Hello, new people!

We’re seeing a lot of new traffic here, and a lot of it seems to be people hunting down that infamous P.Z. Myers dude because they read about his evil ways in some publication, or saw the name in some really bad movie. You’re at the right place, welcome, go ahead and leave a comment. If you’re a creationist, the other commenters here are always hungry for a little fresh meat, and if you’re just generally interested in the subjects discussed here, join the conversation. You can find a list of my science articles here, but as long as you’ve found the place, may I suggest you take a look at the ScienceBlogs main page? There’s a legion of other science blogs right here, my next door neighbors, and they’d probably appreciate some visits, too.

And who knows? You may have really bad taste and think one of those other guys has a better blog than mine, and you’ll hang out there. I might forgive you.

Pseudonymity ≠ anonymity

Another minor blog skirmish has erupted over a perennial issue in the blogosphere: the wickedness of anonymous commenters/bloggers/whatever. I’m going to sort of take the side of Greg Laden.

I despise anonymous commenters. It’s pretty much a sure sign that anything the person is going to say is worthless noise if they aren’t willing to sign a name to it.

That said, though, I consider a consistent pseudonym to be a name. I’ve gotten to know lots of people on the web via their chosen pseudonym, and that pseudonym acquires its own authority on the merits of the writing behind it. You don’t need to reveal your full, legal name to be known on the web — it’s good enough to have a handle so we can recognize you. Note that of the 17 Molly award winners here, 10 are using pseudonyms, and that’s just fine.

There are some people who use their own names who are effectively anonymous, and I’ve been getting lots of email from them this week (I may post some of them later — most are short and angry). If your name is Tom Smith, and you send me a one-shot email that is littered with expletives, I’ve never heard of you before and you certainly haven’t explained your position well. You are effectively anonymous. I don’t regard your contributions at all highly.

I also have to comment on something from Drugmonkey. Note, first of all, that “Drugmonkey” is a pseudonym for a person who has a nice consistent voice on the web — I have a clear picture of who “Drugmonkey” is from his writing, which may or may not align well with the person, but that doesn’t matter. And usually I enjoy what he writes, but not this bit.

A final comment on the special SuperDuperz occupational hazard of the teaching college professor. Now, I love you all, really I do. And I once aspired to be one of y’all. Heck, I may eventually be one of you. For full disclosure I’ll further admit that I spent a considerable number of my formative years in rather close proximity to one of you. Here’s the thing. Your whole professional life is predicated on you as the Authority. In the classroom, you have all the knowledge and the students have relatively little. They are explicitly seeking you out for your authority. Even within most “teaching departments” you are the sole expert in not just a narrow area but in several subfields, are you not? And…c’mon, ‘fess up. It goes to your head after awhile doesn’t it? And even more pernicious…do you teach at a small college in the middle of nowhere? Plopped down amongst the local rubes? So you are more worldly and informed on many topics than most of your neighbors? Which makes you…an authoritah? On oh-so-many things?

Well, it’s nice that he aspired to be one of us, but he clearly didn’t make the cut, and I can guess why. His assumptions are faulty. In my classroom, I’m an authority only by accident of birth — I’ve got a thirty year head start on my students. However, my whole goal is to get these students to start questioning and challenging me, and finding out new stuff that I didn’t know before. I even like it when the creationists in class start raising objections. If Drugmonkey thinks a college classroom is a place where the best teaching is done by imposing his views on a roomful of students, he’s not going to make it to that exalted position of The Teaching College Professor, because he won’t be teaching.

Am I a gorilla or an elephant?

Oy, it’s navel-gazing time in the science blogosphere, prompted by a post at Bayblab that reveals some resentment or justifiable concern (depending on your perspective) about the inevitable problem that always crops up in blogging: somebody always has more than someone else. Traffic and traffic-ranking services fuel a feed-forward loop that means that those that have, get more. And that means that those squatting atop the traffic ziggurat aren’t necessarily there because they are the very best, but because they tapped into fortunate combinations of attraction and attention early on. I’ll be the first to say that luck and timing are the big factors that put someone at the top of the heap in this game (although I think a little talent for the medium does play a role, at least in the sense of keeping one from slipping to the bottom.)

Somehow, I’ve ended up at the high end of my niche on the web, so of course everyone is making me part of the argument. I’m the 800 lb. gorilla, the beast you can’t ignore — is that good or bad? Does that PZ guy demolish the reputation of science across the web, or does he enhance it? Is he in it for the money, the fame, the glory, or the girls, and is all that a corrupting influence?

None of the above, of course. I would be writing the same stuff whether it was a 100 of you stopping by each month, or something over a million. What I write is just plain naked me, without contrivance or effort to write what someone else wants. I get paid a sum that’s actually helpful in staving off starvation, but not enough that I’m at all tempted to quit my day job … and I was doing the same thing when I was getting paid nothing. What I write I write because I feel like it, because I’ve got my hobbyhorses that need to be rocked, and not because I’m trying to meet some abstract standard that someone else set, no matter how well-meaning they might be. Love me or hate me, I’m just doing my thing.

You all are welcome to write a more popular blog. I’m not going to knife you on the way up, and I’m not even going to feel any resentment if you want to pass me by. This is not something I have any control over, and sincerely, I think there is an element of zen here: you aren’t going to get readers to flock to you by trying to get them to come to you. It just happens.

Well, except when you write a mildly inflammatory post and the bleary-eyed 800 lb. gorilla looks up and pokes you with a link.

Anyway, go read the various takes by Munger, Switek, and Laden. They’re pretty sensible.

By the way, I do have to address one specific accusation made at Bayblog, that I get most of my traffic from creationists. I know this isn’t true; creationist blogs rarely link to me, and even when they do, the traffic from those sites is laughably negligible. We actually have a bit of a dearth of creationist commenters; regulars here know that such visitors tend to get shredded fast. I’m afraid that most of the people who show up here are fans, not opponents.

They’ve settled on a name…

…and now they just have to sign the prenup (there is a prenup, right?). Shelley and Steve are merging their two blogs as of early March, and they’ve picked one of the names one of you perspicacious readers suggested.

(I would have just said “This is madness!”, but then Shelley would have kicked me down a well. And they apparently did not like my suggestion of “Food for the Worm. Hmph.”)