Time For A Change?

Warning: a boring self-referential post.

This blog is now over seven months old. Why did I start it? Because I wanted to find a way to save some stuff I wrote on the Edwards campaign blog once his campaign was over. My "job" on the blog was to write civil (no F words unless I am quoting someoene else) yet provocative posts, to force people to look at old issues from new angles and to think outside the box.

I thought that some of the posts were worth saving online and not just as Word files on my computer. My neighbor Henry Copeland (of http://weblog.blogads.com/) suggested I start my own blog and, from the various types of blogging software, after hearing what I wanted to do with it, he suggested Blogger.

So I went online and found Blogger and started the wonderful two-minute process of making my own blog. At one point I was asked to pick a name for the blog. I have not thought about it until that moment, but I knew I wanted to write a lot about politics until the election, and some more about science after the election, so I typed "Science And Politics".

Most people thought it was going to be something similar to Chris Mooney's blog "The Intersection" (Chris initially though that, too), but it is completely different. As the subheading says, I am interesting in understanding American politics through the lens of various sciences: history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, economics, law, cognitive science, linguistics, etc. I am at the same time interested in the ways American politics affects the way science is done, funded, taught and reported. And I love to apply biological metaphors to politics, even where it is not really appropriate.

But, over the past seven months, I see the blog turned into something a little different. I enjoy trying to make connections between apparently disparate pieces of information. I attempt synthesis among things as different as my personal experiences, the Balkans events, the North Carolina local issues, the anthropology of blogging, religion and atheism, science and skepticism, evolution and creationism, politics and ideology, education and environment, foreign policy and music, books and movies, marriage and sex - all in one big picture!

Even if the connections are tenuous, or even if they are non-existent, I hope my posts are provocative, in a sense that they provoke people to look at "old issues from new angles and to think outside the box". Occasionally, I was succesful in this, I hope.

The title "Science And Politics", while it, in itself, brings new readers here, is misleading. If Danah Boyd did not already take that name a few years ago, this blog should be renamed "Aphophenia" - so much of what I do here is just that: making connections where none exist (and hope for an occasional success).

Do you think I should change the name? What else can describe what this blog is all about? Who always says "Make connections!"? Well, of course, Miss Frizzle. So, perhaps I should rename it "The Magic School Bus". What do you all think? Any other suggestions? Just "Connections"? The URL will remain the same.

My computer is still broken so I cannot do anything about this yet, but once it is fixed I plan to do all sorts of things to this blog: change its look, perhaps change its title, change its sub-title, take a good long hard look at the links, expand the blogroll, place some Amazon ads, perhaps Google Adsense ads, maybe a PayPal tip-jar, perhaps even some blogads. What do you all think about that?

†