why Boxer's assessment of paid bloggers falls so far off the mark when it comes to ScienceBlogs.

Blogger ethics: responsibilities to readers I

2008-01-28T14:14:00.000-06:00

The Science Blogging Ethics Wiki asks the question: what is the responsibility of a science blogger to his or her readers? This gets back to the question "what makes a science blogger a science blogger?" Sarah Boxer's article about blogs makes me realise that I have spent too much time in overly genteel company. Most bloggers probably aren't overly concerned about their reliability or reputation. Most science bloggers probably are.

So what is the mission of a science blogger? Why does a person blog about science? Without a shred of data, I am going to hypothesise that:

Science bloggers blog about science because they find it interesting
Science bloggers are interested in communicating their field of interest to people outside of their immediate field
Science bloggers are frequently motivated by a desire to defend science against pseudoscience and denialism

While the first point doesn't necessarily require you to be committed to reliability, for the latter two it's extremely important. Nonetheless, having come across many a defender of pseudoscience who insists that they are pro-science, I have to wonder whether there aren't "creation science" bloggers out there, or "homeopathy science" bloggers out there. I'm sure the latter exist, but they are probably hard to distinguish from snake-oil salesmen. While you find the defenders of creationism out there, it's probably hard to be a "creation science" blogger - you'd probably realise that there's no science to blog about. Of course the intelligent design crowd actively quote mine science in their blogs, I've never come across anything like an interest in science.

Getting back to the questions raised by the Science Blogging Ethics Wiki, is the science blogger's responsibility to his or her readers more like that of a journalist, a professional scientist or a professional educator?

A journalist's responsibility is to report in a fair and impartial manner. While a professional scientist should also summarise the literature fairly, they are expected to analyse and synthesise the data, and generally use that to make a case in support of (or against) some interpretation of the data. The role of professional educators is somewhere in between - it's more important for them to report on the dominant understandings and less important for them to advance their own ideas (depending, of course, on whether you are talking to an introductory course or a graduate student seminar). So where does the science blogger fall? Sometimes you're a reporter, telling people about an interesting new discovery that you don't really understand. Sometimes you're a scientist, advancing the case for one interpretation of the data over another, or pointing out flaws in a published work. But a lot of the time, you're an educator, a person with some expertise trying to explain things to a group of interested novices.

If I am right, we're in a new place: not the place that Tim O'Reilly wrote from, trying to get bloggers to impose order on their Wild West, not in the place of the Cyberjournalists, trying to set standards of behaviour for reporters. But there are also huge swathes of educator ethics that don't apply either.

Blogger ethics: existing codes IV

2008-01-28T00:19:00.000-06:00

Another existing bloggers code of ethics has been added to the Science Blogging Ethics Wiki (it's a wiki, after all). This one, the Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics has five components

Clear representation of perspective
Confidentiality
Commerical disclosure
Reliability of information
Courtesy

The first of these is similar to a point I made earlier - while we all have opinions on areas outside of our training, readers should know where you are coming from, they should know the difference between when you speak as an expert and when you simply speak as a person with an opinion. While it may be pretty clear to you when you are speaking as one or the other (for example: I assume it's pretty clear to both of my readers that I know nothing about ethics), it may not be clear to your readers.

The issue of confidentiality is far more relevant to a doctor or a lawyer, but there will be times when a science blogger has information she or he should not share...like a manuscript you're reviewing that has something awfully cool...but there are probably far fewer examples. The issue of commercial ties is also true, but likely to have much less weight

If the author is using their blog to pitch a product, it must be clear that they are doing that.

After all, few ecologists are wined and dined by company reps (I can see it now, Forestry Suppliers sending former beauty queens as sales reps to ecology labs...)

The issue of reliability is important. If bloggers aren't taken seriously, then we have to do our best to change that perception. And then there's courtesy. I've said something about this on my commentary on Tim O'Reilly's blogger code of ethics. More later, once I've figure out what I think about the matter.

Sarah Boxer on blogs

2008-01-27T23:40:00.001-06:00

Sarah Boxer has an article entitled "Blogs" in the New York Review of Books. She opens with the line:

Two years ago, I was given a dreadful idea for a book: create an anthology of blogs.

Despite her misgivings, she did just that. (Not to belittle her achievement, since, after all, she had to find the best of the blogosphere, but Bora has now published two anthologies - The Open Laboratory 2006 and The Open Laboratory 2007, albeit through Lulu.com).

Boxer writes about blogs and blogging. While she has some admiration for bloggers (Every sport, every war, every hurricane brings out a crop of bloggers, who often outdo the mainstream media in timeliness, geographic reach, insider information, and obsessive detail), the blogosphere she sees is very different from the one I know. She seems to only venture into the semi-literate portions of the blogosphere. When she talks about political blogs, she talks about Glen Reynolds (not semi-literate, but he doesn't write much) and Little Green Footballs. Why does she ignore Daily Kos, the most widely read political blog - and a place where front pagers often produce moderately long articles in literate English?

But maybe I'm just a bad blogger, or maybe I'm not really a blogger at all. Maybe I'm getting this blogging thing all wrong. Nonetheless, I think I'm getting it wrong in good company. Brian at Laelaps writes:

I suppose the disparity between the sort of blogging Boxer describes in the article and what science bloggers engage in is part of the reason why it's still a struggle for science bloggers to be taken seriously. Many people look at science blogs as a simple extrapolation of more normative forms of blogging, i.e. bad grammar, bad spelling, lots of unsupported opinion, stolen images & videos, etc. etc. etc. From what I can tell, though, science bloggers hold themselves to an entirely different standard and popularity requires not only a talent for good writing but accuracy and insightful commentary.

I've failed to write like a semi-literate teen. zOMG!!1! I am a failure as a blogger.

Maybe I understand a little bit more of the reaction to Chris Mooney's Bloggers Guild idea...

H/T Bora.

Press release or original articles?

2008-01-26T10:45:00.000-06:00

BPR3 was set up as a means of separating blog posts on peer reviewed research from comments on things like press releases. One of their guidelines is

The post author should have read and understood the entire work cited.

Writing at the BPR3 blog, Dave Munger wrote:

Is it ethical for a blogger to simply comment on a press release on new research? Or should a blogger always read the original peer-reviewed journal article?... [N]ot every blog post is equal -- that some bloggers aren't acting as experts who have something important to say about the research; they're just alerting their readers to the press release. ...[W]hen a blogger is acting as an authority who has critical comments to make about the research itself, then the blogger does have a responsibility to carefully read the original work.

Jonathan M. Gitlin of Nobel Intent made a similar point

Obviously, from where I am, the number one ethical concern is that what we write is accurate and doesn't misrepresent the facts. ...[T]oo often, coverage of science news involves people taking press releases and rewriting them, with the PR spin intact. ...Sure, it takes longer to read than a press release, and sometimes involves spending an hour or two in PubMed going back through the preceding literature to get up to speed, but it also means that it's possible to see things in the research that might not have been highlighted by other coverage but are just as interesting.

What role should press releases play in the life of a science blogger? It’s difficult to answer that question without addressing the question: “what is a science blogger?” Is it simply someone who blogs about science? Obviously one blog post about science does not make someone a science blogger. Being a scientist who blogs isn’t enough either. And a science blogger isn’t simply a scientist (or someone with or working on an advanced degree in science). Without trying to define a science blogger just yet, it’s obvious that any science blogger (like any human being, I suppose) has some range of expertise. Science bloggers are likely to find themselves outsider of their area of expertise at some point in time. When you find yourself on the margins of your knowledge, it seems smart not to pretend you are an expert. If you don’t feel qualified to assess the original source material, then by all means use a press release or a news story (although it doesn’t hurt to scan the abstract). Just make it clear to you readers that you are commenting on the press release.

It’s a little different when you have some sort of “expert knowledge” (or are willing to bring yourself up to speed on the topic). In that case, if you have the time, you should really look at the original paper (provided that you can get access to it). Obviously you won’t always have the time to do that. But if you have the time, you should really go to the original paper and try to provide your readers with something better than the press release. Because, after all, one of the best things a science blogger can do is to try to present science to the public, to be an interpreter for people who wouldn’t otherwise be reading the scientific literature.

Some thoughts on copyright

2008-01-26T10:22:00.000-06:00

Continuing through the "what others have written" section of the Science Blogging Ethics Wiki, we come to come other posts. Writing in Wired Science, Liz Burr reports on some questions from the session at the Science Blogging conference that caught my eye. The first one especially:

If you quote a blogger from their post, do you have to tell them? Should you link to them? In theory, blog posts are public domain, and can be used at whim.

Ah...the Wild West of the internet. Do people still feel like everything they find online is free for the taking? Then I recommend a short course of Wikipedia - hang around there a while and you'll learn the basics of copyright. Work done by U.S. government employees as part of their official duties is in the public domain. Really old stuff is in the public domain. Other than that, it's safe to assume that the things you find online are not in the public domain. They're covered by some form of copyright (even if it's a copyleft copyright, it's still not in the public domain). Any legal rights that you have not explicitly surrendered are still yours.

Of course, Burr (or the participants in the discussion) might not have been talking about the "public domain" in the legal sense.

Accreditation standards?

2008-01-24T11:55:00.000-06:00

The Science Blogging Ethics Wiki links to prior posts that discuss the underlying issues of blog ethics. Ryan Somma of Ideonexus has an interesting idea: Blogger Accreditation Standards for Scientific Accuracy. I don't think it's feasible, but it's definitely thought provoking.

The issue he identifies is one of trust. There's general recognition that you can't believe everything you read online. The problem then lies in figuring out what to believe. Science bloggers tend to be an excellent source of information - very often they're a marked improvement over what passes as science journalism and "science by press release". But how can you tell the good from the bad? If you go to a place like ScienceBlogs you are likely to find a lot of good - but even they make mistakes. When it comes down to it, we're all amateurs once we step outside of our area of expertise. Since we all step outside of out particular field of knowledge, simply trusting the blogger is no guarantee that any given post will provide high-quality analysis.

