Blogging

I started this blog 13 months ago, and with this being my 70th post I'm averaging over 5 a month. I have on the whole been sticking to my target of approximately weekly posts mentioned in my first entry for this blog. I am still finding the blog a good outlet for me to share my IGY collectibles, describe some of the science, and make other randomish observations and connections to my life.

A decade or so ago I was the main poster for two blogs related to professional groups. One was for the Society for Archaeological Sciences a group I have belonged to for about 40 years. I'm still on the executive board. Much of my academic research applied scientific methods to archaeological problems, so the SAS was a small society that complemented my membership in larger groups like the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, and the Society for American Archaeology. I was the main poster on the SAS blog from its start in Jan. 2009, til about Dec. 2010, with 134 posts, or about 5 a month. My postings tailed off after that, with some being made by other SAS officers. Now it has evolved into an online presentation of the SAS Bulletin Online, admirably edited by Carmen Ting. The SAS Bulletin had earlier had been a quarterly paper and later electronic newsletter.

For about 31 months during 2008-2011, I was the primary poster for the Shaking Earth blog. This was an effort on behalf of the Lamont-Doherty Cooperative Seismograph Network, a consortium of seismograph operators in the northeastern U.S.  For several years, there were regular meeting of station operators, and the blog was conceived of a way to publicize the work of the Consortium and seismological news of general interest. There were 266 posts, or almost 9 a month.

That was a busy time in my career, even without the blogs. I'm pretty amazed I did both of these blogs at the same time. They did create my own impression that a blog was appropriately timely and dynamic if the frequency of posts were on the order of weekly.

Recently I added a list of some other blog in in the sidebar. These are blogs that relate to this one or have influenced me, and that post on a fairly regular basis.

1. The IAGA blog (International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomny) blog, which I mentioned here. "This blog hopes to promote the work done by the IAGA community. It also aims to portray the life of its researchers. The IAGA Blogs are maintained by the Social Media (SM) Working Group, which is a part of the Interdivisional Commission on Education and Outreach (ICEO). The SM group aims to provide an easily accessible platform for news and information and create awareness within and outside the community. It acts as a bridge connecting the scientists and their research with the general public." Much of my own research in archaeomagnetism was in an area covered by IAGA, and I have been to a number of IAGA conferences. IAGA also covers a number of disciplines studied during the IGY.
    
2. The Plainspoken Scientist, hosted by the AGU (American Geophysical Union. "The Plainspoken Scientist is the science communication blog of AGU’s Sharing Science program. With this blog, we wish to encourage scientists to reach out to non-scientists and to do so with plainspoken discussion." That's an admirable goal, and one that I have in this blog, to share some aspects of the science during the IGY in what I hope is an understandable fashion.
   
   
3. The Bridge: Connecting Science and Policy, another AGU blog. "The Bridge is an AGU blog that connects science and policy. It provides a platform for scientists, policy makers, and experts to communicate ideas about the science policy interface." Much of the work done during the IGY was related to national and international science and geopolitical policy. The science of the IGY could never have been done without the support of a plethora of policy makers around the world.
   
   
4. Exploring Stamps (YouTube channel) is a video blog, or vlog. I find Graham Beck to be a knowledgeable and entertaining philatelist. His topics include nuts and bolts of stamp collecting, philatelic esoterica, and special stamp topics including space and Antarctic exploration. He says, "Stamp Collecting is still the most popular hobby in the world. Learn about the world through sorting postage stamps."
   
   
5. Rex Parker Does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle. I've been doing the NY Times crossword daily for several years, currently on a streak of 621 consecutive completions (with some occasional help). The pseudonynmous "Rex Parker" gets up daily at 4:30, solves the puzzle and has a blog about it up by 6 am or so. He (or an occasional guest) has been doing this since 2006, for some 5500 posts. These are cleanly formatted, well written, funny, and heavily opinionated. Ok, sometimes opinionated to the point of being snarky, but it's his blog, he can cry or snark if he wants to. He has a loyal readership and gets dozens of comments a day, so I am guessing he has thousands of readers. He really likes today's puzzle, but don't let that fool you. He has his puzzling likes and dislikes, and he will let you know if the constructor and the NY Times puzzle editors have tickled his puzzle fancy or not, day in and day out. It's interesting to compare what Rex has to say with Deb Amlen's gentler Wordplay column in the NY Times itself.

Wikipedia has a nice overview of blogging.

Keep reading, and maybe writing, those blogs! Feel free to enter a comment listing your favorite blogs, and why you like them.