If I ever give up blogging for good, it will be because of comments like this:

I just don’t get it. What a lame blog topic that should have been left on the cutting room floor. There is no science here. Evidently cited just to provide an opportunity to express a personal belief. Why not blog on the news of the day..the successfully trapping the first “anti-atom” and its potential implications? This is real news, real science and in keeping with your expertise. You could teach me something. Instead you give me this?

Obviously the sensible reaction is to laugh and move on, but few of us achieve that level of Zen detachment in dealing with the world. Many of the comments at CV are great, and I’ve certainly learned a lot from the interactions here, but quite a high percentage are of this form. When you put a lot of work into the blog and care about how it turns out, this kind of stuff wears you down. Why are people like this? I understand that not every post will interest every person; is it really more satisfying to take time to lash out in the comment section (when you have never left a constructive comment yet), rather than just skipping to something else on the vast and endlessly amusing internet?

[/grumpy]

It’s been days since we’ve hit people up for our Donors Choose 2010 Challenge. As you know, this is our favorite cause. It’s also Stephen Colbert’s favorite, as if you needed any extra motivation.

Our challenge page has had a great response so far — many, many thanks to everyone who has donated. Every donation is rewarded with a direct thank-you from the classroom that you helped. Here are a few of our responses:

“I simply cannot thank you enough for your selfless donation for much-needed supplies to use in my classroom. I know that your generosity will allow students with learning disabilities to engage in hands-on activities that relate to their everyday lives in reading, writing and math.” — Ms. S, Columbus

“I AM SO EXCITED about this project being funded! I have always wanted this Lakeshore kit to assist my instruction in science. I know that the students will be excited when they are able to work in groups and pairs to understand scientific concepts using this set. Words cannot express how thankful I am to each and every one of you for your contribution to our classroom!” — Ms. L, Forsyth, Georgia

“The items that you will provide for my students will help them with counting. Can you imagine the look on their faces when they see all the resources that they will get? I can. Its a look that I constantly get when I introduce a new concept and they are interested in learning more.” — Mrs. B, Los Angeles

We’re kicking serious butt in the Discover Blogs sub-challenge, which is nice, but our collective behinds are in turn being kicked by the pretenders at Seed, especially the squid people. Do you really want to stand for that?

And while we’re stooping to cheap psychology, did you notice this recent study that women give more to charity than men? Guys, are you going to just sit there and make these scurrilous accusations become reality?

More seriously, I love the big donations, but it would be nice to see more at the $5/$10/$20 level. Doesn’t cost too much, and it can mean a lot to kids without basic school supplies. You’ll feel good!

Last but certainly not least, we wanted to give huge thanks to everyone who helped spread the word via blogs or Twitter. Here’s the roll call of honor:

Louise Butt
Swans on Tea
@Paradise_Host
@barneygrubbs
@pandeiacomic
@BadAstronomer
@VeniceRiley
@ronsimon
@cosmicutopia
@buffalodavid
@cbcnasa
@break1ngscience
@leafwarbler
@pjrobar
@alltop_science
@rationalsquad
@leafwarbler
@pie_r_round
@mdsteele47
@reckonso
@katiebisbee

and who could possibly forget

Janiece at Hot Chicks Dig Smart Men.

Thanks! Every little push helps.

Time once again (slightly late, actually) for our annual DonorsChoose fundraising challenge. It’s a great program. Public school teachers around the U.S. ask for small amounts of money for their classrooms, and the donor — that’s you — gets to pick exactly how much you give, and to what project. It will break your heart to hear about elementary-school kids in high-poverty areas who need a few bucks to buy whiteboards or calculators. But these basic tools can make a huge difference in inspiring someone to get excited about math and science. Check out some of these projects:

Cosmic Variance Challenge 2010

and see if you aren’t moved to throw a few bucks their way.

As before, we are part of a larger Science Bloggers Challenge. A little friendly competition is good for the soul, and for the donating. Now, in the past, the readers here at Cosmic Variance have done incredibly well in donating — over $12,000 last year! Not sure how that happened, honestly. You guys are good. Can we possibly do even better?

One thing that will help is that your donations are leveraged. The folks at Hewlett Packard have agreed to match any donation up to $50,000. (Not that we would object if you chose to give more, but it’s not strictly necessary.) So every dollar you give is two dollars of impact.

And who know? Maybe there will be gifts for people who are especially generous. We’re not above bribery. Any ideas for what would constitute a good bribe?

Also! If any other bloggers want to put up a post encouraging their readers to donate at our page, we will be very happy to link back to them with assorted compliments. Heck, we’ll even link to tweeters.

Okay, I think it’s time to step down from hiatus and get back into this blogging thing. I missed you guys! And I notice that the science blogosphere has completely blown up and re-organized since I left. Which is a good thing.

I don’t like to navel-gaze too much about the act of blogging, but a gradual evolution in my own style was the primary motivation for my hiatus. In the good old days I stuck mostly to very short posts, pointing to this or that and making simple comments without feeling obligated to provide elaborate justifications for every little thing. But over time, I found myself increasingly seeing every post as a multi-layered 3,000 word essay. (Even if they didn’t end up that way in actuality, that’s how they often were in my head.) Not a sustainable model for someone for whom blogging is a hobby, not a vocation. I promised myself long ago that if blogging ever started to take up too much time (roughly, more than 3 hours/week), something would be broken and I’d have to fix it.