Somma proposes the idea of after-the-fact certification of blog posts - that you could submit posts to a panel of expert reviewers who would decide on certification. It's a good idea in theory, but the problem would be one of finding enough experts. While this would be far less demanding than reviewing manuscripts, it would still require a major time commitment. There would need to be some sort of reward for doing so. There is very little reward in manuscript review, but it's still expected of you as a working scientist. In addition, if you publish, someone has to review your manuscripts. So what would you do to entice reviewers for blog post certification? Maybe when blogging becomes something that you can add to your tenure dossier. Short of that, I just don't think the resources are out there.

Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

2008-01-24T09:10:00.001-06:00

Wikipedia: The Missing Manual has been published.

Blogger ethics: existing codes III

2008-01-23T21:11:00.000-06:00

The Association of Health Care Journalists Statement of Principles may in many ways be more relevant to science blogging than the other two. There definitely appears to be shared ground. Of course, medical journalists should have even higher standards than science bloggers, because people take this stuff really seriously. One of the principles that really got me thinking was

Understand the process of medical research in order to report accurately

I tend to think of science bloggers as scientists and graduate students - people who either have advanced degrees in the fields they write about, or are pursuing advanced degrees. Then I realised that Brian Switek (Laelaps) is an undergraduate, while Chris Mooney has a B.A. in English (according to his Wikipedia biography). They are two of the most effective science bloggers. So now I have to rethink the demarcation issue. A code of ethics is all the more important when you realise that "science blogger" is both a broader and more narrow term than I had previously thought.

The codes of ethics put forward by Tim O'Reilly and CyberJournalist address some useful issues, but they are (intentionally) broad - they are meant to cover bloggers as a whole. The medical journalist code is more specific. While its target group shares many characteristics with science bloggers, there are notable differences. In general, science bloggers aren't going to be investigative journalists. In addition, their code is probably more narrowly focussed than a science blogger code of ethics should be.

Blogger ethics: existing codes II

2008-01-23T18:53:00.000-06:00

CyberJournalist's Bloggers’ Code of Ethics is broken down into three broad areas

Be Honest and Fair
Minimize Harm
Be Accountable

The first set of principles are fair and straightforward: don't plagiarise, don't misrepresent, identify your sources and link to them and distinguish between advocacy, comment and factual information. In addition, they include this principle:

Distinguish factual information and commentary from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.

This point is important - you always see these pay-per-post ads - people who offer to pay you for product placement, in essence. Of course, people tend to justify them by saying "I was going to give a positive review anyway, so why not get paid for it". There's nothing wrong with it - so long as you let your readers know that you were paid for the review. If you don't let them know, you are violating the trust between reader and blogger.

The second set of principles deal with the idea of minimising harm. Generally bloggers should show compassion when dealing with people and be tasteful in their coverage of issues. While these are basic ethical standards, not everyone adheres to them. Finally, the Cyber Journalist ethics call on bloggers to be accountable. These are, to me, the most interesting.

Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.

This is an important point, in my opinion. Too many people find it difficult to admit it when they make a mistake. Doing so is good for you, and it builds your credibility.

Explain each Weblog's mission and invite dialogue with the public over its content and the bloggers' conduct.

Isn't the fundamental mission of a blog "to write about things that interest me"? I'm not sure how important this is in a general sense. On the other hand, it's probably important in the context of a science blog. So I suppose that makes sense. As for "inviting dialogue"...does this mean "have a comment section"? Or does it mean something more?

Disclose conflicts of interest, affiliations, activities and personal agendas.

I don't think it's necessary to disclose affiliations unless they are applicable. Many bloggers use pseudonyms. Many people wouldn't be in trouble until they disclose the identity of their employer. But you owe it to your readers to disclose conflicts of interest. As for your personal agenda - no one expects bloggers to be unbiased. People read bloggers because they have a opinions. And while I trust a political blogger on politics precisely because I know their agenda, it's a little different when we talk about science. Science is supposed to be apolitical. We are supposed to leave our agenda behind when we start talking about science - or at least, separate it from the science. This makes for some interesting questions, certainly.

Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence content. When exceptions are made, disclose them fully to readers.
Be wary of sources offering information for favors. When accepting such information, disclose the favors.
Expose unethical practices of other bloggers.
Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.

Pretty basic stuff. The bit about exposing unethical bloggers is interesting - per O'Reilly's rules, you should only do that after you have tried and failed to get them to change using back channels.

Blogger ethics: existing codes I

2008-01-23T17:51:00.000-06:00

The Science Blogging Ethics Wiki breaks this issue of science blogger ethics into six areas (see previous post). The logical place to start is with the first one: what are the existing codes? Three are listed:

Tim O’Reilly’s Draft Blogger’s Code of Conduct
Cyber Journalist's Bloggers’ Code of Ethics
Association of Health Care Journalists Statement of Principles

Tim O'Reilly's Blogger Code of Ethics drew a lot of attention - and criticism - when it was posted last year. Given O'Reilly's prominence in the Geek community, it's no surprise that he had a lot of impact. He had seven principles:

We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
We connect privately before we respond publicly.
When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
We do not allow anonymous comments.
We ignore the trolls.
If "anything goes", there should be a "free for all" badge

The idea of taking responsibility for your own words is pretty much a given, if you're talking about "ethical conduct". But taking responsibility for comment "we allow"? I'm not so sure about that. To begin with, since recent rulings have said that you aren't legally responsible for comments, why say that you are? It's probably wise to delete posts that appear to libel someone. It's worthwhile to set some level of civility for discussions on your blog. But within the boundaries of your code of conduct, you shouldn't claim "responsibility" for your posts. If you did, then you would delete any comments you disagree with. Reading the principle as a whole, it has merit, but I feel that principles like these could far too easily create fora of the Uncommon Descent/Conservapedia model.

Not saying things online that we wouldn't say in person...that depends on whether we are the kind of person who speaks their mind in person. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't want to "own" in real life. Sure. But quite frankly, if I met George W. Bush tomorrow, I would be polite. I wouldn't tell him that he's made a mess of the country. But that shouldn't mean that I should refrain from criticising the policies of the Bush administration online. The third point, about "connecting privately" before responding publicly is closely entwined. In the context of scientific communication, it make sense to say what you think about a paper. Science works through open communication - if you see a flaw in a paper, why not blog about it? It seems like these principles would lead to a "speak no evil" situation. What if I see a flaw in a paper, and I approach the author privately and convince him or her of the flaw, and she or he "corrects" the error...only to have it end up that I was the one who was mistaken, or to have me convince the person of a suboptimal solution? Take responsibility for what you write, speak out in the open, and be prepared to be wrong.

I can't fault the "take action when someone is unfairly attacking another...though I think it clashes with numbers 2 & 3. Given the half-life of posts online, by the time you have initiated private discussions with the attacker, the matter is stale. In addition, of course, the victim of the attacks is left out in the open.

I can't agree with the idea of forbidding anonymous comments. It's one thing to let someone hide behind anonymity to attack others. It's quite another to require that a person "out" themselves to us before we post their comments. And, of course, "valid" email addresses are dime-a-dozen, so all we are doing is creating the illusion of not allowing anonymity. And what does that really achieve?

And finally "we ignore trolls". Generally good advice, but sometimes it's more fun to toy with trolls.

Science blogging ethics

2008-01-23T17:38:00.000-06:00

What sort of ethics should guide science bloggers? What does a blogger owe to his or her readers? What makes a science blogger? Janet Stemwedel (Adventures in Ethics and Science) discusses this issue

One of the things that came out of the discussion of the ethics of blogging about science at the 2008 NC Science Blogging Conference was a clear sense that we don't yet have general agreement about what kinds of ethics should guide science blogging -- in part, because we haven't come to an agreement about just what kind of activity science blogging is.

Is science blogging more like journalism or the scholarly activities of scientists reporting their findings to their peers? Is it education or punditry? Is it a profession or a hobby?

It's a good question - what is science blogging? What does the blogger owe to the reader? Well, I suppose the Science Blogging Ethics Wiki is a good place to start. It divides the question into six topics

[more posts]

Blogger unionisation

2008-01-23T11:54:00.001-06:00

Chris Mooney followed up his Columbia Journalism Review article with a post at The Intersection (his blog at ScienceBlogs) in which he notes the attention that the issue has attracted attention from Slashdot and Andrew Sullivan, but that it seems a bit too radical an idea for a lot of people.

At Slashdot, in response to the comment that "they get zero compensation for their products being distributed over the Internet", a poster replied "The vast majority of them earn every penny of that." The other argument, which Simon Owens made in response to this topic on my WordPress blog, was that there are far too many "semi-pro" bloggers waiting to take over if the A-listers went on strike.

I think that Mooney addressed the first point pretty well:

At the same time, though, there’s sense in diversity when it comes to compensation: not all bloggers should be treated equally with respect to remuneration. Most bloggers, after all, don’t draw very much traffic; neither are they part of a blogging conglomerate that is making real money selling advertisements. Were bloggers to organize, a threshold would have to be established between blogging “for fun” and blogging in a way that should be considered “labor”—between amateurs and professionals, if you will.

He also pointed out that the distinction between an amateur and a pro shouldn't be whether you have a day job. Most blogs aren't generating significant income for anyone. Obviously, if you simply blog to let your friends and family know what you are up to, the issue of compensation is moot. That said, you should still have the opportunity to join a Bloggers Guild. You never know when someone will decide that your personal exploits are interesting enough to re-post. It never hurts to organise.

The second point is more relevant. If the A-listers went on strike, the B-listers would say "sign me up!" The "industry standard" at the present time is to not pay bloggers. Most people blog because they want their words to be read. If you are getting paid nothing to blog in obscurity, and someone offered you the opportunity to make the same amount of money on a far more prominent platform, many people would jump at the opportunity. The key here is to get people to recognise the value of their labour. Part of that may lie in getting people to realise that people are making money off your labour. In some cases it probably doesn't matter - people who post diaries at places like Daily Kos are doing so as activists. Their aim is to change opinions and get candidates elected. In addition, of course, Markos is sharing the wealth - he is paying his frontpagers, and Daily Kos is sponsoring political events. But even in a case like that, it's useful to give people a sense of the value that they are creating.

