News in Science Blogging

There is an article in New York Times today about the new stable of science bloggers associated with the Seed Magazine. The article is in the Advertising section of the paper so it focuses on ads and the targeted audience.

The targeted audience, according to the Seed study are so-called Leonardos - people in their 30s, upper middle class, white men, who are enthralled with technology and follow science news. PZ Myers sees this from a very different angle, and he is right. Just look at the comments on his blog - the Leonardos are a much broader category of all ages, sexes, classes and races.

In any case, what advertisers think really does not matter. What is important is that a bunch of excellent science bloggers are getting not just free hosting for their blogs, but also technical support, a little bit of money, and the synergistic effect of all being together: once you go there to read Pharyngula, you'll look around and check all the other blogs as well and learn to love them.

There are, so far, 15 blogs on SB (one of which is Seed's ScienceG8, the other 14 are independent) which are all worth checking daily (and there is a common RSS feed for all of them) and they are looking to expand to as many as 30-40 blogs in the future. I have applied. We'll see if they want me (they are looking mainly for more non-biologists and women, I believe).

In the meantime, if you want to check my science writing, I 've been busy on Circadiana lately, with posts about an important modification of the model of the molecular mechanism of the circadian clock in fruitflies, on the correlation between loneliness and poor sleep quality in college students, on the new clock gene found in Monarch butterflies, and on apparent loss of rhythms in Arctic reindeer during long polar night.