So here I am fixing it. I really do very much enjoy the idea of blogging, both exploring ideas for my own sake and the wider conversation with other bloggers and with commenters. But given unitarity constraints on my time and energy, I need to concentrate on punchier posts, and comments that are not fully supported against every possible counter-argument. If the experience of writing a book nudged me toward longer forms, the success of Twitter demonstrates the value of the quick hit & link. Of course I will mix things up, which is part of the fun — longer posts here and there, the occasional video. There may be LOLcats. But I’ll try to refrain from writing poetry.

And now for dessert: chocolate extravaganza from my favorite restaurant, Alinea in Chicago. Ordinarily there are no tablecloths at Alinea, but for this course they cover the table with a thin sheet of silicone and — well, you’ll see.

Some of you might find this presentation too precious and extravagant to be enjoyable. I understand, and I’m sure you’ll appreciate the Oreo Blender Blaster at Denny’s.

I just counted: this is my 1,540th blog post (counting my youthful efforts at Preposterous Universe.) About two posts every three days, for a bit over six years. Time for a break!

So I’m going on hiatus for a while. While my normal mode of operation is to bounce happily between a dozen different activities, there’s a time for consolidation, and I’d like to concentrate on research for a while. It’s been madcap travel ever since the book came out, which is finally done with, and I look forward to getting back into the groove of solving equations and writing papers.

My hiatus plans aren’t very firm: not sure whether it will be a month or a year. It won’t be permanent, that’s for sure. And I doubt it will even be very doctrinaire; if the mood strikes me, I won’t be reluctant to fire up the old laptop and post something on my beloved Cosmic Variance.

In the meantime, the rest of the crew (not to mention you commenters) will keep the fires burning here at the blog. Maybe I’ll even leave a comment or two if one of those jokers says something totally outrageous. Probably most people won’t even notice I’m gone. (Otherwise I wouldn’t have to announce it, would I?)

So, a few weeks ago we all got an email here at cosmic variance inviting us to the first ever “NASA tweetup” for the next Shuttle Launch. Sean and Mark are in Australia and JoAnne is in Egypt, and Julianne is a launch veteran… but Daniel and I decided that it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. This is despite the fact that neither of us actually knew what a tweetup was, or had ever tweeted before…

So we rearranged our schedules, met yesterday in Denver, woke up at 6 am this morning, and are now at Kennedy Space Center with 100 space twitterers. They’ve got a full program here with astronauts and a tour today, and the launch of mission STS-129 to the space station at 2:29 pm tomorrow. The event just started… So stay tuned, we’ll keep you posted. We will be blogging as well as loosing our tweeting virginity @cosmicvariance. You can follow the rest of the gang by looking for #nasatweetup.

Once a year we implore our loyal CV readers to dig deep into their pockets, and support the cause of scientific literacy. One of the most direct and straightforward ways to do this is through Donors Choose, which facilitates direct contributions to primary and secondary classrooms (alas, for the moment only in the United States). The projects are described in detail, and one knows exactly why and how the funds will be used. Your gift has a clear and discernible impact, emphasized by the personal handwritten thank you notes you receive from the students.
To further incentivize readers, Donors Choose runs a yearly Social Media Challenge, where blogs compete to win fame and (give away) fortune. Last year we handidly trounced the folks over at ScienceBlogs. Over 100 CV readers donated a total of almost $9,000, impacting 1,700 students across the nation. We’re truly proud; our readers came through big time! This year we’re once again throwing our hat in the ring. Donate here. Tax deductible. Other bloggers are encouraged to set up their own challenges, or advertise ours (and we’ll happily list you at the top of our Donors Choose page). And although that warm feeling in your heart from helping needy children will certainly be sufficient, we’ll also post a list of all who contribute more than $100 (unless you request anonymity, of course). This is an incredibly direct way to improve the state of science and math education. Donations start as low as $5! And our schools need all the help they can get.

Cosmic Variance now has its very own Twitter feed:

• @CosmicVariance

This might seem superfluous, since we have, you know, a blog. Mostly the tweets will consist of pointers to the blog posts (automatically generated from the RSS feed). Perhaps the occasional special intervention. But this is a quick and dirty way to integrate with the twitterverse, if people want to follow us there and re-tweet and all that delicious stuff.

I’ll try to post something of substance soon. Hopefully I will elaborate on this picture:

We’ve tweaked the blog template once more, and things continue to look better. This time we’ve re-arranged the format of the posts so that the top features just the name of the poster, and all the clutter is at the bottom. And you can click on “N comments” to actually be taken to the comments!

By “we,” of course I mean the web gurus at Discover — your humble bloggers didn’t have to do a damn thing. Thanks, all.

Thanks to the arcane magicks of Discover web producer Gemma Shusterman, this blog now offers the latest in commenting technology: the ability to edit your own comments! That’s right: after you type in the comment and hit “Submit,” for the next fifteen minutes you will be able to go back and change what you wrote. We expect that this will totally eliminate the appearance of typos or mistakes of judgment in any further comments. (Note that, in order to actually leave a comment, you have to click on the post title.)

You’ll also notice that the name of the author now appears at the top of the post, which is very helpful. We have a list of upgrades we’re trying to gradually implement, in order to make your blog-reading experience as pleasant as possible.