Of course, when it comes to comparing A-listers with B-listers, there is an issue of quality. The top tier draw traffic because of who they are and because of what they have to say. B-listers might be just as good writers, they might be just as insightful commentators, but fewer people will read them because they are relatively unknown. At some point, the difference in value makes it worth paying the A-listers. But if the A-listers never ask to be paid for their labour, the entire argument is moot.

Updates

2008-01-23T11:31:00.000-06:00

From my WordPress blog

From my fish blog

From Helium

Rebranding: A blog about blogs and blogging

2008-01-21T15:38:00.000-06:00

When I started my WordPress blog last year, this blog had a major identity crisis. Not that it ever had that much of an identity to begin with, but I now had nothing to separate it from its successor. After floundering along blindly for over half a year, I started wondering about dedicating a blog to blogs. And since blogging about blogs strikes me as the height of navel-gazing, I figured I should re-name it. So, welcome to...Omphaloskepsis (because the only thing more self-important than navel gazing is giving it a fancy Greek name).

A different sort of wave

2008-01-20T10:17:00.000-06:00

Blogging about Obama's speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire generated a lot of traffic, and it was an awful lot of fun to see the spike. But it wasn't something sustainable - most of those people will never visit my blog again. Over the last few days I have experienced a different sort of spike in traffic - one driven by a real science post.

On Thursday, after seeing a story on my BBC Science news feed, I blogged about the discovery of Tahina spectabilis, a new palm from Madagascar. While the traffic grew slowly, it has grown consistently. And it has dominated my blog the last few days. It's great - and very different from the sort of spike that a one-off link can bring. True, there's an order of magnitude less traffic. But it's awfully cool, especially since this is plant science, not politics.

On blogs and blog communities

2008-01-19T11:27:00.000-06:00

While I started blogging (in a sense) long before I had ever heard the word (back in 1997 or 1998, on MSNHomepages), my introduction to the modern world of blogging came via Howard Kurtz's column on the Washington Post. That led to me read Andrew Sullivan for a while, and to Daily Kos, where I really found a home for a while.

In essence, dKos was too big for my taste. Too many comments, too much buzz. It's a great place to read things, but it's difficult to get to know people unless you're there every day. So, while I continued to read the frontpagers, I stopped commenting and rarely read comments. Too noisy for my taste. Fast forward a couple years, and I found myself at ScienceBlogs. My first "home" was Pharyngula, but again, too many comments, too much noise. Nothing compared to a posting on dKos, but the signal to noise ratio is still too low for it to be worth reading 20 or 30 comments. Sure, I join the conversation from time to time. But it isn't the sort of community I am looking for. Now, I tend to comment most at less popular blogs - Greg Laden's, or Abbie's. But at those blogs there's a tendency for the pool of comments to be too limited.

I suppose the alternative is a distributed community - when you run into the same people at several blogs, and get to know them. That, and building a community at my own blog. How you do that, I'm not quite sure...maybe that's a question for Bora.

Updates

2008-01-17T13:06:00.000-06:00

From my main blog

From my Fish blog

My experiment at Helium.com

Blogonomics

2008-01-17T13:04:00.000-06:00

Chris Mooney has an interesting article at the Columbia Journalism Review on the economics of blogging, and the disparities in pay that bloggers at major sites get. While some bloggers are creating real value for website publishers, they are often getting little or nothing in return. On the other hand, bloggers at ScienceBlogs get paid on the basis of traffic. (I have always wondered about that - while I know that SBers get paid, I have always wondered whether it was a fixed amount, a function of traffic, or a share of ad revenues. Now I know.)

Mooney suggests that a Bloggers Guild of America might be part of the solution. Interesting idea…but why just "of America"? The internet has no national boundaries.

Politics beats science?

2008-01-09T08:33:00.000-06:00

Once again, blogging about Obama's speech brought me a huge bump in traffic over at Further Thoughts. I'd be tempted to call it "unprecedented" except that I saw a similar bump in traffic when I wrote about Obama's victory speech in Iowa. So I suppose people are more interested in politics than they are in the usual mismash of vaguely science-related stuff that I usually blog about.

Catching the wave

2008-01-04T16:20:00.000-06:00

Last night, while listening to Barack Obama's victory speech, I posted the following on my main blog

Listening to Obama’s victory speech in Iowa, I understand what people see in him. I heard Edwards, I heard Clinton. They’re ok, but they don’t excite me, and they don’t move me. Obama moves me. This is Obama at his best, I think.

When I checked my traffic stats a short while after, I was shocked. Within a couple hours, it had gone from being a poor day traffic-wise, to being my best day ever. What happened? I'm guessing that I was one of the first to post on the topic. For a little while I was in the top three hits on google searches like "obama victory speech", even the top hit for some variations. The lesson, I suppose, is that "the scoop" generates a ton of traffic, even if only for a brief window of time.

Using OpenID for comments

2007-12-04T08:31:00.000-06:00

I added the option of using OpenIDs to comment on this blog, per phydeaux3's blog post. So it should now be possible to leave comments using AOL/AIM, LiveJournal, TypeKey, WordPress or other OpenID logins.

Phydeaux3 also has instructions on how to alter the settings on to allow this on Blogger.

What should I be?

2007-11-23T13:28:00.000-06:00

According to the Beliefnet Believe-O-Matic I should be a Unitarian Universalist (but then I knew that already).

1.	Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2.	Secular Humanism (92%)
3.	Liberal Quakers (92%)
4.	Neo-Pagan (81%)
5.	Reform Judaism (73%)
6.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (73%)
7.	Theravada Buddhism (73%)
8.	Mahayana Buddhism (69%)
9.	New Age (69%)
10.	Jainism (67%)
11.	Sikhism (63%)
12.	Taoism (61%)
13.	Nontheist (60%)
14.	Bahá'í Faith (58%)
15.	Scientology (51%)
16.	Hinduism (51%)
17.	New Thought (48%)
18.	Orthodox Quaker (47%)
19.	Islam (43%)
20.	Orthodox Judaism (43%)
21.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (36%)
22.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (24%)
23.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (24%)
24.	Seventh Day Adventist (23%)
25.	Eastern Orthodox (17%)
26.	Roman Catholic (17%)
27.	Jehovah's Witness (14%)

Elections

2007-11-07T16:34:00.000-06:00

My thoughts on the recent elections in Trinidad and Tobago.

Updates

2007-11-02T11:56:00.000-05:00

From my WordPress blog

John Angus Campbell and the North Mason School Board

2007-10-25T08:18:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago I blogged about the fact that Discovery Institute Fellow and intelligent design advocate John Angus Campbell was running for a seat on the school board in North Mason County, Washington. Not just that, but Campbell was running as “John Campbell”, and appeared to be hiding his connection with intelligent design and the Discovery Institute. A new blog, the Belfair Report, has started up to address this issue.

It turns out that there is more to this story. [Read the rest of my post at John Angus Campbell and the North Mason School board Part II]

Visiting Lucy in Houston

2007-10-22T08:21:00.000-05:00

We took a trip down to Houston this weekend to visit the Lucy exhibition. There had been controversy over the tour, given the irreplaceable nature of the skeleton and its frailty, I figured that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Regardless of whether I thought it a good idea for her to travel or not, she’s in the neighbourhood. So we took a trip down to see her. Lucy is the name given to the most famous Australopithecus afarensis skeleton in existence, which was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.

I found the display fascinating. Abbie wasn’t thrilled with the long religious history of Ethiopia that preceded the palae- stuff, but I quite enjoyed it (after all, I’m fascinated with history, and there were some pretty cool artefects in there). But it paled in comparison to the main display.

[Read the rest of my post at Visiting Lucy in Houston]

Updates

2007-10-19T07:41:00.000-05:00

From my wordpress blog

Updates

2007-10-07T09:16:00.000-05:00

Some recent posts from my wordpress blog

Intelligent design and archaeology

2007-10-04T08:37:00.000-05:00

One of the arguments repeated over and over by intelligent design advocates is the assertion that archaeology is a search for design. Like intelligent design, they say, archaeologists assume design once they have ruled out other possible causes, so why shouldn’t IDists? I have always found that analogy annoying - after all, it fails to take into account that archaeologists are working with known designers and known mechanisms. But I never really thought the whole point through. Luckily for me, archaeologist Christopher O’Brien has done just that in an excellent blog post (one of many, based on a quick look at his posts).

[Read the rest of my post at Intelligent design and archaeology]

Conservative Heroes

2007-10-03T22:14:00.000-05:00

Perfectly phrased.

I already have many copies of pictures of my conservative heroes. They're all blank, white, and hanging from a roll in my bathroom.

Group Of Intellectuals Negating Godless Atomism + Generic Atheism

2007-09-29T10:29:00.000-05:00

James McGrath has launched a new movement dedicated to defeating “godless atomism” called Group Of Intellectuals Negating Godless Atomism + Generic Atheism.

All around the world, children are being indoctrinated with a godless philosophy in what should be science classrooms. Instead of learning true chemistry that agrees with sacred Scripture, children are being taught atomism. This has become possible because very few parents and concerned citizens today are aware that atomism is in fact not a true science, but a philosophy with its roots in the teachings of Greek philosopher Democritus. His teachings gave rise to Epicureanism, which shows they are fundamentally antithetical to religion, piety, and ethical behavior.

I have decided to commit myself to the movement and get a second Ph.D. in another field that isn’t chemistry, and charge groups $5,000 to come and talk about the subject. [Copied from my main blog]

Parity

2007-09-20T20:25:00.000-05:00

Larry Moran of Sandwalk pointed out that today, for the first time in 30 years, the Canadian dollar was equal in value with the US dollar. I remember discussing that, back when it happened. Maybe not when the Canadian dollar first slipped below the US dollar, but soon enough after. It was something that the adults were talking about. It was something that made me feel both a little offended and somehow less secure. Strange thoughts for a seven-year-old, and while it wasn't a topic of conversation that I raised, I clearly remember discussing it with my friends.

While it may not be the best thing for the Canadian economy, it somehow has a feel of a wrong set right. The child, waiting for this one little thing to be set back right in the world, has finally seen the wish fulfilled.

