Well, it was a good fight, but in the end, PZ Myers and his spineless horde at Pharyngula managed to ooze past the Bad Astronomy Blog to win the "Best Science Blog of 2006" title. It was close: he got 1% more of the total votes cast (22,588) in the Science category; it was 9417 to 9189 in the end.
I have sent him my concession email, and, as promised, I will write some post praising biology in some way (there are some aspects of it I happen to like), and then, in January, at TAM5, I will wholly embarrass myself by saying <gack> something <hwarf> nice about PZ and Pharyngula.
I want to thank everyone who voted for me (including Penn, who evidently was quite busy) and especially all the folks who pimped for me (especially Teri, Rebecca, and Janie who all acted above the call). That post with the big list o’ fans will go up shortly.
December 18th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
sorry phil, what can we do, squid can click 8 times faster than us.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:45 am
ONE PERCENT?! Nooo….this breaks my heart.
Where’s the explanation regarding the bizarre ‘jump’ in votes in the last 90 minutes? We want answers!
(sadly sighing) You’re still Number #1 to us. You’ve become the Astronomy version of Al Gore!
December 19th, 2006 at 1:33 am
It might well have been a Hoax believer’s negative vote which made the difference. Or perhaps chemtrail…….
December 19th, 2006 at 1:39 am
Now when you say Penn, do you mean Penn Gillette? Or is it some other Penn?
December 19th, 2006 at 2:49 am
No. Phil has the amazing ability to have brought William Penn back from the dead to vote for him. He’s just so pimp like that.
December 19th, 2006 at 5:18 am
Bootlady Teri, that jump in votes for PZ happened every night around the same time. I guess that is when a large block of his voters either woke up, or got home from school/work.
December 19th, 2006 at 5:40 am
You’re still da bomb, Dr. BA.
We’ll get ‘em next year!
Kisses!
December 19th, 2006 at 6:25 am
Keep your chin up BA, and have a nice big bowl of calamari for dinner. At least then you know what squids are good for…
December 19th, 2006 at 6:27 am
Losing a war is always sour, especially a war against scary spineless stuff.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:36 am
Yeah, really: the block of votes came in late because of the 24 hour limit, and the fact that my first announcement that people could vote occurred at 10:00 at night.
If Phil is the Al Gore of this election, that makes me the GW Bush…and you can’t imagine how disgusted that makes me. I have to recoup my honor somehow, now…like by declaring war on one of the other science blogs in the competition.
December 19th, 2006 at 7:40 am
“have a nice big bowl of calamari for dinner”
There is your hook for TAM, BA. Something like, “The best thing I can say about squid is that they make an excellent appetizer when properly battered and deep fried.” Yum!
OEJ
December 19th, 2006 at 8:15 am
How about:
“Biology: for now it’s still a _real_ science.”
If you’d lost to an ID site we’d all be screwed.
December 19th, 2006 at 8:15 am
I have a better hook. If we want to see what aliens might look like, the first place to look is our own oceans, where there are hosts of strange creatures that are far weirder than anything we might imagine. I’ve got lots of pictures of pretty cephalopods that I’d be happy to send along as examples.
December 19th, 2006 at 8:45 am
It’s easy to appreciate biology. The human female for example, has several enjoyable parts that are wholy biological in nature.
December 19th, 2006 at 8:54 am
I’m with ya’ zoot. In fact, I’d say that “they are HOLY biological” in nature.
Hi Dr. PZ!
One thing ya’ gotta say about the oceans is that they really do prove that “the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we CAN imagine.”
Just think about what we’ll find in the oceans on planets that don’t share a common ancestor with us!
I often refer to them as “Purple Octopus Aliens from Mars”. Won’t be scientifically accurate, I know, but it gets across the idea of the um… alienness… of what we might find, I think.
December 19th, 2006 at 8:55 am
ack.
Not a good day for grammar, I suppose.
December 19th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Can’t remember who said this but “physics is the only true science the rest is just stamp collecting”. oh well it was a good fight we were just out numbered 2 to 8.
December 19th, 2006 at 9:01 am
And the winner is……
Phil has conceded, and I’ve received official verification that Pharyngula is indeed the winner of the Best Science Blog award. I have no illusions, though: this really isn’t a recognition that I have the best science blog, it’s evidence……
December 19th, 2006 at 9:04 am
Maybe it’s small consolation, but one of your posts in the great Pharyngula/BadAstronomy Debates caused me to go by one of those Skepdude calendars. So it was for a good cause.
December 19th, 2006 at 9:23 am
Congratulations to Pharyngula & Bad Astronomy (and the rest)!!
Anybody who can get others excited by science, in science, for science is a *winner* in my book.
-a simple guy with a backbone.
December 19th, 2006 at 9:23 am
David - I think that was Eddington.
