The 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.

Friday, May 27, 2005

PZ Myers's avatar

The godless liberal evilutionist, it plans

The Tangled Bank

First reminder: there will be another Tangled Bank next Wednesday, 1 June, at Organic Matter. Send those submissions to Chris, [email protected], or me. I'll mention this again when the deadlines draw a little closer.

Also on Wednesday, I'm planning to make a trip into Minneapolis, to attend a session of Drinking Liberally at Liquor Lyle's, on 2021 Hennepin Avenue South. Despite the name, I won't be drinking anything other than caffeinated beverages, though, since I'll have a long drive home afterwards. Minneapolitans and St Paulites and Upper Midwestern heathens, science geeks, and political progressives, join us! Look for me between 6 and 9, and I'll try not to pull a Bérubé—I've already had my appendix removed. If there are any plan changes, you'll hear about it at Power Liberal or the Minneapolis Drinking Liberally forum.

I'll also be traveling to Minneapolis this Sunday. My son Connlann and our guest Rossella and her friend Sara (another Italian foreign exchange student) are flying off for a week in sunny LA. Any of you Southern Californians who see a pasty pale young Minnesotan gawking at the hot burning light in the sky whilst accompanied by a pair of excitable Italians, be gentle. Offer them kindness and directions and sunblock. I guess we're going to be hanging about in the Mall of America the afternoon that they leave, in order to acclimatize them to the trendy commercialism of LA gradually. I think I'll just be hovering about the Apple Store the whole time.

There's going to be another power outage that will affect Pharyngula tomorrow, 28 May. Fortunately it will be shorter than the last one, and the server will only be down between 5AM and 9AM Central Time. Sleep in, and you won't even notice.

Imminently, a more important and major event will occur, and one reason Connlann gets to go off to the coast: graduation. The big Morris High School commencement ceremonies occur this evening, and our little boy gets to march around in funny robes and a strange hat for a few hours, while his parents fidget on uncomfortable bleachers. I'll probably put up a few pictures of the fuss and bother this weekend, I'm sappy that way.


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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:

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.

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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