Google Ads

2007-09-19T22:40:00.000-05:00

Google Ads select ads based on the content on your page. In general, you could rationalise that into being a good thing - you're actually helping your readers find the products that they want (though, of course, if you really believe in that then you probably should go for one of those 'pay per post' services...you're getting paid to post about products you actually believe in, or something like that). Regardless of how you think about it, sometimes it can go very wrong. Last time I looked (over there, in the corner...No! No! Don't look!) there was an ad for a creationist website called Y-Origins Connection: Intelligent Design for Everyone. (Just take my word for it, don't look because I told you, only look if you would have looked anyway - you aren't supposed to draw the attention of people to your ads who would otherwise not be interested.) So, alongside my criticism of Dembski, I am advertising for creationists. Lovely.

Dembski and the flagellum

2007-09-19T22:36:00.000-05:00

In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe takes evolutionary biology to task for failing to explain the evolution of biochemical pathways within the cell. From this he developed the idea of “irreducible complexity” - that there are systems that are too complex to have arisen by (known) evolutionary processes. From there, he makes the jump to an “intelligent designer“…in other words, failure to come up with an evolutionary explanation is proof of God. Of the the central “icons” of intelligent design is the bacterial flagellum. Despite the fact that far more is known about the evolution of the flagellum than was known a decade ago (when Behe wrote his book), ID proponents still cling to it as a pillar of their anti-evolutionary arguments. In his talk at OU on Monday, one of Dembski’s main criticisms of “Darwinian evolution” was the fact that it failed to provide a “complete, fully articulated path” of evolution for “molecular nano-machines”.

[Read the rest at Dembski and the flagellum]

Dembski at OU

2007-09-18T09:05:00.000-05:00

I saw William Dembski talk last night at the Meacham Auditorium in the University of Oklahoma Student Union. The title of his talk was: Why Atheism is no Longer Intellectually Fulfilling: The Challenge of Intelligent Design to Unintelligent Evolution. He spoke for over an hour, dancing around a number of topics, but the theme that seemed to jump out post at me was: I wrote a book. Not only did the cover of The Design Inference flash across the screen at least three times, he also showed a screen shot of the OU library webpage card catalogue entry for the book. (I suppose he was trying to refute the assertion that intelligent design proponents don’t publish their ideas in peer-reviewed math and science journals. The truth is, there is no research into intelligent design. There is no research programme, although Dembski did lay out a ten-point plan; skipped it in the talk, flashed through it in the Q & A. Not holding my breath for that to come to fruition).

[Read the rest at Dembski at OU: Why Atheism is no Longer Intellectually Fulfilling]

Oddly fascinating

2007-09-16T21:03:00.000-05:00

I recently discovered a blog called Religion Clause, subtitled: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... --US Const., Amend. 1". Written by Howard M. Friedman, an Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Toledo, the blog presents summaries of cases and rulings related to the religion clause. Unlike most blogs, Friedman simply presents the information, he doesn't say "this was a good ruling" or "I disagree with that ruling". He simply presents the facts.

I find it oddly fascinating. In many cases I have no context in which to interpret the information - it is simply data. It's almost like reading a string of numbers and trying to decide if you should try to figure out what they mean, or simply enjoy their beauty. Read enough rulings an motions and I think you learn something, but I'm not sure what I have learned.

It is, I must say, oddly fascinating.

Puzzled...and bummed

2007-09-07T14:39:00.000-05:00

My WordPress blog was suspended for a ToS violation. Huh? I have no idea how I am supposed to have violated the ToS. I have no idea what I did wrong. And that has me incredibly bummed. Just when I was starting to get a little traffic to the site...it's gone. Together with four months of blog posts (apparently you can't get your content back when your account is suspended).

I have no idea what next. Is there an appeal process? Will I at least find out what I did wrong? It really feels like a part of myself was ripped out. I put a lot into those posts. Oh well...it's a free service. Sucks.

Update: It's back. Yay. Apparently it was deleted "by mistake". I should be annoyed, but I'm too relieved.

Discovery Institute Fellow runs for school board as “Darwinist”?

2007-08-31T08:33:00.000-05:00

Nina Shapiro of Seattle Weekly reports that a retired college professor by the name of John Campbell is running for a school in North Mason County. Shapiro reports that:

A retired communications professor, Campbell says he has the skills to foster a more civilized dialogue, “restore trust,” and “establish transparency.”

Although campaigning on “trust” and “transparency”, she notes that he fails to disclose that he is John Angus Campbell, a Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture (formerly Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture), the creationist arm of the right-wing “think tank”, the Discovery Institute.

[Read more at my main blog]

Anniversary of the Coup

2007-07-27T12:17:00.001-05:00

On Friday July 27, 1990, the Jamaat al Muslimeen attempted to overthrow the government of Trinidad and Tobago. A six-day siege ensured, with the Jamaat leadership holed up in the Red House (where they held the Prime Minister and most of Parliament hostage) and in the headquarters of TTT (then the only television station in the country) and Radio Trinidad (one of two radio networks, located next to TTT).

This year the anniversary falls on a Friday. In the seventeen years that have passed, there has been no inquiry into the events. The guilty parties are free and have never been called upon to account for their actions. The two major political parties, the PNM and the UNC appear to wish that the events would just go away, but there are still open wounds in society. Carson Charles, leader of the NAR, which was the governing party during the coup attempt, has called for a probe into the events, but the government is uninterested.

“There must be some kind of investigation, some kind of impartial investigation and report of what took place. Something dispassionate, something removed from the politics with the emphasis on what lessons should be learned from what took place,” Charles said.

The government is uninterested in any inquiry into the events

Questioned yesterday on the matter, senior Cabinet member Energy Minister Dr Lenny Saith indicated there was no change to the Cabinet’s previous decision of holding no enquiry.

Some politicians though, agree that this is important

Congress of the People Chief Whip Ganga Singh, the existing Caroni East MP, who was not a member of Parliament in 1990 agreed with Charles.

Singh said that instead of a Commission of Enquiry, the country needs the local equivalent of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the Government of South Africa.

…

“I think as a society, I think we should really confront this issue and not go into self denial as if it never really happened,” Singh said.

Seventeen years have passed, and nothing has been resolved. The memorial will be “low key” - neither the President nor the Prime Minister is attending. But these things don’t just “go away”. The memory of what happened is still burned into my memory.

At the very least the victims should be remembered.

From the Trinidad Guardian

* The 1990 Coup Attempt — Through the Eyes of a teen Born in the midst of chaos

From the Trinidad Express

* No work on July 27
* Low key ceremony at Red House today
* ‘Fireworks’ in Parliament
* Call for probe
* Death remains unsolved

From the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday

* Why no coup inquiry?
* COP remembers 1990 Coup

The Assault on Reason in 90 seconds

2007-07-22T17:57:00.000-05:00

This summarises Al Gore's new book pretty well

It's rather chilling, either in long form or in summary.

H/T Madhu at Reconciliation Ecology.

What's new

2007-07-20T22:57:00.000-05:00

New on my wordpress blog

Updates

2007-07-10T14:17:00.000-05:00

New on my wordpress blog:

New on my fish blog

God

2007-07-07T01:30:00.000-05:00

While I consider myself Christian, I have an awfully difficult time with the idea of "God". Before reading Spong's Jesus for the Non-Religious the idea of God was just one of those very troubling ideas that I couldn't wrap my mind around, so I didn't. It's actually remarkably easy to just put the idea of God aside and realise that definitions aren't all that important. It's easy, but it isn't really satisfying. The question, and the fact that you don't have an answer comes up - both when you are faced with people who actively reject the idea of a God or Gods, and when you are faced with the more religious types and their questions about "do you believe in a personal God?" Actually that isn't the hardest question - it doesn't mean that you have to be able to define God. Still, the lack of a God language was problematic - I wasn't comfortable with the God language (or God ideas) that I had been given my the church, but I had no alternative. Which is one reason why I love Spong's book.

The "theistic" understanding of God as a being, external to the world, which intrudes from time to time (or doesn't, I suppose, for a deist who uses theistic language). The "Spongian" understanding of God - that you reject the supernatural, external characterisation of God - is terribly useful to me. And while it doesn't leave me with an answer to the "what is God" question, it leaves me with a set of skills that may be useful for me to formulate my own definitions. It's also nice that these definitions or understandings are just my own conception...they don't represent any sort of an objective "truth". And I find that idea remarkably comforting.

Clemency, writ large

2007-07-03T01:14:00.000-05:00

In a general sense I am all for clemency - if a person has been given an unduly harsh sentence for their crimes, then clemency is a good thing. But if someone failed to be moved as he signed 152 death warrants, it would seem that they are strangers to ideas like compassion and clemency. If someone can send a mentally retarded man to his death, if someone can mock the pleas of a woman who turned their life around while on death row...it would seem that "clemency" is not, to them, a virtue.

So why, after all that, does Bush turn around an commute part of Scooter Libby's sentence? Was he suddenly moved to clemency? Or was he, as Joe Wilson suggested, participating in obstruction of justice? It seems far more parsimonious to suggest that Bush is merely acting to protect his administration than it is to suggest that he suddenly and coincidentally discovered that "compassion" was something more than a campaign slogan. And does this mean that Bush will engage in further acts of clemency? Is he going to spend the rest of his term in office studying the convictions of other criminals, to make sure that the sentences imposed are not "excessive"?

Blog Against Theocracy

2007-07-01T23:59:00.000-05:00

My contribution to the Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm is here.

Other new posts at my Wordpress blog:

And at my Livejournal

Updates

2007-06-21T00:41:00.000-05:00

At my Wordpress site

Up is down at UD? - more comments on the inanity at UD.
Crack dealers for Rudy? - a comment on the indictment of Rudy Giuliani's South Carolina campaign manager.
Is intelligent design science? - comments on some inane postings at UD
Creationism in Canada - a look at a survey of attitudes toward evolution by Canadians.
Terrorists celebrated - about "Paul Hill Days" in which Minnesota anti-choice activists celebrate terrorist.
Dispersal, vicariance and press releases - Ceiba pentandra in the Neotropics and Africa (and how not to write press released).
Jesus for the Non-Religious (part III) - the third part of my look at Spong's book.
Fuel and economics - about biofuels and food prices for the poor.

