Don’t ask me how a decidedly landlocked blog, in name and location, will manage to host the decidedly nautical Carnival of the Elitist Bastards this weekend, but it will. Actually, you can ask, and I even have something cool planned. I’m just not going to tell you what it is.

To quote the admiral:

Aye, it be that time again! Extract yerselves from the dens o’ iniquity (where ye’ve been discussing philosophy o’er the finest wine, right? Right?). Send me a link to yer finest Elitist Bastardry no later than Friday, August 28th. We be sailin’ wi’ Captain Stephanie from Quiche Moraine, and she be intendin’ to sail wi’ a full crew.

For those o’ ye who’ve watched the Bastards sail and think ye might be o’ proper caliber for such an illustrious crew, here be the requirements:

1. Pick a blog post o’ yours that hits the stupid where it hurts.

2. Send us the link.

That be it.

See ye aboard!

Or somewhere thereabouts.

Still don’t know what we’re looking for? Try here. And remember, the more you submit, the more you make me work. How’s that for motivation?

This is actually a tougher fight than the election was. Corporations far and away recognized that four more years of rule by the monster that the Republican Party had become would be as disastrous for them as it would be for all of us. They were pragmatic in their understand that business cannot flourish anywhere the government doesn’t meet at least its minimal obligations in law and the maintenance of infrastructure, so they supported Obama.

They are not supporting health care reform, which means we need to do more. Their disproportionate influence isn’t all arrayed against us, but neither is it on our side. We’re much more alone this time.

Find out what we need to do at Quiche Moraine.

…with his post asking his readers about themselves. DrugMonkey took up the call and tagged “science-y or academic-y blog[s]” with the meme.

That raises a question I find just as interesting as the secret identities of my lurking readers. Why does Almost Diamonds keep getting listed as a science blog? I know people have waffled on this. Some of folks who have been so kind as to put me on their sorted blogrolls have had a tough time classifying me. But it still happens.

So if you’d care to indulge a confused blogger, please tell me in the comments what kind(s) of content brings you to Almost Diamonds. And if I don’t already know who you are, I’d love to hear a bit about your background too.

Well, it only took us four months to launch Quiche Moraine. I guess it’s not too weird that it’s four months and 100 posts later before we work on having the launch party.

If you’re in the area and interested in coming, head over to the thread we’ve hijacked for setting up the party and register your opinions. (Is it hijacking if we do it ourselves?)

Hope to see you there.

Okay, there seems to be some demand for this, so here’s the code for the recent comments widget.

Updated to make copying easier and to fix a bug with anonymous commenters: In the end of the script, replace my URL with your own. Then all you have to do is add an HTML/Javascript widget to your sidebar and paste in the text.

You may not see comments right away, as my widget started by reading the comment feed prospectively only, but as people leave more comments, the widget should fill itself out.

Enjoy!

<!– // hide from browsers
//Recent Comments Widget originally by Blogger Templates and updated by Blogger Buster then edited by Ben Zvan for simplicity
function showrecentcomments(json){
for(var i=0;i<show_number;i++){
var feed_raw=json.feed.entry[i];
var comment_link_raw;
if(i>=json.feed.entry.length)break;
for(var k=0;k<feed_raw.link.length;k++) {
if(feed_raw.link[k].rel==’alternate’) {
comment_link_raw=feed_raw.link[k].href;break;
}
}
var comment_link=comment_link_raw.split(“#”);
comment_link=comment_link[0];
var comment_link=comment_link.replace(/u003d/,”=”);
var post_link=comment_link.split(“/”);
post_link=post_link[5];
post_link=post_link.split(“.html”);
post_link=post_link[0];
var post_link=post_link.replace(/-/g,” “);
post_out=post_link.link(comment_link);
var author_name
if(feed_raw.author[0].name){
author_name=feed_raw.author[0].name.$t;
}
var author_link;
var author_out;
if(feed_raw.author[0].uri){
author_link=feed_raw.author[0].uri.$t;
author_out=author_name.link(author_link);
}else{
author_out=author_name;
}
// Output phase
document.write(‘

‘);
document.write(”+author_out+’ on ‘+post_out+’
‘);
document.write(‘

‘);
}
}
// –>

var show_number=10;

Yay!

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank PalMD, in whose Blogging 101 session I declared Recent Comments to be the single most important widget a blogger can have, and Lou, who sent me a widget that turned out not to work with my template, for getting me off my ass to find a widget I could use. Thanks also to Ben, who tracked down why a simple change in the (unformatted) Javascript to customize said widget made it stop working.

Anybody who wants a recent comments widget that works with the layout function in Blogger templates, just let me know.

This was my first full year of blogging, and I’m pretty happy with what I accomplished. Here are some of the posts that have gotten the most attention.

For some reason, a bunch of people do Google searches for the word “loner.” A lot of them end up at this March post on why Facebook is just about the right amount of interaction–maybe.

Blogging really started ramping up in May, with a short essay on the costs of breaking rules in writing (and why I’ll do it anyway) and a guest post on science blog content at Greg Laden’s Blog. The guest post just goes to show that if one wants lots of comments, one should talk about PZ Myers. Also from May, my recipe for the perfect margarita has stayed popular. Please just remember that it’s dangerous.

In June, I flexed a little blogging muscle (with much help) to get a problem cleaned up that should already have been fixed, told a little story about too many ex-boyfriends, and spelled out my motto.

July brought one reason it’s sometimes better to be vague in your science fiction than to be wrong, a lesson in how not to take critique (the closest I’ve come to jumping into the framing debate), and some musings about the utility of offense as a concept.

August featured a pair of posts on Muslim censorship of fiction. One event was very high-profile, with an interesting dimension not much talked about. The other was much quieter, perhaps deservedly so. Also, my views on “tolerance.”

September was the start of my career in poliblogging. I put up my first post on Bachmann and weighed in on the economy, looking at the reasons the social safety net isn’t obsolete and at the failure of our long-standing economic policy. Oh, and apparently I get into arguments occasionally.

I continued to beat on Bachmann in October. “Realists” and libertarians got theirs too. I also summarized a very long set of arguments over whether the concept of human races has any biological validity. Short answer: no. Then I went and got myself called a science blogger by a bunch of people by writing about the value of diversity. That was weird. To lighten things up: sensical nonsense and writing for wildly diverse audiences.

I got a little more sleep in November, but I still managed to make people cry, talk about religious belief, wave a flag for the defective, and argue about belonging and identity. That last one contains one of the more interesting comment threads on this blog–better than the post itself, I think.

December has seen me mashing up science and fiction in ways I never thought I would. I committed fanfic as illustration and used the literature/pulp debate to talk about how the language of science can be exclusionary. This month also produced what is already my most linked and viewed post ever: How to Hijack a Thread. Apparently, this “meta shit” works for people. Who knew?

So what will 2009 bring? There are a couple things in the works, here and elsewhere, but I’m not not one to count chickens and all, so you’ll have to wait. Mostly, I hope the new year brings me the kinds of friendship and food for thought that the old one did.

Have a very happy new year, everyone.