I am going back to Eugene!

oregonmap

I love Eugene — lovely place, great school, good people — and I’m flying back there, leaving tomorrow and staying for the weekend, for a science conference and to meet with old friends. It’s got all the best stuff: copacetic venue, interesting subjects (zebrafish!), nostalgia, wonderful people (the zebrafish community is exemplary that way), and best of all, I don’t have to work! I’m chairing one of the sessions, apparently, but otherwise I have no obligations other than to learn and enjoy myself.

It’s perfection.

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Still pondering commenting rules

rule4

I’ve been considering all the suggestions in the commenting changes thread. One thing that is obvious: We have a problem, Houston.

But it is also true that I feel a hesitation to post because I will be considered an outsider and not worthy of acknowledgement or response.

Broken Things

Hi – another extremely-long-time lurker, very infrequent commenter here. I don’t have any solutions, but reading this comment thread made one problem very obvious: when people ask for more charity, less hostility and knee-jerk dismissiveness, several regular commenters respond as if they’d been told to stop saying fuck.

amrie

I’m another very, very longtime lurker who has commented only a few times. I almost always agree with PZ and the majority of usual commenters, but I’m still really afraid to comment here and be ripped to shreds by the very people I admire so much. I commented the other day one minor criticism of something PZ said, and suddenly I’m “ranting” and “slamming” and being condescended to about whether I read the OP. I’m afraid to go back and see what other responses I got. I love reading this blog, but it’s true that it’s not welcoming to people who aren’t regular commenters.

Dingo Abbie

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Commenting changes coming

rule4

The existing rules aren’t working, so they’re going to get revamped. In particular, everyone pretty much ignores section V, especially this bit:

2. Justice is more important than civility. But aspire to be charitable at first.

That’s been annoying me for some time now, and it’s time to refocus and re-emphasize, so that means the whole thing is going to re-written.

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We always knew Dracula would come back

christopherlee

The man I grew up knowing as Dracula, Christopher Lee, is dead. Probably. I know most of you young whippersnappers probably think of him as Saruman or worse, Count Dooku, but I will tell you definitively that you are wrong, and everyone should know he was Dracula, most definitely.

Mostly, of course, he was a guy who brought some class and dignity to even the goofiest role.

Help Dana!

Dana Hunter took a gamble and quit her job to dedicate herself to a writing career, and of course immediately got hit with small catastrophes that are screwing up her dreams, because America doesn’t believe in that social safety net stuff. She’s looking for donations, and also selling off precious stuff, so do help her get past this rough patch. You could also buy her first book on Amazon, Really Terrible Bible Stories vol. I: Genesis — it’s both fun and terrible (not the writing, the Bible stories).

My enemies are hilarious

I’ve been targeted by KotakuInAction, that wretched hive of gamergate villainy. My crime? I reviewed Greta Christina’s book, Bending, without declaring that she was a writer on “MY” network. It’s a silly complaint, but the funniest thing is how much the gamergaters get wrong.

I lost track of how many outright fabrications and errors there were in these comments…without even counting the fact that they spelled my name three different ways.

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