Well, congrats to Pharyngula, best science blog for this year.
December 19th, 2006 at 9:23 am
Phil, that’s a tough break, and I’m glad you’re taking it so well.
I, on the other hand, wish to express my UNDYING AND ETERNAL SUPPORT FOR OUR NEW CEPHALAPOD MASTERS. Tell us Thy bidding, O benevolent Overlords, that we may use our vertebral columns to serve Thee more fully!
December 19th, 2006 at 9:56 am
I definitely think BA conceded too early. There hasn’t even been a probe into the alleged voting irregularities yet!
Have the hanging chads been recounted? Has the ‘official’ tally been statistically analyzed and compared to exit poll results? Have the voting machines (err… servers?) been checked for evidence of tampering?
Was the voting page accessible for the visually impaired? If not, that’s systematic disenfrachisement.
Let’s bring in the lawyers.
December 19th, 2006 at 10:17 am
David, the stamp collecting quote is from Ernest Rutherford:
“In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.”
But then again he also said:
“The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. “
December 19th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Well, the Moon shines because it reflects light from the Sun, which is powered by nuclear fusion. So he was right.
December 19th, 2006 at 11:17 am
I’ll have you know we squid have 10 prehensile appendages. And squidOS supports 10 simultaneous mice.
December 19th, 2006 at 11:22 am
It was a close race, and I did vote for you, but I gave the net sum of my votes to PZ. Appealing to my chordate pride was a good hook (as much as I like inverts my heart belongs to our vertebrate brethren), but the biological affiliation won out I’m afraid. Anyway, next time you guys are competing in a meaningless race I’ll give most of my votes to you.
Keep up the great blogging!
December 19th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos! Hmm, maybe I should have voted for Bad Astronomy instead…
Hmm, it looks like winning might have actually been a curse for PZ. Now BA gets compared to Al Gore, and PZ to Bush. I think we all know who really comes out ahead there.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Oh… BA. That’s a terrible joke. I like it. I’m gonna take it and use it without the proper attribution.
December 19th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Was the voting page accessible for the visually impaired?
Personally, I wasn’t too happy about the Flash requirement.
December 19th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Well, to be fair, Ernest had only radioactivity as a guide to nuclear energy and the rate of energy release from decaying radium is pretty small. It would have been very hard to see how that could possibly be useful,,,until someone startred wondering if the nucleus could be split and as I recall, that was some time after Einsteins E=MC2.
Gary 7
PS Gee, I’ve never tried calamari. Is it good?
December 19th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Gary 7,
In honor of the Blog Awards, I dined on a fried cephalopodist overlord, er, that is calamari, this week. Perhaps it was the on-going battle between invertebratista versus glabrous (=bare-nekkid) vertebratophile, but the calamari seemed particularly tasty. Try it with a good marinara and/or tartar sauce.
December 19th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
Waitaminute! I thought you were supposed to SING the praises of Pharyngula at TAM5: “In addition, in his talk at The Amazing Meeting this year, he will take a moment to further sing the praises of Pharyngula (and he must spell it correctly!) before his audience.”
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Yeah, Phil… it was me. I did work against you in support of PZ but that was a call I had to make in using talk.origins to fight the dirty fight. Us biologists have been having a much harder time from the cretinismist… , er, creationists, than you astro-boys are having. If Darwin had never come along and Galileo was left to attract the ire of fundamentalist cretins, then you would be dealing with rants about how “you Galileoists” are destroying the moral basis of the world and how the orbits were “designed” to be what they seem etc etc. while we biologists would just be drawing pretty pictures of flowers.
There were some moments I thought you were going to take the prize, and I’m glad that you gave PZ such a good run. Just so you know, I often show people around here the ISS when it can be viewed here in Sydney and we also spotted both the shuttle and the Russian craft on their recent visits. Also, I make my boys use the AstroPic of the Day page as their “homepage” when they go on the internet and they often get excited about whatever the picture is and have me come look. Congrats and being a close second place! (And put your song for PZ on you-tube, OK?) (signed) marc
January 1st, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Here’s the thing. PZ and his followers really ARE spineless, and not in the invertebrate sense.
Sorry, Doc. I voted for you -repeatedly- as PZ is a useless boor who damages the general blogging community. Too bad you didn’t win.
January 1st, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Hoody, thanks for the votes, but…
PZ is many things, but a boor? I don’t think so. He’s up-front, and completely honest in his passion. I don’t think he’s rude, or unmannerly. He didn’t start this fight, and the lies told by creationists set the bar far lower than he has ever been. He is angry, but so am I. I don’t think he damages the community; quite the contrary, he enhances it.
Incidentally, many of his readers are here too. I’m one of ‘em.
August 12th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Ernest Rutherford is the author of the “stamp collecting” quote. I suspect no one will read this however.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
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