Bad Astronomy

Last call to vote for Weblog Awards

Note: somehow, I thought the voting ended tomorrow. In fact, it ends at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time today.

Criminy, this web award thingy is getting some attention.

Boing Boing posted on it, as well as Fark, Point-oh, Cognitive Daily, Sadly, No! and many others (even BuzzFeed!).

What silliness!

Let’s be clear: this whole thing is really just a skewed popularity contest. Skewed because people can vote more than once, and because bloggers across many websites can exhort their readers to vote for one blog over another, without the voters even knowing anything about the sites.

There are ironies abounding. I was going to be low-key about this, because although it was fun to play the silly game PZ and I did last year, I didn’t want to irritate my readers again. :-) But then Climate Audit jumped in and said some things about the BABlog that weren’t true (though it has been updated to more closely represent reality since then [Update (Nov 10, 2007): Looking back at some blogs posting on this topic at that time, it appears that heat was rising before Climate Audit said anything about me. It doesn’t look like Steve McIntyre at CA started this; like me, he was responding to what he saw elsewhere.]). I thought about it, and decided to defend myself.

I didn’t ask for this, and was going to avoid it, but now, well, here we are.

And now we see an anti-global warming site – and it would be dishonest to call it anything else; although others have defended it saying he only attacks those who misuses statistics, where are his attacks on those who use GW statistics to deny it exists? – pulling ahead, partially because some antiscience sites (cough cough Junk Science) are pushing for it.

So I had to wade in to this. I’ll be very honest: a couple of days ago PZ and I were neck-and-neck, and I was considering endorsing him instead of me if he started to pull ahead, at least so that a real science site would win the award. Instead, I started eking out a lead, and he endorsed me.

Here’s the voting panel. If you see the actual stats, it means you’ve voted in the last 24 hours. If you see the list of blogs with buttons to vote, then go ahead. I’d appreciate your vote, but only if you really do like this site. Otherwise, come back Saturday or Sunday, and I’ll be on the science and politics you know and love/hate as usual. :-)

Incidentally, Wil Wheaton is up for Best Celebrity Blog, and it’s close with some guy I’ve never heard of. Show Wil the Man (or otherwise) love.