CoE 63 at EvoAnth

The Carnival of Evolution: Eclectic September edition is posted at EvoAnth by Adam Benton.

Adam chose to list the names of the people who submitted the posts, rather than those who wrote them. Perhaps this will make a few people realize that for CoE to keep running, someone has to make sure posts are submitted.

Next month is at Madhusudan Katti's Reconciliation Ecology.

We have hosts for the next three months

After much yelling we have now procured CoE hosts for the next three months:

Sep 01, 2013	EvoAnth
Oct 01, 2013	Reconciliation Ecology
Nov 01, 2013	Pharyngula

Rejoice!

We have a host, but we need a host

Great news. Madhusudan Kati (Reconciliation Ecology) has volunteered to host an edition of CoE. Alas, semester starts in September, so he has asked not to do it then, but will instead host in October.

Do we have anyone who could host #63 in September?

Several people have voiced concerns about what gets into CoE, and suggested that perhaps the reason that the diminished interest in submitting to CoE results from too many submissions that aren't really about evolution (just mentioning the word is of course not enough) or are pseudoscientific or too controversial. An example of the latter is a couple of posts submitted by David Peters, who allegedly are on the fringe about Pterosaur evolution. You can read a post by Darren Naish here explaining what the problem is.

I welcome such discussions, but emphasize that it should be made clear when people disagree. I think this should be obvious when blogging about science in general, but when the blogger in question doesn't explain this, the CoE host should do their best to bring it to attention. This would be easy when submissions come from Uncommon Descent, but not equally so in some other cases. To that extent I sincerely hope that knowledgable readers will post-review by commenting on the blog in question.

Any other suggestions?

How to deal with potential junk science bloggers?

I received this email from a CoE reader. My reply is below. Does this seem reasonable to you?

> This is the second C of E to feature a post from the Pterosaur Heresies [http://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com], a junk science site. Is there any screening going on here? Could we see posts from Uncommon Descent in future editions?

The screening we have is reliant on the host. The host reads all submissions and ultimately decides what is in and what is out. The guideline is simply that it must be about evolution, not that it be factually correct or far from the fringe. Yes, there is nothing inherently wrong with including posts from UD, but none has been submitted.

I was not familiar with this blog before. I see that people disagree strongly about the things discussed there, and you may well be right that David Peters is crazy, but I don't think that should deter us from reading it. It would great if the CoE host could point out that there is a discussion going on, and that most people think David Peters is wrong, for example. I will add something to this effect in the CoE instructions before next month.

Thanks,
Bjørn

P.S. We need hosts. Would you be interested?

CoE in trouble

The 62nd edition: The Whig History is up at Joachim Dagg's Ecology and Evolution Footnotes. It's a voluminous and excellent edition, but as Joachim notes, getting enough submissions is more and more becoming the chore of the host.

Bloggers have issues with the site that we use for submitting posts (BlogCarnival.com), because they now require people to log in every time they submit. It's really easy to register and log in, but it is of course another hurdle that many people would rather be without. Is there a better way to handle submissions? A script that trawls the web for serious evolution posts?

It is also up to the host to filter the submissions for spam and posts that are not really about evolution. We don't want CoE to be a dump of random posts marginally related to evolution - we want it to be where people go for the best blogging about evolution every month.

So we need hosts who are willing to read a lot of submissions, make sure they are legit, and write up brilliant summaries in an creative format. If that's you, please come forward. We need hosts for the fall.

CoE #61 up on Teaching Biology

Marc Srour is hosting CoE #61 on his blog Teaching Biology: Crustie Lovin' Edition.

CoE 60, hosts for June, and Snowbird

The 60th edition is now up at NeuroDojo. Go check it out, it doesn't have very many posts (what is going on with that, btw? Summer?), but Zen wrote a great one.


I'm just a little disappointed he didn't make a new logo. Something like this?

(I have no idea wtf I am doing.)

We need someone to host the July edition. And August. We love the volunteers.

See you in Snowbird?

59th at DNA Barcoding

The 59th edition of Carnival of Evolution is now up at DNA Barcoding.

We need hosts for the next editions. It's a thoroughly rewarding experience, and your blog will get lots of exposure. Plus, it's really very little work. Interested?

58th up + we need hosts

58th edition of Carnival of Evolution has been posted at Synthetic Daisies. Thanks to Bradly Alicea for hosting.

Speaking of hosting, no one has volunteered for the coming months. That means that right now the 59th edition to be posted on May 1st is available. Let yourself be heard if you are interested.

Help keep a dying species alive

It's time to submit the blog-posts on evolution you have written (or those written by others). Carnival of Evolution #58 will be hosted by Bradley Alicea on Synthetic Daisies.

Hosts are needed for May and onwards. Everyone is welcome to host, even if you have hosted before.

Lastly, I am getting the vibe that Google+ is going nowhere, and that Facebook is taking over. Even some blogging is now done on Facebook, with popular pages such as Evolution and I Fucking Love Science (you are also welcome to promote your posts on Carnival of Evolution's Facebook page). Are other people getting this? Science blog carnivals are dying left and right (I think CoE is the only one alive at the moment?). Can anything be done, or is this out of our hands? Ideas?

54th us up

54th edition is up at ideonexus.com: Carnival of Evolution #54: A Walkabout Mount Improbable.

And it's a super-fancy one, so don't miss it, and let everyone else know, too.

Get it?

CoE #53 at Sorting out Science

Sorting out Science is hosting CoE #53.

One post is about Pikaia, a very important fossil from the Burgess Shale:

Pikaia‘s general appearance resembles that of modern-day lancelets, as drawn above (Conway Morris & Caron, 2012), a resemblance reinforced by its small size and fins. Pikaia was ~5cm long and had a collagenous body wall, preserved in the Burgess Shale fossils as a silvery film. A dorsal thread can be seen running along the body, flanked by putative V-shaped muscle blocks; this is interpreted as a notochord or even a combination nerve- and notochord. This notochord and the muscles are key to Pikaia‘s positioning as an early chordate. A pharynx (i.e. a mouth) has been suggested at the anterior end of the animal, based on concentrations of sediment at the interior of the animals there (Shu et al., 1996); if accepted, this further solidifies a chordate.

Carnival of Evolution statistics

David Morrison just hosted Carnival f Evolution #52, and now he has written a post with lots of statistics of CoE: The network history of the Carnival of Evolution.

In short, we're doing quite well compared to many other carnivals who have gone extinct. This is especially true for science carnivals, of which CoE is the only active carnival listed on BlogCarnival.com.

The steady growth of CoE through time. "Fortunately, the number of posts has shown a steady upward curve, as indicated in the sixth graph, although not always at the one-blog-post-per-day rate set in the earliest days. However, over the past 20 Carnivals there has been an average of 1.06 blog posts cited per day of passing time, so we are certainly holding our own."