Tangled Bank

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Call for science writing

PZ Myers • 9 Comments

It's May Day! We're supposed to be thinking of flowers and spring and new life and Revolution and labor and the rights of the working class, but here in western Minnesota we're looking at snow and a late freeze and fierce winds—the snow is coming down sideways, always a bad sign—so I'm sitting indoors with a stack of papers to grade and thinking about these things in only the most abstract ways, I'm afraid. I'm going to bring up something completely different, science on the web.

So first, I will urge everyone to think positive thoughts about life and biology and science, good stuff to consider any day of the year and not just in the spring, and remind you all that a new edition of the Tangled Bank will be online this Wednesday, hosted by Buridan's Ass. The Tangled Bank is a biweekly collection of writing about science, natural history, medicine, etc., and it is now taking submissions of your good stuff on those subjects—send links to <buridans AT buridansass DOT com> or to me or to [email protected] by Tuesday. And if you are snowed in or bored, browse the archives to find out who's talking about science on the weblogs.

There's another, even closer deadline coming up, and this one is your opportunity to strike a blow for good science in the so-called mainstream media. Last week, a major metropolitan newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, ran several opinion pieces on Intelligent design creationism, both pro and con. This isn't unusual, but they are also asking for more reader contributions on the subject:

An invitation to readers on ID/evolution.
We're interested in your thoughts on intelligent design, evolution, and their proper places in school curricula. Write us an e-mail of no more than 150 words and send it to [email protected], with the word "evolution" in the subject line. Be sure to include your name, address and telephone number so we can contact you if we decide to publish your response. Please reply by Monday, May 2.

This is a great opportunity to show our support for good science teaching and make a public statement in opposition to creationism. I know it's short notice, but heck, 150 words? That's a paragraph or two. I've made a suggestion about possible topics (in short: keep it positive, and let's encourage the newspapers to take a strong pro-biology stance), and if you'd like to see an example, here's one person publicly working through a couple of drafts.

The extremists and the lunatic religious right are usually far better at flooding the media with calls for action—let's try and reverse that pattern this time, OK?

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The Tangled Bank

Welcome to the Tangled Bank, a version of the "Carnival of the Vanities" for science bloggers. A Carnival is a weekly showcase of good weblog writing, selected by the authors themselves (that's the vanity part). Every other week, one of our crew will highlight a collection of interesting weblog articles in one convenient place, making it easy for everyone to find the good stuff.

Two things will distinguish us from the original "Carnival of the Vanities": 1) we are specifically restricting ourselves to articles in the field of science and medicine, very broadly defined, and 2) we've got a different name. Our weekly compendium of great science weblog articles will be called the Tangled Bank, after Charles Darwin's famous metaphor.

Submissions

Are you a weblogger? Have you recently written something you are proud of, that you think other people with an interest in biology, medicine, science in general, or just the general workings of the natural world might find worth reading? Let me know! Send an e-mail message to [email protected] containing the words "Tangled Bank" somewhere in the subject line, and a link to your article, along with a sentence or two of descriptive summary. Don't hesitate, don't be shy, don't wonder if your work is good enough—flit right into the bank with the rest of us elaborately constructed forms.

This is an egalitarian activity. You do not have to be a Ph.D., you don't have to write articles with ten-syllable words, you don't have to discuss esoteric details. All you have to do is express some enthusiasm for the natural world or encourage study of the same.

The host will review your entry, and if it meets our generous standards, it will be included in that week's Tangled Bank. Our recommendations:

The subject should be on biology, medicine, or natural history. We will define those categories very broadly, and it's sufficient that you show some passion for the science of the natural world.
Your entry should reflect your point of view and your writing; give us something more than a couple of links with a brief comment.
I would like to encourage positive stories; while the occasional cranky rant against creationist legislators or evil malpractice lawyers, if well written, might fit in, entries that talk about the really cool stuff of life are more appropriate.
The Tangled Bank is apolitical. While we as individuals may care very much about the policies of right vs. left, the focus here should be on the universal subjects of science, not the latest crime against scientific study by the political party you like least.
Only make one submission per weblog per week. Be selective and pick the best of your writing.

Anyone can submit an entry. Even if you don't routinely write about medicine or biology, if you just happen to have written about your gall bladder surgery that week or the pileated woodpecker that has taken to waking you every morning, if you think you've said something interesting and insightful, send it in.

Hosting

Hosting the Tangled Bank for a week requires a bit more commitment. Ideally, we'll be able to rotate hosting duties among a number of people, minimizing the effort any one person has to put into it.

Your weblog should have some focus on science or medicine or natural history, but we're very liberal in interpreting this. Are you interested in promoting good science? You're in.
You should submit your site to me, PZ Myers, and I'll put you in the schedule.
The week before you host the Tangled Bank, the previous host will announce your e-mail address and solicit submissions, and I'll also announce it here at Pharyngula. You might also want to scout around and look for worthy articles in various weblogs, too.
Organize the submissions into an article on your weblog, and publish it. Send me notification, and I'll enter a link to it here and generally try to trumpet its existence.

Other Carnivals

Meta Carnival
I and the Bird
Philosophers' Carnival
The Bharteeya Blog Mela
Bonfire of the Vanities
Carnival of the Capitalists
The Kissing Booth
Carnival of the Canucks
The BestOfMe Symphony
The Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of The Consumers
The SciAn Melt
Carnival of the Godless
Grand Rounds

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