Over at Science Blogs, the new over lords, National Geographic, has decreed that bloggers using pseudonyms will no longer be permitted. Well, that certainly bites, and may the Phactor predict that the blog they purchased will lose many good bloggers and a great deal of their readership. Although SciBlogs never saw fit to include a botanist, the Phytophactor would now be banned anyways, so there. Who wanted to be in your blog collective anyways, and they put stupid ads in the siderail over which you have no say. So there! This blog is hardly controversial, doesn't use bad language, and generally stays clear of politics and contentious topics unless for mental health reasons the Phactor needs to blow off steam. Upon those occasions that he comments about the ineptitude of deans or provosts, readers find it comforting to think "that may well be the fool we've got here", and that's the point of never quite pinning down person or place, it keeps people wondering, thinking, and the blogger remains free of entanglements of institution, person, or place. Besides it's amusing to write in the 3d person.
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3 weeks ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
4 comments:
Indeed.
Perhaps we can, pseudonymously, at least lobby for the inclusion of a botanist or two. That bugs me!! What's the matter with those guys?? Don't they realize plants rule the world?
Maybe the BGR folks could start a movement?
Not to mention if one uses one's real name there's a very real chance that one could lose one's job if one's bosses don't like something that one says.
Allowing pseudonyms encourages free speech.
Ah, well, true, but tenure does allow one to speak up to power, something the Phactor has always been OK with, but why complicate things by creating an adversarial relationship, so without question we agree.
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