Sleeping in the library

2007-06-20T12:38:00.000-05:00

One of the strangest phenomena at OU is the way that people sleep in the library. Now, the idea of people falling asleep hunched over a book is pretty normal to me - been there, done that. It's a little bit weird to see, but part of student life. But what's really odd is the way people do it here - the lie down on the couches, put a jacket or something over them, and sleep with the abandon of people at home in their beds.

It takes a great deal of trust for total strangers - after all, when you are that deeply asleep, you're pretty much helpless. I just can't imagine doing such a thing, and even after all this time, it has never ceased to be very strange.

Benny Hinn update

2007-06-16T12:08:00.000-05:00

I had never heard of Benny Hinn before he came to Trinidad and talked about the large number of "demons" there (which most people took as an insult directed at the Hindu population). He also went on to praise then-Opposition Leader Patrick Manning. Richard Bartholomew at Salon blogs has some choice quotes from Hinn's TV show:

..."Years ago I was in Trinidad...this man was sitting on the platform and I said... you will be the next Prime Minister and he is till now. I was in his (Manning) office a few months ago... he brought with him a very foolish woman who called herself a prophetess.

"He came to the room with this woman and said "I have a gift for you". So he looked at me, said this is the woman, she has a word for you... I was not happy and when I am not happy people will know it.

"He (Manning) said I want her to pray for you and give her the word, I take her with me everywhere he said (Manning).

"God speaks to me through her. She has been a great blessing to the Government. I'm thinking you foolish man.

"This woman reaches out to touch me and I grab her hand in mid air, 'don't touch me' I said. Shaken, I said Mr Prime Minister, I honour you but I don't know who this woman is...nobody will lay hands on me and I walked out of the room. Whether it is the Prime Minister or President, nobody lays hands on me. I don't know what spirit is in her. Don't let people touch you."

Bartholomew also managed to find some articles from the TT press - notably Sat Maharaj's comments and a Newsday story about Manning's "prophetess".

Anyway, since I was only really aware of Hinn in relation to the nonsense he did in Trinidad, it was interesting to know that he did similar nonsense in Uganda. Only there, he cast demons out of a local pastor, which have now infected a heard of pigs. Looks like people will have to call on a witch doctor to remedy Hinn's work.

The willingness of people to believe in televangelists is both shocking and sad. (H/T Ed Brayton)

On the other hand, if he called Manning a "foolish man" he can't be all bad, right? ;)

American televangelist Benny Hinn has told millions of TV viewers that he thought Prime Minister Patrick Manning to be a "foolish man", after an incident which occurred during his last visit here.

Updates

2007-06-15T02:09:00.000-05:00

At my Wordpress site

The effect of topography, a comment on ecological effects of canyons on vegetation in western central Oklahoma
Teaching creationism, my first comment on DeWolf's Boston Globe OpEd
Politics and evolution, about support for evolution in the major US political parties
Holes in the big tent?, my second comment on DeWolf's Boston Globe OpEd
DeWolf and denialism, my thirdcomment on DeWolf's Boston Globe OpEd (ok, so it was getting abt much)
Omnivore’s Dilemma, a comment on Pollan's book and the food industry
Dembski’c ongoing antics, which comments on Dembski's latest argument argument in favour of intelligent design creationism “your ugly, nyaa, nyaa”.

From my other blogs

2007-06-12T00:09:00.001-05:00

At my Wordpress site

The Edge of Evolution, a comment on review about Behe's new work of religious fiction
Chesterfield and Dover, a comment on the latest school district to consider adding creationism to their biology syllabus
Travel to the US, which talks about the fears of Trinis (especially Muslim Trinis) travelling to the US after the JFK plot.
Another nail in the coffin, which talks about the discovery of post-synaptic proteins in sponges (which lack nerved).
In which I contemplate my own comments, where I do just that.
More hilarity at UD, which reflects on their attempt to fisk Sean Carroll's review of Behe's book.
Continuing assault on science education, which looks at the new DI textbook Exploring Evolution.
Small world, a sort of meta-comment on the US Senate candidacy of Rand Knight, the first ecology PhD to run for the senate.
The destruction of our shared cultural heritage, which laments the treatments of archaeological sites in Iraq by the Americans.
Powell's redemption?, which talks about Colin Powell's attempt to redeem himself.
Really?, which is a comment on an alleged "inductive proof" for ID

and finally

Jesus for the Non-Religious (part II), which talks a little about Spong's newest book, Jesus for the Non-Religious.

Liberal progressive Christianity in Norman, Oklahoma

2007-06-11T23:36:00.000-05:00

As Oklahoma goes, Norman is hotbed of liberalism - between the election of Cindy Rosenthal as mayor and the passing of a recycling initiative, we are cutting edge. But as liberal progressive Christianity goes, I was only aware of St. Stephens UMC. However, googling around led me to Dr. Bruce Prescott, executive director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists, president of the Oklahoma Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and host of "Religious Talk", an AM radio talk show. In 2004 Frederick Clarkson featured him in a post entitled Blogging the Christian Left (in which he also features "Pastor Dan", who was then blogging at Faithforward (and now, primarily at Street Prophets, a site I really wish I read more).

I'm rather curious about Prescott - Clarkson reported that he had two blogs: Mainstream Baptist and Christian Democrats - the former appears to be active, the latter hasn't been updated since September 2006. I'm curious about the wider world of progressive Christianity in Norman.

Crossroads

2007-06-06T22:16:00.000-05:00

I'm at a bit of a crossroads with respect to what to do with this blog. Somehow or other, I ended up with five separate blogs:
* this one
* my wordpress blog
* my plant news blog
* my fish blog
* and my livejournal
In every case, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but as a result of an experiment at the wordpress blog, all the archives of this blog are now present over there. That would seem like a pretty good argument in favour of shuttering this one...after all, it's pretty much inactive. So why keep it? It isn't for the hordes of loyal readers.

I started the plant news blog for just that purpose - to write about plants in the news. Although I have not updated it in a long time, it's probably the blog with the most potential. The fish blog probably generated the most concentrated posting, but I ran out of steam. The wordpress blog is good for posting about religion, science and politics. The livejournal (which I only created because Carol's blog is now private) is useful for personal stuff, journaling. So what does that leave for this blog? I'm really not sure, but hopefully over the next few weeks I will figure out a purpose for it.

Boris Yeltsin

2007-04-23T12:19:00.001-05:00

It was something of a shock to hear that Yeltsin died today. Josh Marshall said:

[I]t's hard for me to see where he won't be one of those figures whose positive moments, even if brief and episodic, were profound enough in their importance to outweigh the longer periods of lassitude, corruption and drift.

I think that sums it up pretty well. I have no way to judge his overall contribution, I don't know whether he tried to set Russia on a good path, or whether he is the one responsible for putting the gasngsters and oligarchs on the path to power...but I can never forget the coup in 1991, I can never forget him standing up against the military. Whatever came after, my opinion of Yeltsin was formed on those actions, and whatever came after was always seen through the filter of that day.

Fish blogging

2007-02-11T14:39:00.000-06:00

Linz got me an aquarium for my birthday, and now I am totally fish-obsessed. I kept talking to anyone who would listen (usually Carol on msnmessenger) about my fish, my plants and water chemistry...and I'm sure she's pretty sick of it, so I decided to switch to a blog. I probably won't be much better keeping it up to date than I am with this blog or the plant one, but hey, if I'm that interested, you never know, I might actually write. (And, like with the plant blog, the link is in the title of the post).

Plant News

2006-09-06T06:44:00.000-05:00

I'm trying something new. As per Gordon's request, I am going to blog about what's new(s) in the plant world. It could be fun, but it could also be a black hole which will suck up all my time. We'll see how it goes.

A President's Legacy

2006-08-27T09:13:00.000-05:00

I think the Express editorial captured something that got lost in all the praises of his most visible characteristics:

For the late Noor Hassanali to be remembered simply as a kind of placid president is to do an injustice to the memory of the man. It is true that he exuded a certain tranquillity but this is a man whose term of office straddled some of the most traumatic moments in the country's post-Independence history.

Among them were the first-ever defeat of the People's National Movement (PNM), the party that had guided the country since its attainment of sovereign independence, the subsequent coming into power of the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) in 1986, its sudden sundering and the consequential return of the PNM and the unprecedented 17-17-2 results of the 1995 general elections.

Newsday managed to capture something that people forgot as well - the fact that the State has not been nearly as good to Noor and Zalay as they had been to the country

His presidency is remembered as a model of thriftiness, as his household bred their own tilapia in ponds and grew their own vegetables on the grounds of President’s House. Further, in accordance with his religious beliefs, no alcohol was served at President’s House, a move which surely helped the taxpayer. He is also believed to have spent his own money to repair President’s House.

President Hassanali and Mrs Hassanali served Trinidad and Tobago well. Sadly, however, it can’t always be said that Trinidad and Tobago served the Hassanalis well.

In a story, “All Presidents not equal”, Sunday Newsday on January 29, 2006, reported the hardships being faced by the Hassanalis who had to pay the cost of security, vehicle, and driver, which had otherwise been provided free by the Government for at least one other former Head of State.

One other dark cloud impacting on the Hassanalis was the incident in September 1989 when two gunmen fired three shots at the car in which Mrs Hassanali was travelling. Fortunately she was not injured, although to date no-one was ever convicted for the offence.

All in all we say President Hassanali had a good innings both in his professional and public life and served Trinidad and Tobago well.

One day the full story may be told. I look forward to the biographer who really writes a definitive work on the person I believe to be our greatest President ever.

Our best President (Noor Hassanali, 1918-2006)

2006-08-26T11:08:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's hard to separate one's own preconceived notions from one's ideas about what "people think". So it's always re-assuring to see at least some of them ring true. I have always said that he was the most popular president Trinidad and Tobago has ever had, and he was one of the very few truly national figures, someone who was universally admired. The news coverage of his death seems to bear that out. From the message boards at ttonline

Possibly the best Pres. T&T ever had.

Possibly? He was the best president we ever had. May he rest in peace.

There's a lot of coverage of his death in the local papers. The international press mentions race (first Indo-Trinidadian President), religion (first Muslim head of state in the Americas) and the coup. Factually true, but that misses his main achievements. He was elected President by an NAR government. He revoked Manning's appointment as Leader of the Opposition and replacing him with Panday, he was re-elected President by the PNM government. Despite being President in a turbulent time and with two different governments, he was never criticised (by any side), he never came into conflict with either administration.

