This weblog awards contest has few people up in arms because WUWT is currently leading. Lucia points out some of the dynamics of silliness that go on related to it.
My take on it: it’s all simply fun, and the outcome affects nothing, heck there’s not even a prize except for a sidebar badge. But in the spirit of that fun, I thought I’d share some of my favs:
- Best Blog – I’m going with Huffington Post, for having the courage to run Harold Ambler’s essay on Al Gore
- Best Online Community – Our friend Jennifer Marohasy is in the running, she needs a little help
- Best Liberal Blog – I note that BigCityLib is not present, so I have no pick. Though given Wonkette’s lead, choice is irrelevant
- Best Conservative Blog – This is a tough one, as many of these have befriended WUWT. But I think I have no truer friend than Kate over at Small Dead Animals
- Best Celebrity Blogger – Hands down, Wil Wheaton, the rest are just noise
- Best Technology Blog – I like Engadget for this.
- Best European Blog – Not only for content, but for widgets, Luboš Motl and The Reference Frame
- Best Science Blog – Take your pick
Here are some categories that didn’t make it this year and my nominees:
Best tongue in cheek commenter: Steve Mosher
Best blog that is my inspiration: Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit
Best cheerleader: Gosh, there are so many. Roger Pielke Sr. has been stalwart as has been Joe D’Aleo. Evan Jones and John Goetz come to mind. So do Russ Steele and Gary Boden, and Leon B. and ‘jeez’, tough choices. But given all these choices….I think perhaps ‘smokey’ might be the winner here though.
Best angry blogger not nominated: Joe Romm of Climate Progress seems to be the clear winner, though Tamino is worthy of note
Best troll: TCO aka TCOisbanned
Best reason for me to stop blogging: my family that doesn’t get enough attention from me as it is
Best label from a detractor who is now belly up: “Reverend Anthony’s Screeching Mercury Monkeys” …from editor Tom Gascoyne of the Chico Beat, now history.
Best Silly Logo: Gary Boden’s rendition above
Best Orange Wiener Dog in a sidebar: Lucia’s the Blackboard
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Your excitement shines thru your disclaimers. That’s if I translated you correctly, of course.
REPLY: I think you are confusing amusement with excitement, easily done. No Worries. – Anthony
How about “Best raving streetcorner lunatic”… that phy-atheist-weirdo guy would be my nomination, however the guy who stands on the corner near my office and yells at himself all day might be more likely to have dinner at my house.
Is there an “Arrogant SOB” award on the horizon anywhere? There are definitely some good potential nominations in the AGW world, including many defenders of the disproved theory.
Obviously, there is no such thing as “best” anything, since we all have different personalities and needs, but I’m very happy to see WUWT on top at the moment. I was dragged to church kicking and screaming for the first 16 years of my life, and I’m all full up with sermons… AGW people all remind me of traveling revivalists, town to town with a message of doom and despair, and only they have the solution to our problems…
OT, sort of…,
And, in the “another straw house gets blown over by sensible (although extremely belated) policymaking (shock horror)” category….,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5462012.ece
We are now allowed to use mobile phones in hospitals. It has been “discovered” that they do not intefere with pacemakers, life support machines and other industrially shielded equipment.
The average Brit knew it was just lies but “What to do?”
From what I am reading over at solarcycle24 they have given a number to this new sunspot that popped up yesterday.
It doesn’t look like much of a sunspot to me, are they now giving anything no matter how small a number.
you may want to reconsider the rationale for that HuffyPo pick…
Huffington Post says skeptical article was a ‘slip-up’ – ‘Essay is gone from the site’s portal pages’
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=2477
apprently the huffington post made a mistake and they state that the article was a crank and they shouldnt have posted the article apparently it is now gone!
I like the Climate Audit website, but I must admit the discussion gets a little too technical even for me and I have an engineering degree! I just don’t have the time to come up to speed with all of the terminology and statistical analysis techniques used on the site.
You think TCO is a troll? Just because he drops the “f” word in comments and/or provide tmi about his sexual preferences in comments? That makes him a troll? Who’d a thunk? 🙂
TCO left a frownie face at my blog post describing the “Troll Control” plugin I’m working on. The main functionality seem to be working. Some of the unnecessary tweaks may not be. (You can see his frownie here.
When completed, I suspect a number of bloggers using WP as a self hosted application will want to use the plugin. Oddly, sometimes just mentioning that a plugin exists enforces better behavior.
Well, it is not a surprise really. Joe Romm’s angry rant has been picked up by Grist, so it looks like we’ll have a flood of votes shortly to stamp out WUWT.
wattsupwiththat (08:27:25) :
got a link to that angry rant?
REPLY: here, cut and paste into browser:
climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/anthony-watts-up-with-that-anti-science-denier-website-weblog-awards/
Arianna Huffington herself read and accepted my article and directed her staff to post it. She was my primary, and only, contact at the Huffington Post.
I am on a very intense book deadline, but have told Arianna that I intend to respond to my detractors a couple of weeks from now.
