Good evo blogs

[Nic Tamzek]

I was browsing PZ's blog (http://pharyngula.org) and realized that I had discovered a new phenomenon: The Evolutionist Blog. PZ's is really great, and he links to Carl Zimmer's new blog (http://carlzimmer.com), which I haven't read yet but which I expect is good.

Help assemble a list of (good) blogs at EvoWiki:

http://www.evowiki.org/wiki.phtml?title=Good_evolutionist_blogs

[pz]

Carl's is very good. Damn professional writers, coming along and showing us amateurs up...

We do seem to be a rare phenomenon, though. Maybe a few more evilutionists ought to start writing!

[Dr.GH]

I try to post something every day on some evo/creato BB. But I try to use venues that have a fair amount of traffic.

My question then is, do blogs afford a means to directly address creationist's many falsehoods with a reasonable number of creatos or un-desideds in the readership? If they do, would a repost of daily responces to BBs constitute a resonable content for a blog?

[Nic Tamzek]

Hey, one thing I've heard about is "group blogs" where a bunch of people blog on an issue. This would be something to consider along GH's lines.

Does anyone know of any successful issue-specific group blogs, or have opinions on if an evolution would be useful?

(E.g., it would be nice to have a single, central, public location for people (well, me) to check each day for Evo news, rather than the usual scrabbling around newsgroups and boards for new stuff)

[pz]

The site that hosts Zimmer's blog, Corante (http://www.corante.com/), does support multiple other authors. There's also Crooked Timber (http://www.crookedtimber.org/), Unfogged (http://www.unfogged.com/), and Corrente (http://corrente.blogspot.com/) -- the group blog approach is growing in popularity, since it does make it easier to have frequent updates. Corante does have something of a science focus, but the others are more political or focus on diverse subjects -- I don't know of any that hammer on a single issue like evolution. I suspect that a site that had too narrow a focus might lose a little of the personality that everyone expects of a blog. Another problem is finding a compatible group. I wouldn't mind having others contribute to my site, for instance, but they'd also be tarred with my liberal politics and penchant for occasional silly blather.

I also think it would be very hard for one site to be a comprehensive source for evo news. There's too much of it, for one thing, and again, I think perspective and personality are important parts of the blog, that are in part expressed in the topics chosen. There are a few sites like Science Blog (http://www.scienceblog.com/community/index.php) and bottomquark (http://www.bottomquark.com/) that try to act like news distilleries; they're OK, but I think they lose a little flavor.

As for Dr GH's questions -- I think blogs do grab a more diverse readership. It's a much smaller group, but it's not like ARN or antievolution.org or iidb, where readers tend to have a strong predisposition pro or con, or they wouldn't be there. And yeah, anything goes -- there are blogs that have entries that consist of little more than a string of links to somewhere else, and others that contain long, long essays. I would think that the kind of stuff we're all dumping into BBs is perfectly acceptable fodder for a blog. The only difference would be that here, we have other people's posts that surround ours and provide context; in a blog, you have to take a moment to provide the context and explain why you are suddenly talking about frog legs or chimpanzee brains. Sometimes all that takes is a link to another site that prompted your musing, but it is a tiny bit of extra effort that has to be made.

[Steinsky]

Psst, we could start using the In the news (http://www.evowiki.org/wiki.phtml?title=In_the_news) page on EvoWiki ;)

[Steinsky]

I've been doing a bit of blogging about evolution lately, but certainly not in same league as PZ and CZ. I have been ranting about articles in The Guardian about atheism though. And tabloid style articles in The Independent about GMOs.

http://www.steinsky.me.uk/

[RufusAtticus]

I started posting my EvoMath series on my blog.

http://blog.rufus.ws/archives/000030.html

I still need to tweak my LaTeX support, but it is getting there.