It's worth remembering that he was the first Indo-Trinidadian President specifically because it was uncontroversial. In 1987 there were a lot of people who were apprehensive about what they saw as an "Indian power-grab" in the form of the NAR government. I'm sure that some people saw the appointment of an Indian President as yet another step in that direction. But if people had reservations, they quickly forgot them. He was a national figure, above politics and above race. He was, I believe, the perfect person for the Presidency. Outside of sports we have never had a national identity, so it's fitting that such an avid sportsman would be the one truly national figure in the world of politics.

Noor Hassanali (1918-2006)

2006-08-25T11:31:00.000-05:00

Chilo was, without a doubt, the most popular president in the history of Trinidad and Tobago, and was perhaps the most well-respected national figure. As a country there's a void to be filled. But it is as an individual that I feel the loss most.

There was always something about him that set him apart - a sense of nobility, a sense of being an honourable person, a good person. He was always friendly, always made you feel important. I admired him more than anyone else I have ever met. It was more than the fact that he was family - I think I would have admired him equally if he were a stranger. I always said that being related to the President in no way reflected on me - after all, I did nothing but be born. But knowing a person who was good and honourable, knowing a person who, it seemed, saw the good in people and did his best to do what was right - that was important to me. Long before he was the President he was someone in the family to look up to.

It's been a long time since I saw him. His health has been in decline for a long time. At 88 it's likely that he was the longest-lived person in the family - ever. But while it wasn't a surprise, it was a shock. There was a comfort in knowing he existed. It's a shock to know he's gone.

Summer is done

2006-08-20T01:43:00.000-05:00

Classes start on Monday. Three months have slipped away. I wish I knew where they had gone.

To be honest, that's nothing but a series of cliches. It isn't the least bit surprising that summer has slipped away - we departed on the Appalachian trip just days after classes ended; after we got back I was back to teaching almost immediately; then we were off to Michigan, and just over a week later classes start again. The idea of a "break" during summer is an illusion. I suppose I should be happy to have the time off that I do - after all, in the "real world" people have to work longer hours with fewer breaks.

What would a "real workd" job be like? I have no idea, and no basis against which to judge. My only "real" job was the time I worked in the Herbarium in UWI, and even then I was supposed to be writing my dissertation when I got home, and doing consulting work on weekends. I have such an idealised view of the work world - on one hand, the idea that you are working continuously all day, pretty much tied to your desk for eight hours, and on the other hand, the idea that you can drop what you are doing at the end of the day and just be done. One seems to be torture, the other a luxury. But neither is realistic, I suspect.

So what is the "real world" like? Whatever you make it, I suspect. Just like life in academia.

Sixteen years after the coup

2006-07-28T10:29:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the sixteenth anniversary of the Coup - coup attempt, in reality, since it didn't succeed. Manning didn't bother to show up, as usual - but thenm whether he knew anything about it or not, he is probably the biggest beneficiary from the tragedy.

As the anniversary approached there were the usual calls for a special commission to look into it. And, as usual, it was ignored. The coup is the last issue for the NAR, and only NARites (whatever party they support) care about it any more. Both the PNM and the UNC have been in bed with Bakr, so it isn't in their interest to have people look too carefully at the issue.

I have a hard time thinking of any day as the anniversary - in a certain sense it's with me every day, or almost every day. The anniversary is just another day (or rather, set of six days) in which to remember what happened. It's hard to summon additional intensity for something that is ever-present.

Time flies

2006-07-25T00:38:00.000-05:00

Over a month has passed since I last blogged. A lot has happened since then, and yet it feels like nothing has changed.

The summer has flown by. I don't know how it is that we are in the final week of summer classes. I am at a loss to figure out where the time has gone. In a sense I am glad to be almost done with teaching, but in another sense I'm unhappy with all the things I didn't get done. We may go the Michigan next week, which means that I will have even less time available to get things done. In the next couple of days I have to put together the visa stuff before we run out of time.

Then there's the Israel-Lebanon war. War is always terrible, and yet I find it impossible to tear myself away from it. CNN shows that it's the network for war coverage, but as Atrios point out, why aren't they covering the Iraq war with this level of enthusiasm. Granted, Iraq is a lot more dangerous for journalists, but there's also a virtual media blackout on Iraq. Much like some of the wars in Africa, it has become a forgotten war. Maybe it's not a matter of the networks bowing before the Bush administration's desire to forget the toll of the war - maybe it's just that the public doesn't care about the civil war/quagmire.

I have mixed feelings about the Israel-Lebanon war. On one hand, I find Israel's actions despicable - bombing hospitals and ambulances, but also waging war against civillians and infrastructure. On the other hand, I also find Hezbollah's actions despicable. So when both sides are acting despicably, do you seek moral equivalency and say "well he started it"? I can't do that. It doesn't matter who started it. It doesn't matter who had the moral high ground to begin with. As it stands now, both sides are barbaric. War is barbarism, but equivalent military units engaging one another at least has some send of symmetry (not that I have ever seen a war like that). Once one side has the might in firepower human nature is to cheer for the underdog. It's difficult when you realise that the underdogs aren't people you can support.

People say "what is Israel to do after 6 years of rocket attacks". Does that mean that once this is over Lebanon is entitled to do to Israeli infrastructure what Israel has done to Lebanon's? Does that mean that, once you tally up the dead, that Hezbollah can kill x Israelis to even things up? Of course not. Just as Israel is not entitled to count the rockets attacks as justification for this war.

And so it ends

2006-06-20T23:10:00.000-05:00

It was a great run, it was hugely exciting. I wish we had won something. I wish we had made it to the second round and challenged Germany. But we didn't. It was the first time Trinidad and Tobago made it to the World Cup. I wish I had been there, I wish I had seen some of the games in real.

It was great to see them play at the World Cup. It was great to see Latas play. There's a beauty in his play, skill and grace. "The Little Magician" - less than two months short of his 38th birthday. What would it have been like if we had made it to Italy in 1990. How would things have been different if we would have had a coach like Beenhakker in 1989? In a real sense I believe that the disenchantment that began after the USA match in 1989 was the first stones slipping down the mountain that ended as the avalanche that was the July 1990 coup attempt.

Would the world have been different if we had made it to the 1990 World Cup? Would I have been different? It's unknowable.

The Gay Animal Kingdom

2006-06-17T12:11:00.000-05:00

Fascination read - I've got to track down Roughgarden's book now, buy a copy when I get a chance.

I was really amused by the idea that, yes, here's real "controversy" in evolutionary biology - someone questioning Darwin on sexual selection. Just the sort of thing that the Discovery Institute is talking about in their Teach the Controversy campaign. Right? I can really see them calling for high school children to be taught that homosexuality is normal (or as the article puts it "[a]t last count, over 450 different vertebrate species could be beheaded in Saudi Arabia.")

The thing that really made me think was the comments about how biologists tend to react to homosexuality in other animals - as a curiosity, as animals "just having fun". I must admit that I have never been too quick to embrace the idea that, because homosexuality if widespread in other animals, that it is natural in humans because I couldn't find a good adaptive explanation for the behaviour. Sure, the "gay uncle" theory is plausible - that non-breeding relatives add survival value and contributing to the survival of your siblings gives you just as much fitness as raising your own offspring. Still, it makes a lot of sense that the adaptive value of homosexuality is in its contribution to social cohesion. Which raises an interesting point - does our modern definition of homosexuality, in which people who are gay do not reproduce, amount to selection against homosexuality? Are the homophobes, who would rather homosexuals remain in the closet, actually acting against their own interests (by increasing the chances of gays reproducing)? Interesting thought.

Football

2006-06-15T09:12:00.000-05:00

We play England in just under two hours. Terribly nervous, but hopeful. In the first game I was nervous, I was hopeful, but I really thought the question was whether we would lose with respect or whether we would lose badly. But once we drew with Sweden, everything changed. Suddenly we have so much more at stake. If we can draw with Sweden, maybe we can beat Paraguay. Then the game against England becomes so much more important. Goal difference matters. And, as uninspiring as England was in its first game, maybe we could come out of this game with a point or three. Sure, it's far more likely that we will come out of the round with only the one point we have, but suddenly there's possibility. And possibility is scary.

Teaching Evals

2006-06-15T00:09:00.000-05:00

So I got what appear to be my best evals to date. Granted, I haven't seen the summary yet (those wonderful averages of categorical data, but whatever), so it's hard to compare with past semesters, but the comments were amazingly positive. I just hope that the comments were a reflection on the overall opinion.

At the same time, I can't ignore the negatives. My style of lecturing leaves still leaves some to be desired. Of course, I also need to lecture less. I get off to a good start with interactive/inquiry teaching, but I have a hard time keeping it up. I think that this class is going well and people are learning, but I find myself standing around with not enough to do. I need to get back to requiring myself to talk to every student, individually, every couple of days. It's easy to interact with the interested ones, but it's a lot harder with the ones who avoid eye contact. Something I have to work at.

Finals week

2006-05-08T09:25:00.000-05:00

So the ritual of finals week is here. It's always a nostalgic time for me, a chance to remember matta season in UWI. Night and day when compared to "finals week" here. Of course, old style, pre-semester matta season was also a world away from the modern thing is UWI.

I always loved the intensity of matta season. It really made me feel alive to dedicate whole days to studying, to sitting alone and working through a year of notes. At a good time it was as intense a tunnelling experience as I have had. So different to watching finals here, where people have a pile of 3-credit courses, many of them with non-cumulative final exams. Matta season was a time to synthesise, to see all the information together at once, to try to make a whole of it.

And that thought takes me back to 5S, when Hoosanie made Lit synthetic, when he put together Julius Caesar into a whole. It also brings me back to GP, when I finally learned how to write. In many ways A Levels was a waste of time - we spent one year learning the material, and the second year learning how to pass the exams. We could easily have covered 2-3 times the material. On the other hand, it was in A's that I learned how to write, I learned how to put ideas together, how to synthesise knowledge. The most important step towards writing a dissertation was probably A Levels. It always bothers me the way that we gloss over things in intro biology or botany classes.

