Happy Holidays to all my readers – whichever holiday you choose to celebrate during this season. I am partial to Festivus myself. And although I am not a druid, I do love the Winter Solstice – we are turning the corner at the bottom of the analemma and the days will now start to get longer (and also this is likely the original reason why this is the holiday season).

I will be spending the holidays with family, and while I will continue to post blogs through the holidays, I will be away from the computer most of the time and so comment moderation will be slow – so be patient.

SBM was down on Friday and is down again today after days of very slow responses. We are not sure what the problem is – it could be simply the wild popularity of the blog, or a denial of service bot, or something else.

In any case, we are already in the process of changing hosts and significantly upgrading the service. This process should be done today, so hopefully SBM will be back up and running soon.

Recently the data file for this blog was corrupted and about half of my posts were down. As soon as I discovered this we worked on the problem (thanks to Mike for helping with this) and restored every post from the archive. However, for some reason they appear to be down again.

Interestingly, Michael Egnor noticed the absent posts and wrote about it here. I never received the e-mail he sent me, and there is no way to leave comments on his blog.

All of the blog entries are archived. We will have them restored as soon as possible and I will leave a notice when they are back.

— Update 05/20/08 —

The problem appears to be with the new version of WordPress we just installed and Brinkster, our host. I am told that by tonight everything will be back. We will have to go back to the old version of WordPress, but that will not affect subscribers, just the back end.

I suggest that if you leave any long brilliant comments today you should save a copy offline. We will try not to lose anything in the transition, but it”s better to be safe.

Thanks for your patience.

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Update 5/24

All blog entries seem to be back up. Please let me  know if you find missing entries or broken links.

Note – if you registered between 5/17 and5/21 please re-register.

Thanks again to Mike for fixing my blog.

Next week I will be in Los Angeles filming a pilot for a new TV show called The Skeptologists. The show is the brain child of Brian Dunning (of Skeptoid fame) and producer Ryan Johnson (of American Dragster fame). At this point the show is just a pilot, produced on spec, as it were, so not big TV contract yet. But we can always be hopeful.

The show will be a reality investigative documentary – we will explore fringe and unconventional claims from a scientific point of view. I think the time is ripe for such a show. There are far too many credulous paranormal shows out there, with kids and plumbers playing at science but getting it wrong. I think (hope) the pubic will welcome a show with actual live scientists taking a look at some of these claims.

Here’s the lineup:

Me, Michael Shermer, Phil Plait, Yau-Man Chan (yes, that guy from Survivor), Kirsten Sanford, and Mark Edward (here are more details on the cast).

This also means that next week I am planning on being too busy to update my blog, but fear not. I will be re-editing and updating some of my classic essays from back in the day (originally published either in my Weird Science Column or in the New England Journal of Skepticism) and posting them up throughout the week. If I have time I may also give you an update on how the shooting is going for Skeptologists. So stay tuned.

University of Sheffield professor and computer scientist Noel Sharkey, best known for his appearances on the BBC show Robot Wars, in a talk before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute warned the world that automated military robots “pose a threat to humanity.” I agree. Seriously.

Well, OK – not right now. But it is not too early to think about the implications of developing increasingly automated robots designed for warfare. While I think it is an unlikely scenario that such machines will take over the world anytime this century, as in The Matrix or Terminator, they may pose a credible risk in the near future.

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Carl Sagan, noted astronomer and science popularizer, died 11 years ago today, on December 20th 1996. Beginning last year, on the 10th anniversary of his death, and continuing this year (and hopefully into the future) there is an informal Sagan blog carnival, honoring the memory of the man who meant so much to so many of us.

As I wrote last year, Sagan was a critical early mentor in my personal journey to understanding the nature of science and its role in society. In part, this blog is a manifestation of both the personal effect that Sagan had on my life and also the tradition of promoting the public understanding of science that Sagan so successfully nurtured.

One of the things I admired about Sagan’s style was his ability to step back and look at an issue from a broader, dare I say cosmic, perspective. I remember in an interview he was asked about his religious beliefs. He responded by pointing to a map of the known universe. He said (I am paraphrasing) “See this map, this is the universe. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe. See this one galaxy – there are hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy. On the edge of one of the arms of this galaxy there is an ordinary star. Around that star there are nine planets and on one of those planets there live people who think they are the center of the universe.”

Sagan made it cool to popularize science, to be enthusiastic about science, and his enthusiasm was contagious. I hope the tradition of science for society and for the people that Sagan promoted continues to thrive, and I will continue to do my small part in keeping it alive.

This blog entry concludes exactly one year of the Neurologica blog. I wanted to take the time to look back at my first year of science blogging.

It has been a wonderful experience overall. First, I am proud that I managed to maintain 4-5 posts per week for the entire year. Statistics vary, but about 80% of all new blogs are abandoned within a month. The average blog has the life expectancy of a red blood cell – about 120 days. There are now an estimated 12 millions blogs in America alone, but most are not maintained and/or have few readers. I have been averaging several thousand readers per post, so by all measures I think my first foray into blogging has been a success.

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On the current episode of the SGU (Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe), our guest, Lawrence Krauss, mentioned that he is involved with an effort to have the presidential candidates for 2008 (in the general election, not the primaries) engage in a debate focusing on the many scientific issues that face Americans and with which our next president will have to contend. The effort is called Science Debate 2008.

This is a wonderful idea. We have mentioned this casually on our podcast in the past so I am glad that prominent scientists have banded together to spearhead this effort. You too can join the effort by signing up on the website. When each of the major parties has picked their nominee we will also need huge public pressure to make a science debate happen.

In fact, it’s such a good idea that we should have pushed for such a debate during the primary elections. During this earlier phase of the presidential run there are many more debates, and therefore it would have been easier to slip in another debate on science issues. During the general election typically there are 2-3 debates that are highly crafted and negotiated by both sides. It will be more difficult to add an extra debate on scientific issues, as important as that would be. This is why it is going to take a huge effort to make this happen.

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The Skeptics Guide to the Universe now has an official blog – The Rogues Gallery. There are seven authors, myself included, and we will post a new entry every day at 8:00am Eastern. Give it a look.

I posted today’s blog entry over at the Gallery, answering a listener’s question about intelligent design.

The Scientist.com is putting together a list of the top science blogs, so if you have not done so already please go there and vote for your favorites. Now, I’m not going to say I’m bitter because I have only had a single mention so far (thanks, Pekka). I understand my humble blog is still relatively new. It’s just that, it’s a little embarrassing when I’m standing around the water cooler with the other science bloggers and they are all bragging about their awards, mentions in prominent journals and websites, and all the votes they are getting from their readers (I mean Orac can be a real snob and Phil Plait will just not shut up about himself, and don’t even get me started on PZ Myers, the primadona).

Seriously, if you like what you read here please help me get on the radar of science blogs by giving me a kind mention.