It was difficult to see that the piece was taken down from the site when it was, by quite a margin, the most popular blogger piece at the time and also the most popular piece in the entire Green section. I suspect that Arianna received an unimaginable amount of flak, some of it from powerful people, over her decision to post the article.
I remain grateful for her courage — and encouragement.
lucia (08:22:48) :
You are nothing but a paid shill for Big Oil!
This response always cracks me up…if only it were true, the we’d at least receive a little financial benefit for engaging the eco-wacko lunatics! LOL
Best angry blogger not nominated: Joe Romm of Climate Progress seems to be the clear winner
I went there to check it out. I’m sure he did much better in the “best religious blog” category, though apparently didn’t make the top 10 there either… Maybe next year.
Interestingly enough, if you have the guts to read Joseph’s mewling and puking, he has a direct link to Harold’s article – which is still there. I suspect that the link at Huffington Post was the only thing that was removed.
Harold Ambler (08:30:51) :
Still there at huffington post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html
Had to search for it on her site, but it’s there… Mike S.
Most spectacular dummy spit goes hands down to Climate Progress.
http://tinyurl.com/72etry
I suspect sour grapes is the reason for Ambler’s post being removed from Huffington’s blog. It appears WUWT is leading by quite a margin and Climate Audit is kicking RealClimate’s butt… hooray!!
Who knows, perhaps in a couple years WUWT will make it to being nominated as Best Blog!
And, as I mentioned elsewhere regarding that sunspeck…
“Leon Brozyna (03:37:46) :
The sun’s still spotless after 25 days. Last night’s sunspeck appears to have been a too short-lived event to be worthy of official notice.
In other news, I hear Hathaway has come out with a new forecast. Sure hope they can do an update on what’s now showing at SWPC’s graphs. They’re showing an embarrassing disconnect between the old forecast and the current situation.”
Yep, there is a new Hathaway prediction:
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif
re: that “climateprogress” link:
I will never, EVER understand how someone can be intelligent in one way, and absolutely retarded in another. Apparently, that kind of name-calling rant is what passes for “science” in their world.
Spectacular.
Yeah, I USED to believe in AGW. Yep, I did. I defended it just as strongly. Fortunately I wised up.
BEFORE voting for the Huffington post I suggest you read CO²science blog.
It seems Huffington have removed the offending article !!!!!
Don’t forget to vote today: click
I posted the following on the Climate Progress blog this morning:
You excoriate Watts as being “anti-scientific,” yet the wattsupwiththat blog site has several direct links on the side bar to fresh real data (including SOHO’s solar observatory and sea ice extent) and a resources page on the menu bar that has numerous links to official (government and academic) sites for atmospheric studies, climate anomalies data, temperature data, sea states (ENSO, PDO, etc.), solar data, weather station data, and others. This site (climateprogress) has none of that. Even links from this site to others that should have access to the raw data, don’t. For example, realclimate’s science links go to selected interpretations while skirting the original source data. Does the source data intimidate you or is it that you find these data irrelevant except through the prism of the IPCC?
While this site weighs heavily in the field of ad hominem smearing of those who raise valid and reasonable questions about the underlying basis for anthropogenic warming claims, the Watts site weighs equally as heavily on the source data and the underlying analysis of that data. On balance, I would say the Watts site does not deserve your label “anti-science.”
[Copied, no comment]
another ASS from Germany Says:
Huumh, some of my teachers may spin in their grave now.
Personally: I had:
Math: A-
Physics: A
Chemics: A
History: A
English: D (did improve that in the last 40 years)
German: B
Sports: D-
Religion: E (a born roman catholic, but was too critical, did too often
refer to historical (scientific) datas/sources, did have some ancestors in the history science).
I have to confess, I was in the AGW bloc until ‘03, but -IMHO- datas did not support it anymore, since then.
So, I am an ASS. Strange, in my job I’m – famous/feared – for my distaste for people taking assumptions w/o a good clause/good datas/good research/good science/good reason.
Hmmmm, Dear Sir, may I have the liberty to diagnose a different
syndrome?
It’s the BeAgressiveToAllWhoIgnoresMyPersonalFearsSyndrome –
or BATAWIIPF -Syndrome.
Personally, I don’t fear to be disproofed. But I can’t rule out to be wrong.
But then, let’s do it on the way of science. Not on the way to diagnose on somebody else psychic insanity. That has been done too much in history.
Science is like freedom.
You allways have to fight for both,
because they allways are inseperately.
re: Klausb (10:22:08) — oops, forgot to add source:
climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/anthony-watts-up-with-that-anti-science-denier-website-weblog-awards/#comment-26448
…the January 7th, 2009 at 1:14 pm – comment
Well Pearl and Aggie had me over looking at Climate Progress.
A more glaring example of the pot calling the kettle black I have never seen. Using actual data and application of scientific method is classidied as Anti science syndrome.
Meanwhile anyone who questions even the worst of the climate change panic mongers is dismissed as using long disproven denier talking points; I noticed however there was no mention of how any of these them were disproven. We all know of course that being disoproven to them means Tamino or someone like him said “nuh-uh”.
If there was a flat earther pseudo science catagory I think Climate Progress would have a shot