Talking of coups

2006-04-16T08:56:00.000-05:00

Ever since the Seymour Hirsch piece on Iran came out, the word coup d'etat has started slipping into the conversation. People have been saying that The Generals are fed up with Rummy, and by extension, Bushco. Fair enough. But what do they really mean when the stick in the phrase coup d'etat.

Having lived though an attempted one, I tend to fixate on that word a little bit. To me it isn't just a throw-away phrase - to me it means blood in the streets and men with guns, social unrest and widespread looting. To me it means the picture of Police Headquarters in flames, a picture in which you can see a separate set of flames coming, probably, from the police constable on sentry duty who was run down and killed when the Jamaat members stormed the building and blew it up.

So what does coup d'etat mean in a US context? Is it just hyperbole? The idea of changing the government by non-electoral means seems far-fetched. Unlike with Nixon, Congress isn't going to impeach Bush. The Republican majority is far too closely tied to him. Even if "The Generals" are pushing for something, I can't see the current set doing anything like that. I've seen the US President removed from office twice on 24, and I assume it will happen again this season. But I don't see "The Generals" having the leverage to get Cabinet to remove Bush. So what do they mean? Probably nothing. But emporers changed in Rome when an army fighting somewhere out in the provinces revolted, proclaimed its general emporer, and marched on Rome. As the new Rome (mired in unwinnable conflicts in Mesopotamia, much like the Romans tended to be), is the US susceptible to direct military overthrow? I hope not. As much as I dislike Bush, I can't say that the prospect of that sort of a regime change appeals to me in the least.

Still puzzling over coup d'etat. Probably just an internet meme...

Been a while

2006-03-21T20:39:00.000-06:00

Every now and then you seem to hit your stride, and then something derails you. In the case of this blog, success may have been my worst enemy - I was doing well, I felt like I had something to say - and then Carnival was done and I had said what I had to say. And I was left with a "so now what..." Last week I had things to say, but I was just out of the habit.

Last week we joined a gym. It was great to finally do so. We visited three of them, and picked the first one, as usual. Linz calls me an impulse buyer, but quite frankly, since so much of what I come across isn't "right", once I find something that feels right, I know it. Which reminds me of the day before we joined the gym when I had to buy shoes. That wasn't fun - and it was a lot less fun for Linz than it was for me. I hated most of the shoes I saw. Granted, that's my normal feeling. Once I have to buy shoes I realise how ugly I find most shoes. But that isn't anything new. I like very few shoes, but generally once I find a pair I like, I like them. The problem, in this case, was that I never saw a pair I liked - I only saw shoes I either disliked or disliked intensely. In the end we went to a running shoe specialist, where the guy knew what he was talking about and was able to recommend a pair of shoes which weren't too ugly and, far more importantly, suited my feet - probably better than any pair I have owned.

The gym was a different matter. I really didn't know what to do, didn't know where to start. I find gyms intimidating for a number of reasons. One is that I am in such bad shape that I fear people will laugh at me, or worse yet, feel sorry for me. The treadmill was ok, and we played around with the machines a little. It was ok. Then on Saturday we got someone to show us around, suggest a routine, and help figure out weights and reps. It was great - and empowering. And we haven't gone back since. Yesterday the weather was too intimidating - we got into the car and the wind was buffetting it around, and then we heard a tornado warning for Logan County. Not knowing where that was relative to us, I thought it best that we go home and find out. And once we got home, of course, we never left again. Today we had a valid excuse for not going - Linz is feeling unwell - but it still means that we are not going. I am afraid of breaking my stride again. But not that worried - I feel confident that we will be back as soon as Linz feels well enough. I am looking forward to it, I want to go back. And, for a change, I was able to pace myself in such a way that I felt like I was getting something done without overdoing it.

Ash Wednesday

2006-03-01T08:47:00.000-06:00

And then it was done...

As far as Carnivals "in exile" go, this was by far the best. The weekend was far better than the actually days themselves - it's difficult to stay in the mood while you have work to deal with, while you are embedded in a matrix of people who really have no interest or awareness in what's going on. Still, it was nice listening to the radio from home, listening to people who were worked up, were in the mood for it all. In that regard 101 was more effective because they have several djs who are less professional - not the slick radio presenters, but people much like people you know in real life.

Anyway, it's over. 101 is back to Filmi, it would appear. Haven't had a chance to check the others yet. Does Lent still bring more sombre music?

Carnival Sunday

2006-02-26T13:48:00.000-06:00

Starting to feel the fever pitch, the sense of being alive. It's Carnival. I may be a world away, but it's still Carnival. I can't go to work tomorrow! That's just so wrong. Doesn't anyone realise what day it is? I'm ready to go out at 4 am (which it 2 am here), ready to stay up all night to listen to Dimanche Gras. But I won't. I'm sleepy enough as it is, I have to get a good bit of work done for tomorrow, and I have to get an abstract in by Wednesday for ESA. Who came up with the bright idea of putting the abstract submission deadline on Ash Wednesday? What were they thinking? :)

Carnival Friday

2006-02-24T16:03:00.000-06:00

As far away as I am, it's still Carnival Friday. I could blame it on having access to Trinidad radio, but the truth is that it's there no matter what. Carnival is Carnival. You can be happy about it, or you can let it break your heart - but you can't ignore it. It's in your blood. The fact that I have access to Trinidad radio means that I can enjoy the feeling instead of having this immense sense of being excluded, of the biggest thing in the world happening, but you can't be there.

It's so difficult to not be home for Carnival. Sure, not being home for Christmas sucks too, but there is so much more to Carnival. It's the high point of the year, and no matter how long you spend in exile, no matter how many Carnivals you miss, I can't imagine it not being the high point of the year. Listening to a flood of chutney soca only makes it more intense. Kaiso is something I feel strongly about, but I don't feel the sense of "ownership" of kaiso that I do of chutney. Still, no matter how much of a sense of immediacy the radio can give you, it will never be the same, and it will never fill the sense of longing, the knowledge of what you are missing.

Wot a ting

2006-02-22T08:43:00.000-06:00

The day after I spend my money for Homeviewtnt, 101 decides to stream for free, at least for the Carnival season. I'd say their free stream is better quality than the paid stream. No complaints - complements what Homeview has. Real chutney. Now I happy.

HomeView and Filmi

2006-02-20T22:25:00.000-06:00

Finally (rather too late) subscribed to Homeviewtnt. So far so good - except that the only real kaiso available is 105, which seems to be covering pan-round-the-neck competition. Not exactly meeting my desire to figure out what's in play for Carnival 2006 (can't believe that in just a week I will be missing yet another Carnival).

So what do I find myself listening to? Filmi on 103.

I remember when I used to hate this kind of music. It was just too inaccessible to me. It didn't seem musical, it seemed terribly discordant. Now, hearing it for the first time in so long - I can't imagine anything better. Ok, I would probably prefer chutney, I would probably prefer dub. But other than that...and yeah, this one is about as inane a film song as I have heard (because the chorus is in English - I wonder how some of this stuff would suck the rest of the time if I could understand it).

In a general sense, listening to music in a language you can't understand seems strange to me. It's one thing is Spanish, where I can still figure out a good few words, here and there if not everywhere. Hindi is another issue. I know the odd word here and there, I know a number of other words that I don't understand...but for the most time I have no clue what they are saying. And yet the music still says something to me - there's the music, the sound of the words, and the intonation of the singing.

Review Sessions

2006-02-08T07:58:00.000-06:00

It would appear, based on the comments I have come across in the past, that the best feature of my teaching is my review sessions. This is unfortunate, since I would rather be better at engaging students than at helping them cram for exams - but the truth is, I have been taught to cram, to spot, and all these other good things, so it makes sense that I am able to model the behaviour I have learned.

The issue now is how to make that into a useful pedagogical tool. Rather than working against your strengths, can you work with them? Anyway, first exams are today. Let's hope they do well.

On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year

2006-01-25T22:29:00.000-06:00

Awake! (not Greece - she is awake)
Awake, my spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake
And then strike home!

It seems a lifetime ago that I lived for Byron's words, when poetry was the thing that brought me to life. I wasn't even sure, as I sat down to write, whether this was the correct year; and it wasn't until I sat down to write something while anticipating my 36th birthday that I even remembered the poem.

Reading Byron was like waking up from a dream. To read the start of the poem is the feel a rush of life into you - to feel something that you haven't felt in maybe a decade - since the depression grew so deep that it drowned out the poetry. I left my books behind when I went to Michigan - no more Byron, no more Yeats. Somehow, without realising it, my workd grew smaller. All that remained was Christy Brown - and eventually even his words faded and were forgotten.

And after the depression had been pushed back, I no longer cared. I stopped writing - I didn't have the passion, I didn't have the hurt. But it was so much better than what had gone before that I did not mourn what I had lost. I still do not mourn it - it was a more than fair trade. But until this moment, until I clicked on the Google link and read the words: 'Tis time my heart should be unmoved, Since others it hath ceased to move:

To read those words was to feel something come alive - and yet it was a chance to appreciate the beauty and the sorrow without letting it overwhelm me. Before, when I read those words they were true, I read the poem and I became it. I read Yet, though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love! and I knew that it was true, that no one could love me, that I would never be loved. Now I know that it isn't me speaking, it's Byron. Then I did not know the difference.

I remember when 36 was ancient. I thought that Byron's death was perfection - he was old enough to have lived, but still young enough to care. While it really sets into stark relief my own lack of achievements, to compare my life to Byron's, it also serves as a kick in the ass - it serves to motivate me. But it does so in a good way, not in a hopeless way.

Turning 36 is still a big deal. I wish I didn't have to teach. Not because I feel I shouldn't work on my birthday - actually it's a fine day to work - it's ok to go to work on a day over which you feel ownership - you, Andrew Ridgely and India. What I would have liked is a little quiet time for reflection right around 11 am. Well, maybe I should take into account the time difference, and celebrate 9 am instead of 11 am. If I get ready early enough I'll have a few minutes to reflect.

I always get an itch almost, over the first 25 days of the year. My age is the year. So to be 35 in 2006 feel wrong, and it only feel right when my birthday finally arrives and I, too, and 36. Like a racehorse, my "true" birthday is January 1. But at the same time, it's always a little weird to get a year older.

