PZ Myers. 2004 Apr 13. Announcement: The Tangled Bank. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/announcement_the_tangled_bank/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 04.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Announcement: The Tangled Bank
In cooperation with several other of us geeky science types, I am pleased to announce our own version of the “Carnival of the Vanities". A Carnival is a weekly showcase of good weblog writing, selected by the authors themselves (that’s the vanity part). Each week, one of our crew will highlight a collection of interesting weblog articles in one convenient place, making it easy for everyone to find the good stuff.
Two things will distinguish us from the original “Carnival of the Vanities”: 1) we are specifically restricting ourselves to articles in the field of science and medicine, very broadly defined, and 2) we’ve got a different name. Our weekly compendium of great science weblog articles will be called the Tangled Bank, after Charles Darwin’s famous metaphor:
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many
plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various
insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp
earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so
different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex
a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws,
taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction;
Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability
from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from
use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle
for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing
Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.
It’s a fine comparison to the world of weblogging as well, with some singing birds and a few of us crawling worms, all struggling to enlarge our Ratio of Increase. We only hope the analogy fails somewhere before that business about “Extinction of less-improved forms”...
Our first step is to request submissions from YOU, gentle reader. Are you a weblogger? Have you recently written something you are proud of, that you think other people with an interest in biology, medicine, science in general, or just the general workings of the natural world might find worth reading? Let me know! Send an e-mail message to pzmyers@pharyngula.org containing the words “Tangled Bank” somewhere in the subject line, and a link to your article, along with a sentence or two of descriptive summary. Don’t hesitate, don’t be shy, don’t wonder if your work is good enough—flit right into the bank with the rest of us elaborately constructed forms.
I’ll review and compile all the submissions, and then right here next week, I’ll post the complete list. Look here next Wednesday, 21 April, for an article titled “Tangled Bank #1”: you could be in it.
At that time, I’ll also announce contact information for the next host of the Tangled Bank; we have almost two months worth of weekly hosts lined up, and next in line will be Jennifer Forman of the Invasive Species weblog. I’ll also provide a link to a central page where you’ll be able to easily find who has hosted in the past, and who is scheduled to host in the future.
If you think you’d be interested in more than just submitting articles, and would also like to host the Tangled Bank, drop me a line and I’ll add you to our schedule. We would definitely be overjoyed to share the work.