What’s this? A blog popularity contest with both PZ and me as contestants, and not a global warming denial site in sight?
Wackos everywhere! Plague of madness!
Incidentally, voting ends March 17.
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About Bad Astronomy
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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March 9th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Wow, this is tough. PZ lets me cuss, but Phil visits Second Life. Obviously, I’ll have to vote for whoever offers me the most meaningless promises he doesn’t intend to keep. Is either candidate bold enough to call for a ban on hasenphefer?
March 9th, 2009 at 7:23 am
@NBwaW
Your views are backward. If hassenpfeffer is banned, then what culinary advances will be cut off? It would mean that countless palates in need of new and innovative gastronomic creations would be denied such needs!
March 9th, 2009 at 7:28 am
I think you and PZ should dress up in a couple of Sumo wrestler suits and then have a go at each other.
Just a suggestion for TAM7, no need to thank me.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:40 am
Forget TAM7, just sent it straight to Youtube. It would be an instant classic!
March 9th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Since there´s no Dr. Pamela Gay´s blog, I voted for Phil!
March 9th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Oh, yeah, and before I forget:
Another shameless self-promotion from Dr Plait!!
You got to love this guy!!!!!!!
And Phil, hope your book is reaaaally good, it costs me the soul to import it to Brazil (2 weeks to go yet..)
March 9th, 2009 at 7:54 am
@Todd W: What is wrong with eating raw carrots and lettuce? You kids today and your fancy liberal food! Things were better in the olden days, when we ate good American veggies and left the German dishes for Hitler!
March 9th, 2009 at 7:56 am
@NBwaW
See, now. Look what you did. You brought Hitler into the discussion, so you’ve already lost. You really should have waited until well along in the argument to bring him in. This is just evidence that you have no basis to support your side.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:04 am
I think we should vote for whoever bans Culinary Thrombosis!
March 9th, 2009 at 8:05 am
@Todd W: I don’t need your elitist “reason”. I have faith! *slurps his chicken stew*
March 9th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Thomas Peters is crushing both you and PZ, but I voted for you anyway.
Who is Thomas Peters?
March 9th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Of that whole list, the only two I’ve even heard of are you an PZ.
Despite a lack of cephalopods here, I voted for you.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:35 am
@Evolving Squid: Same here, PZ and Phil are the only names I recognize. I have probably read some of the other but I have never actually noticed their names. Hey Phil, whatever happened to the World President contest you two had on Facebook, that thing made me sign up for the damn thing!
March 9th, 2009 at 8:38 am
You can’t choose askaninja? This contest is a joke.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Never mind. I withdraw my last comment. I realize anyone on the list could secretly be askaninja. Is it you, Phil?
March 9th, 2009 at 9:58 am
@Bunk, “who is Thomas Peters” you ask?
I googled him, and it appears that he’s a catholic apologist who among other things, apologetically defends the fact that the abortion performed on the 9 year old raped Brazilian girl was wrong, and even under those circumstances, considered murder.
http://americanpapist.com/blog.html
Either way, these popularity contests don’t mean much as to the content of the site, and I know Phil and PZ enjoy this kind of tongue-and-cheek humor, not exactly taking it seriously. It does help identify the collective will of global warming denialists, or catholic apologists, or new earth creationists, or magic as natural phenomenalists, etc.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:08 am
what an incredibly secure voting system … but i don’t expect any better from a site where a religious nutcase aka americanpapist is headed ftw.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:33 am
FWIW, neither Climate Audit nor Watts Up With That are “global warming denialist” blogs, although others certainly are. They ARE skeptical about some climate science because of the evidence that challenges some of its conclusions. Phil, you diminish yourself when you fail to be skeptical of your own biases and paint with a broad, ad hominem brush.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:54 am
No global warming deniers; just Thomas Peters, “a young lay Catholic with a Masters’ degree in Theology”.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:54 am
@GT,
The skeptical position is to doubt a claim until and unless presented with positive evidence. The published evidence overwhelming supports the AGW position. The bloggers at Climate Audit and Watts Up With That have been presented with the evidence and still doubt; they doubt in spite of the published evidence, not because of it. Therefore they are not skeptics.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I think PZ gets more traffic based on the amount of average replies he gets from his commentary. But I could be wrong in using that as a measuring stick.
Besides I like both you; to me there is no competition.
And yes…I remember when this site was up against Climate Audit and how they zerg’d BA with painful walls of apologist text and splitting hairs. I am glad science only blogs are winning this time. It’s easier on the head. <3
March 9th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Where the hell is Wheaton?
March 9th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Oh dear, looks like Thomas Peters has assembled his troops and might pwn this contest… get out there people, vote Phil, you know it makes sense…
March 10th, 2009 at 7:34 am
O.K. Phil I voted for you, do I get a free copy of Death from the skies?
March 11th, 2009 at 10:18 am
@ The Other Ian
You didn’t comprehend what I said. To reiterate: these two bloggers are skeptical of *some* of the published science because of the problems they find with it. What problems? Continued use of suspect data (strip-bark bristlecone pine tree ring series that an NAS panel has said to avoid; continued use of surface temperatures data from demonstrably invalidly sited stations), invalid statistical procedures (tweaked principle components analysis and RegEM infilling) that have not been verified by professional statisticians. Then there’s the refusal of a number of climate scientists to make their publicly-funded data available for examination and analysis, contrary to the requirements of the journals their papers are published in and the way science is supposed to work.
If such things were rare, then your criticism of these bloggers might have merit. Unfortunately, the problems are recurrent, and are not corrected by the climate science community.
If you read these blogs carefully, you would see neither one denies global warming, but they both are highly critical of the tendency to accept any conclusions based on authority rather than evidence.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:21 am
@GT,
I stand by what I said. While I can’t speak for Phil, I can speak for myself. I’m not trained as a climate researcher, so all I really have to go on in determining the validity of the science is the published, peer-reviewed evidence; which, as I noted before, overwhelmingly supports the AGW position. If “skeptical” researchers like McIntyre and Watts have concerns about the quality of the evidence, then they should be publishing those concerns — or better, their own evidence — in respected, peer-reviewed journals, not just blogging about it. The fact that they do not seem to be doing this leads me to the conclusion that their evidence is probably not as strong as they claim.
In short, my trust is in the peer-review process; blogs are great for presenting the evidence, but not for critically reviewing it.