After several months of contained excitement and preparation, the embargo has been lifted and I can finally announce the unveiling of the new Scientific American blog network, of which I am honoured to be a small part at The Ocelloid, my new blog -- focusing, like this one, on protists and evolution, although with a stronger attempt at reaching the lay audience. I will continue blogging here at Skeptic Wonder as before, and since I already don't blog as frequently as I should, not much of a difference should be noticed. Basically, my goal is to have The Ocelloid more general audience friendly and introducing people to the protist world from a more superficial 'wow' angle, while Skeptic Wonder will be cater more to the current crowd that seems to consist mostly of people more qualified than I am about this stuff. It has been a bit awkward trying to reach both types of audiences from the same blog so I think this may work out well for everyone. I'll also keep more raw discussions here and The Ocelloid should be more polished up. We'll see where this goes. From time to time I'll cross-post between them but perhaps it's better to keep the recycling to a minimum. Bora has an amazing detailed introduction to the SciAm network which discusses its purpose as well as awesome overviews of the individual blogs. The official launch press release is here, as well as a welcome post from the Editor-in-Chief and a post on The Observations. More once I get home, am out of town right now until tmr with crappy internet and no control over own time...
EDIT 23:30 05.07.11: Just to clarify things: I am keeping Skeptic Wonder and staying here at FoS as well! And there may be another change here coming up, for the better!
That new blog sounds promising-- I have a passing interest in protists but am not a biologist.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the banner image is really pretty!
Great news! That seems like a perfect gig, for you.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to see Scientific American making space for the protists. I took my youngest kid to Chapters a couple of days ago, to pick out a popular science magazine. There were half a dozen astronomy & telescope publications on the racks, but not one microscopy journal. Even the catchall science magazines, like Discover & American Scientist, seemed to be dominated by astrophysics stuff (and the microbiology articles I saw were slanted heavily toward the prokaryotes). Maybe people need to be reminded that the real fun isn't up in the sky (what do people see in those those fuzzy dots & purplish smudges anyway? :-D ) but down in the ditch, where the little invisibloids are doing things that make your hair stand on end.
IGrats! Im going to miss rubbing eshoulders with a eukaryotic microbiologists.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Am very glad some non-biologists out there find this stuff interesting (and my ramblings decipherable) =D
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, Bruce, while the sky is interesting in its own way (particularly up in the mountains, at night, in the winter...), there are extraterrestrial-seeming worlds right at our feet, and that's what I'm trying to hint at somehow, and point people towards. More invisible worlds can only make one's worldview bigger, so why limit yourself to one particular aspect of it?
@The Lorax: I'm still staying here too, don't you worry! More than enough of me to go around, at least enough to bother people ;p (my bosses present and future may be less than satisfied with this attitude, however >_>)