Teacher as performer

2006-01-23T23:14:00.000-06:00

It comes back to the same idea of teacher as performer. Overheard someone in the coffee shop talking about a really good prof - one who had him on the edge of his seat, wanting to be the one picked to answer a question. You've gotta think - "wow, how does he do that?"

The first excuse that comes to mind is both simple, easy and lazy. "Oh, it must be because he gets to teach classes on exciting, controvertial topics", or "oh, he has an upper level class with a more engaged student body". And then you think about last semester, and you realise that no, it's your own fault. You had the chance, and although it was your first semester (for one of the classes), you just didn't get into the things that would have really engaged them. Sure, if it were my class I could make it more exciting...

Well, I pretty much "own" my sections of General Botany. How do you make cells and cell division exciting? How do you manage to engage them? Well, let's see - what is tomorrow all about? Cells and microscopy. Not very exciting, you say. And you are somewhat correct in the position. But that's really just lazy thinking. You need to ask the question "what can I do to make the material more exciting?" But there I am stumped. How do I excite people about plant cells? Simply being excited about the material isn't really good enough.

What is the consistency of a cell? Solid, liquid, gas, solution or colloid? Not very exciting - but you can make it engaging. Cytoplasmic streaming is always cool, if I can get them to see it clearly enough. And how does vinegar affect the cell? Well, it denatures the protein. So I need to introduce them to the idea of proteins, and how pH affects the structure of a protein. I suppose that might be the right place to start - after I get them looking at the Elodea leaves, hopefully.

Teaching

2006-01-23T23:01:00.000-06:00

I realised something very interesting today - I'm having fun teaching. I suppose, since it's the fourth semester that I am teaching this class I should say "it's about time". Summer wasn't bad, but it was difficult to teach two classes back to back - now, after doing two-hour sessions for a third semester it really isn't a big deal. Of course, when I mentioned it to Gordon, about "having fun" teaching, his first question was "are you getting them to talk?" My first thought was focussed on today - and the answer would be no, not much talking. But then I thought back over the four days I have taught, and I realised that I am getting them to talk - far more than I would have thought possible when I started all this. There's a distinct difference between the two classes though - my first class is more talkative than is my second class. Tomorrow's class has more opportunties for them to talk, more chances for interactions. I hope it goes well.

So I suppose I have learned a thing or two about interactive teaching. I can't be someone other than I am, but I can do a decent job of acting. An effective, engaging teacher needs to be something of a performer. It isn't just a part of their personality. While the great ones are quirky, you can be good without needing to be great. Right now, being "better" is a good starting point. If I can be better, then eventually I can be good. My personality and my way of speaking are a challenge, a hindrance, but they are not insurmountable obstacles.

Typically Trini?

2006-01-20T10:45:00.000-06:00

What does this mean? "Eats at the same restaurant every day"? I have never heard that as a Trinidadian thing to do. But, yeah, I do. So what? Is there something Trini about that?

Not that I would read NRO's corner, google took me there, but still...

HURRICANE ROGER [Rick Brookhiser]
Neither the Transit Workers' Union nor its leader Roger Toussaint has won many friends. The tabloids are on the warpath against them, but they are following the popular mood as much as shaping it. I'm hearing disgust in unexpected places: Ed Lover, the hip-hop radio host, was mocking Toussaint's accent. Out of the blue, my trainer called him a typical Trinnie (Trinidadian). "What do you mean by that?" I asked. "He's been here for years, but he still talks like a Trinnie; he probably eats in the same restaurant every day." (My trainer is from another island.)
Seems like New York is suffering from Hurricane Roger.

Classes

2006-01-17T09:34:00.000-06:00

First day of classes for the semester. Nervous and excited. Already have one problem on my plate - a student who insists on sitting in on a full section. May work out fine, someone may drop (is there a waiting list?) Shall see

Happy New Year

2006-01-14T15:03:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been about a month since I posted, and my traffic has slipped down to two visits a week, so I figure I might as well post something just for the sake of posting.

My job hunt seems to be going nowhere. That after spending all that time with Bob revising my cover letter and c.v. I'm still hopeful - while the pickings are a lot slimmer than they were, there's still a flood of ads on the Chronicle every Monday, and there are still ads with deadline dates scattered across February and up to March 1.

And now onto classes. The semester starts on Tuesday (Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day), and I have two sections of Intro Bot and the Appalachian field trip class. So far I have already gotten a scheduling-related email from a student (a little bit last minute, to see if you can switch classes at this stage...good thing I check my email on weekends). On one hand, I am excited for classes to start back; on the other, I am not so thrilled. I do have to put more effort into fixing what's wrong with my teaching - that's both a challenge (and thus motivating, since it gives me a chance to play at a role of being someone other than I actually am, maybe someone more interesting than I am in reality) and a bother, since I will never be good enough, and if past experience is anything to go on, I won't succeed. I suppose that while success is a good thing, the real motivation is the challenge of trying to figure out how to do it.

Job hunting

2005-12-19T05:21:00.000-06:00

They called to check references on Friday. Good news, even if they didn't reach Gordon. At least it suggests that I am still in the running for at least that one job.

Reading a post about job hunting on the Chronicle, I started to feel better about this. Making it to the stage where they are checking references is probably a pretty good sign. I suspect that it may mean that their first choices didn't work out, and they have moved onto a second tranche, but that's fine with me once I get considered. That said, I find the whole idea of interviewing to be terrifying. I doubt I will interview well, especially considering that I have never really been interviewed. Ok, I have had a grand total of three job interviews in my life - one with NIHERST, one with the Ministry of the Environment, and one phone interview with Gordon.

Anyway, there's no point in talking about interviews at this stage.

Mushtaq 1977-2005

2005-12-13T22:45:00.000-06:00

I don't know what to do with a death of a friend. I don't think I have ever had to sort something like this out. I don't have anything useful to think. It's even hard to say you'll miss someone when you haven't seen them in years, when you have probably had as few actual conversations as we had. But it doesn't change the fact that he was like family. It's all the more difficult to sort out something like this because you don't actually feel entitled to mourn - you feel like you'd have to appreciate a person's company more to be entitled to mourn them.

He always seemed so bright, upbeat and lively. He always seemed a positive person.

I don't even know how to pay my respects. I can't imagine how Ishaq, Nisa, Bedah and their mother feel. His cousins as well - they seemed more like brothers than anything. I really have no ideas what he was up to, what he was doing with his life.

I'm glad Carol told me, but I wish I had heard something sooner.

2005-12-09T14:28:00.000-06:00

Jobs

A week past the nibble and no follow-up calls to my references. Did I fail the phone-interview disguised as a phone conversation? Maybe. That's rather a shame - Georgia wouldn't be a bad place.

I have no concept of time in the academic job search. I wonder if the applications I sent out for December 1 have passed their 'sell by" date already. It's so hard to tell. Oh well, I'll stay optimistic, and at the same time hope that I'll be welcome to stay here another year, if need be...and focus on churning out some seroius pubs.

2005-12-08T08:17:00.000-06:00

John Lennon. 1940-1980

Twenty-fifth anniversary of a tragic day.

2005-12-03T07:41:00.000-06:00

Job hunting

I got my first nibble in my job hunt this week. Just a follow-up call, but at least I made the first cut - they considered me worth calling my references, and they gave me a call. I failed on what may have been the most important question - "why are you interested in us"? (Ok, the most important questions were really "are you still interested in us" and "do we have your permission to call your references", because without saying yes to them I was automatically out.

As to the "why" question, I mumbled something about being interested in a small school. Gordon said that I should prepare a "stock" answer, but I have no idea what it should be. Why am I interested in . I don't think "because I am hoping for a pay-cheque" is the right answer. I don't see how I would come up with a stock answer. I am interested in a place where I have the chance to know my colleagues and my students? I don't want to teach classes with 2-400 students? Something like that. I like teaching smaller groups.

As for Georgia? I suppose proximity to Florida and South Carolina would be something to bear in mind. It seems like an environment that's closer to tropical - kinda almost subtropical. That kinda thing. And, of course, proximity to Savannah River and UGA are good things too. If you have to be at a small school you should at least be near to a bigger school with a proper library and more potential colleagues. That kinda thing.

For the moment it's just a day-dream, but it's a good sign nonetheless. It's reassuring - at least someone is interested in me, based on my (rather slim) cv. Gives you reason to hope.

2005-11-30T09:40:00.000-06:00

Evaluations

Doing evaluations today. Gives me a few extra minutes to avoid teaching and try to find my sanity. Or something like that.

But seriously, evaluations are scary. I'm just not that entertaining a teacher, and this semester was not a good one, given the teaching load. And yeah, I realise I'm kinda boring - as a speaker in general, certainly as a lecturer. My tendancy toward really long pauses, too many "um's", that kinda thing...I don't really know how I got this way, and I don't really know how to change. It sucks. So I have evaluations.

2005-11-26T22:37:00.000-06:00

"That elusive national unity" (to use Carol's phrase)

Qualifying for the World Cup did more than heal the trauma of 1989 - it gave a glimpse of what could be. National unity seemed only to exist outside of Trinidad - until we won in Bahrain.

As various studies have shown, the things that unite us are greater than the things that divide us, but race and politics seems to be unsurmountable obstacles. In 1986/87 after the NAR won there was a brief window of unity, but even then there were those who were on the outside. PNM supporters felt unwelcome at the party, and as things went bad they grew more bitter. But this was different. Even people who lost money betting against them are still winners. For once it isn't a zero-sum game. Victory can come without being at someone else's expense. And that, I suppose, makes all the difference

2005-11-16T11:28:00.000-06:00

Is there anybody out there?

Sure, if you look at the hit counter, there are a few people who end up here other than Linz and me. But it feels lonely. It feels like I am just talking to myself most of the time.

Part of this is probably a matter of being too vague. It isn't a content kinda blog, where you could come and learn something. And it isn't a diary sort of blog in which you could get some insight into a person's life. So what's the point of this?

That's the question I need to answer. Why do I blog? Why am I doing this? What should I be writing about? Or should I be writing at all? (Granted, I should not be writing now, since class starts in 2 minutes!)