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So for whatever reason I didn’t actually update the database for strip #448, which fortunately has nothing to do with the global warming series but which I want to stand alone and be seen anyway. So it’ll have the spotlight to itself for about six hours or more, then #449 will go up and have at least twelve hours to itself if I’m late in posting it, but otherwise after that we’ll proceed as though nothing happened.

Global Warming Series Open Thread

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I’m trying to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt where global warming stands scientifically, good or bad, ideally resulting in a case the most hardcore partisan couldn’t ignore, and I don’t want to leave any information on the table. So leave a comment here, or e-mail me at mwmailsea at yahoo dot com, if you have any counterarguments or new information in response to the arguments already presented (with an emphasis on today’s strip, whatever strip that may be) that doesn’t duplicate one of my existing sources, as listed below.

UPDATE 4/12/2009: I’m no longer specifically checking my e-mail for new global warming information; use this thread instead. See this post for details.

It’s possible I may miss something that actually is in one of the sources, and one of the sources is so goldanged long there’s no way I’d get through it all myself, so I’d also be up to being referred to any information already in the sources, and feel free to debate the other side’s information and arguments as well instead of waiting for me.

Supporting the global warming theory:
http://scholarsandrogues.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/anti-global-heating-claims-a-reasonably-thorough-debunking/
http://www.grist.org/tags/How+to+Talk+to+a+Climate+Skeptic/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

Opposing the global warming theory:
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/13/47/
http://globalwarminghoax.wordpress.com/2007/05/19/green-myths-on-global-warming-%E2%80%94-debunked/
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/
http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/index.php?showtopic=2050
This last source is so long and thorough I don’t really have time to go through it all, so you can duplicate links from there.

Odd, very odd.

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Want to know why today’s strip is so late?

I was preparing for various extraneous things related to the strip (including the basis for what I hope will be a long-term traffic influx) a little after 1 when I dozed off.

When I woke up, it was almost 4.

And that was only the beginning of the madness.

I don’t know if it’s the universe telling me not to launch into this project I’m about to launch into or not… either way, expect the strip to be posted at 9 or 10 AM PT the rest of the week.

Not a good day.

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I was all set to have a mostly April Fool’s-free day. I would be spending most of my time preparing for the next epic Sandsday series. I wouldn’t get tripped up by anything today, that’s for damn sure.

Well, I’ve been dodging April Fool’s jokes left and right on the Internet, while getting bogged down in writer’s block and distractions for the series and fighting off a headache. (Right now I have two strips written and they’re probably going to get the hatchet treatment.) And I have an assignment I need to get done for tomorrow… and last night I got around to coming up for an idea for the OOTS post that doesn’t rely on following the current strips but which is going to take quite a bit of doing… and I still need to look for a job… and I’m already getting a head start on falling behind on the textbook…

Maybe I can make some incremental progress on the series while waiting to see the new OOTS strip…

Before, I might have thought V could stretch the splice into the next book. Now? Not so much.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized terms of lease.)

I’m going to try and be quick with this.

Because it was a makeup for arguably not having a February OOTS post, I don’t consider the post I made when V took this deal to be an official OOTS post for most purposes.

That means I still owe you a March OOTS post, and that will probably come when the next strip does.

But I do want to give a cautionary tale to Aspiring Webcomickers Everywhere, regarding the previous strip, which I don’t think Rich thought through.

OOTS doesn’t accompany its strips with posting dates, which means later archive bingers won’t realize the connection to March. More to the point, now and in the future, non-Americans won’t get the joke at all. And it doesn’t help that, legibility reasons or no, the Arizona State Sun Devil is misidentified as simply “Arizona”.

The moral: Use topical strips with caution.

That is all.

Okay, I have to check this out.

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Sometime next week, you’re going to get a sports TV graphics roundup and review.

Because SportsCenter is overhauling its graphics package.

I may wake up slightly before 6 AM on Monday just to see it debut. I wonder if this is a sign that SportsCenter and other ESPN programs are (finally) moving to the graphics package that has populated ESPN’s actual sporting events since the debut of MNF on ESPN (and been ubiquitous on them since April 2007)?

Or… is it an entirely new graphics package, and I need to watch baseball’s Opening Night the previous night to see if it makes its “real” debut there?

Tweeting out of a facebook in my space.

