On science blogs: My Wedding Anniversary
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAYAN APOCALYPSE? December 21 has been the most important day in my calendar for many, many years. It's the day I married him. So I was amused when I learned, a while back, that December 21 of this year — a week from today — is to be the End of the World. According, it was said, to the Mayan calendar.
Given that the Mayan Apocalypse is just a week away, I expected a flood of headlines, or at least much blogging. There's some, but not a lot. Whatever happened to the Mayan Apocalypse? Turns out it moved to Russia. Steven Romano describes the goings-on there at Geekosystem. Which includes an ice sculpture in the form of a Mayan arch but also comforting reassurance from Moscow's Ministry of Emergency Situations that the world is not on the verge of destruction. How much do you trust the Moscow Ministry of Emergency Situations?
Much of the blogging I did find consisted of more-or-less serious attempts at scientific debunking. Not all that surprising among science bloggers, I suppose. These range from volcanologist Eric Klemetti's Eruptions (12/21/12: Definitely Not the End of the World) to Cosmic Log's Alan Boyle, who fills us in on NASA's anti-apocalyptic efforts and provides homely advice about what to tell your kids, to Annalee Newitz's somewhat profane but dead-serious rant at io9 (How many times do I have to tell you the Maya didn’t give a shit about your dumb apocalypse?).
Of course sciencey types such as we spend a lot of time repeating phrases like, "There is no evidence for [fill in the blanks]." So it's natural, almost a reflex, to reach for science as our favorite tool for refutation of balderdash. And yet we know, or should by now — with the evidence of the climate-change and evolution debates before us — that people who have unshakeable beliefs have beliefs that are unshakeable. No amount of hard scientific evidence makes a dent. It's all fingers in the ears and La La La I can't hear you.
Steven Mazie talks about this human phenomenon at Big Think, a post that also contains useful links to apocalyptic sites, pro and con — including the exhaustive Wikipedia item, which is, among other things, a crash course in Mayan archaeology.
Ridicule is probably no more effective in getting people to unbelieve the ridiculous than are earnest scientific explanations. But ridicule is at least fun for the rest of us. At Code for Life, Grant Jacobs links to a new paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal: "The Mayan Doomsday’s effect on survival outcomes in clinical trials." HuffPo reports that LA's Griffith Observatory, which normally closes at 10, will stay open until a minute after midnight December 21, which is, technically, December 22. The Observatory advises arriving early because parking there really is apocalyptic.
At the Newton Blog, Ross Pomeroy notes that the much-venerated Sir Isaac Newton — to our chagrin a devout believer in several ridiculous things — also forecast the end of the world, by which Newton meant the Second Coming. Newton's date is 2060
I will, blessedly, be long gone by then, but some of the rest of you may be around to see whether Newton's prediction for 2060 was on a par with his ideas about gravity and the laws of motion. I am guessing not, but by 2060 we may have brought about the End of the World on our own. At io9, George Dvorsky lists nine ways that might happen.
DISCOVER BLOGGERS DISCOVER NEW HOMES. When publications announce big transitions, the official word is always that nothing will change. But things always do change. Always. So when Discover's publisher announced a while back that the magazine was moving from New York to the home base in Wisconsin and recruiting a new editing team, I predicted that notable members of the magazine's notable blogging network would likely be moving on. And they are. And how.
Bad Astronomer Phil Plait has taken his stargazing to Slate. Meanwhile, at the group blog Cosmic Variance, Sean Carroll (the physics one) announced that he is leaving and going back to his own blog ("in truth, only atoms and the void"). Cosmic Variance will continue with astronomer Julianne Dalcanton, who's in charge of the Hubble Telescope project to map the Andromeda Galaxy. And perhaps others, but I can't find their names. TBA?
The venerable National Geographic is finally giving its imprimatur to blogging, and it's doing so with a big bang. Its new blog network, Phenomena, is launching with four top bloggers, including two of Discover's biggest stars: Carl Zimmer of The Loom and Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science. In his farewell post, Yong says "seeing this group come together behind the scenes has been like watching Nick Fury recruit the Avengers."
Yong's analogy to pop-culture heroism comes about because the nascent NatGeo network also includes Brian Switek, who is moving the very popular paleontology blog Laelaps over from Wired, and a new blog from Virginia Hughes called Only Human. A new blog, but in no sense a new blogger; Hughes has been a mainstay at the group blog Last Word on Nothing. Her farewell post is brief and sits atop an intriguing tale of a 13th Century Bible said to have belonged to Marco Polo and returned to Italy in the 17th Century by a self-promoting Belgian Jesuit.
Discover is fighting back. Keith Kloor is taking his well-known environment-and-climate blog Collide-a-Scape there. And I would guess there's more news to come about Discover blogging.
Deb Blum tells you all about these changes at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker site, and so does Curtis Brainard, whose Observatory observes the science press at the Columbia Journalism Review.
It appears that none of the new URLs for any of these traveling blogs has yet been announced. We shall all await word. Assuming doomsday does not arrive next Friday.
HAPPY NEW YEAR! I'm taking the next few weeks off for total familial immersion. This hiatus is also uxorial; I am thumbing my nose at the Mayan Apocalypse and have scheduled a December 21 trip to a favorite restaurant for an anniversary dinner with my spouse and my sister. See you back here January 11, 2013. Assuming there is a January 11, 2013.
