So, Goodmath/Badmath was nominated for a weblog award for the best science blog. I was actually planning on ignoring it for two reasons. First, Pharyngula was nominated in the same category, and there is absolutely no way that I can *hope* to complete with PZ. And second, the Weblogs are kind of goofy, with very strange voting rules (for example, you’re allowed to vote once per day).
But people keep emailing me and asking why I haven’t said anything. So, if you feel like voting for this
blog, please do. Maybe I’ll manage to come in third or fourth 🙂
And many thanks to the folks who nominated me. It’s really nice to know that people have such a positive opinion of my blog. It’s incredibly flattering to be nominated alongside people like PZ and Phil.

As you may have heard from some of the other ScienceBlogs, our SciBling Shelley Batts, of [Retrospectacle](http://www.scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/) is competing for a scholarship being
given to bloggers. Shelley’s a great writer, and on her way to becoming a great scientist. Please head
over to the [Blogger Scholarships voting](http://www.scholarships-ar-us.org/blog/2006/10/31/vote-for-the-winner-of-the-blogging-scholarship/),
take a look at the finalist, and if you agree with us SBers that Shelley deserves to be the winner, put in a vote for her!

Sorry for the sudden silence on the blog. My computer died on me yesterday, and so I’ve been rather cut off. I’m in the process of setting up my gorgeous brand new MacBookPro, and things should be getting back to normal pretty quickly, except that I lost a couple of prepared posts in the crash, so this week might be a bit slow around here.

Yes, it appears that I have won the great ScienceBlogs nerdoff/geekoff. [Janet announced the results yesterday][geekoff], and despite [much][orac-whines] [whining][pz-whines], I’m proud to say that I was the winner. There was some stiff competition, particularly from Orac, but in the end, no one could quite exceed my pathetic level of geekiness.
In answer to a question I’ve heard a couple of times: Janet called it a “Nerd-Off”, but I’ve preferred to call it a “Geek-Off”. I consider them roughly equivalent. Depending on where you are, geographically, I’ve found that the differences between the two vary by location. Growing up, I always heard “nerd” used as a sort-of-positive thing (Nerds were smart people with odd interests, etc.); and “geek” was purely pejorative (geeks were obnoxious twits with no social skills). When I went to grad school, everyone there used the two words in exactly the opposite fashion: Geeks were the good ones, and Nerds were the obnoxious ones. So why do I like geek better? Because my wife has an “I love my geek” shirt that she likes to wear. And hey, if you’re a total geek like me, and by some incredibly strange stroke of luck, you somehow wind up meeting and marrying an amazing, brilliant, gorgeous, brilliant woman, you pretty much do whatever she prefers. (and yes, I repeated brilliant on purpose; she’s just that smart.)
Anyway; I think that my winning had something to do with the slide rules… so, as an award for myself, I ordered a brand-new slide rule – the Pickett whose simulated image I used for the slide rule posts last week. I’ll need a second one at some point anyway, since I have two kids, and I want them each to have a rule to learn on.
[geekoff]: http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2006/09/and_the_nerdiest_is.php
[orac-whines]: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/09/i_was_robbed.php
[pz-whines]: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/09/it_was_rigged.php

A few of my recent posts here appear to have struck some nerves, and I’ve been
getting lots of annoying email containing the same questions, over and over again. So rather than reply individually, I’m going to answer them here in the hope that either (a) people will see the answers before send the question to me, and therefore not bother me; or (b) conclude that I’m an obnoxious asshole who isn’t worth the trouble of writining to, and therefore not bother me. I suspect that (b) is more likely than (a), but hey, whatever works.
Answers beneath the fold.

Continue reading →

I’m leaving on vacation today. I’ll be away for a week, with intermittent internet access. And even when I have access, I doubt I’ll have much time to do blog-related stuff. I’ve scheduled a bunch of reposts of some of my favorite posts from the early days of _Goodmath, Badmath_ back when it lived on Blogger, so there’ll be some fun stuff continuing to appear here even while I’m away.
Have a nice week!

The category theory series is finally winding down; I’ve got one topic I’d like to write about, and then I’ll have had my fill of category theory for a while. I don’t want to dive right in to another really deep topic like topology, so I’m looking for some subjects that people are interested in that can be covered in one or two posts. I could come up with some by myself (and probably will), but there are a lot of things like the zero article which so many people seemed to enjoy which I could write about, but probably wouldn’t think of on my own.
So, what would you like to see one or two posts on?

Just so folks know:
ScienceBlogs is experimenting with some new anti-spam stuff, which should do away with the need
for typekey. I’ve disabled typekey for Goodmath/Badmath, and we’ll how it goes. If you’ve got cookies or cached data for the site, you might have a bit of trouble with comments for a day or two; if you do, please drop me an email (see the contact tab), and I’ll see what I can do.
I’m also trying to figure out the right settings for the spam filter on the blog; if you post a comment and it doesn’t appear immediately, it’s probably because I don’t have the settings right. Don’t worry; it just means your message is sitting in the moderation queue until I get around to releasing it.

As you can see, there’s a new site banner.
I got about a dozen submissions this time. They were all terrific, but something about this one just really grabbed me; it was absolutely exactly what I wanted. It was designed by Josh Gemmel. So Josh gets immortalized in the “about” tab of the blog.
Any of you folks who submitted a banner, if there’s some topic you want me to write about, drop me a note. I’ll try to do articles for all of you.
Thanks everyone for your time and effort!