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When I started Da Blog, I mentioned that “you won’t see me get a MySpace or Facebook account” and I lumped in MySpace and Facebook along with blogs as things I didn’t think there was anyone left in my age group who didn’t have them.

Since then, I’ve seen a number of blogs shacking up with MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter and reposting the posts that are already on their blogs there. I’m wondering, why? You already have an RSS feed, why do you need to put alerts of new posts on Twitter as well? Why repost your blog entirely on MySpace or Facebook and obviate the need for people to visit your blog and view your advertising? If you really want to be on MySpace or Facebook, why not just put your blog there in the first place

I had the same questions shortly after getting my first webcomic-post-created bump, when someone created a feed for Da Blog on LiveJournal. I never really got a satisfactory answer – seems the creator wanted a one-stop shop to read Da Blog and his other feeds from his LJ friends list. I’m not sure if even that applies to MySpace and Facebook (or, to a lesser extent, Twitter).

Well, I think I’ve found the reason why people would dive in to that sort of thing voluntarily: to aid in blog promotion.

The friend function on MySpace and Facebook has become a complete misnomer grossly deprecated from its original function. Probably the vast majority of “friends” aren’t. Celebrities accept every friend request under the sun, allowing any fan to claim their favorite celeb isn’t just someone they really like, they’re BFFs! On the flip side, small-time bloggers and other attention whores (and I use that term to describe a lot more bloggers than the community would like to admit, and I’m one of them) beg for friends on the off chance that people will discover them off their “friends”‘ friend lists. Never mind that when you have 600 friends, they become meaningless. (Some people may not even know who the people are who they apply to be friends with.)

Friends have become trivialized, but their organization hasn’t. The problem with using MySpace and Facebook to pimp your blog is the hassle of applying for friends, and even more so, dealing with friend requests. (One or both may allow for en masse friend approval, without looking at the individual requests, but it’s not a networking site that wants to fight the trivialization of friends. Or spam, for that matter.)

Twitter is better for such a purpose, since “friendship” isn’t reciprocal – there’s a distinction between “following” and “follower” – so people can link you just by announcing they’re following your tweets, and you don’t have to do anything. So between the potential blog-promotion possibilities and my own growing interest in its original purpose (I’m always doing something, ideally), has actually made me seriously consider becoming the latest to follow the crowd and hook up with Twitter.

Oddly, perhaps the major reason why I have some misgivings is the tagline at the top of Da Blog: “The ONLY blog written by Morgan Wick.” That reflects, in large measure, the multi-blog nature of Da Blog as I see it, obviating the need for me to take part in any other blogs. It was originally intended as semi-ironic, since it would be pretty unlikely I (or anyone else) would need any other blogs anyway. But not only has a growth of alternate platforms increased the possibility for things that could be considered “second blogs”, if I were to join Twitter it could easily be considered, despite its restrictions, a second blog for me – if it didn’t even supercede Da Blog.

Besides, I’m better than annoying everyone with what I’m having for dinner.

At least I’m not violating my first-post promise… if only because I’d rather avoid the hassle of coming up with and enforcing a friends policy.

Out with a whimper.

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This is not the way I intended to do this.

For the first time since July 14 of last year, I did not have a post on a weekday yesterday.

I had been intending to continue The Streak until I hit the one-year mark. Oddly, that might have resulted in extending the streak into at least September and possibly (after college football season) December, because of at least one project I have in the works.

Honestly, after abandoning webcomics posts for March on the grounds I needed the time to work on a paper, I’ve been completely procrastinating. I spent most of yesterday sleeping, watched more TV than I should have or planned to, went out for a while and had no place to really use the Internet (nor, for the most part, did it cross my mind to), and used the last few hours of the official Tuesday playing games rather than at least work on the paper. Really, the paper’s barely started and I’m going to need a three-day blitz to write… eight pages? I hit a research bottleneck where I had to go running around for books to cite to make the point I intended to make (by not being what it calls an “indiscriminate collection of information” Wikipedia may actually be hindering the Web’s potential as a repository of all knowledge by attracting too many queries for it to itself) and that’s been taking up a lot of time I could use actually working on the paper.

(For the sort of research I want to use not just for this paper, but spending much of my life doing, I have a feeling I’ll need a lot of money for books… and I STILL don’t have a real job…)

I may well start a new streak with this post anyway – I have posts planned for the remainder of the week and may try to get a second post out today.