Carnivals and Concert Halls

Well, Anya has been very busy on her blog and I was very interested in this. It is a BLOG CARNIVAL idea. I am interested in Farrell's views on academics blogging and feel he is absolutely spot on when he says:

Academic bloggers differ in their goals. Some are blogging to get personal or professional grievances off their chests or, like Black, to pursue nonacademic interests. Others, perhaps the majority, see blogging as an extension of their academic personas. Their blogs allow them not only to express personal views but also to debate ideas, swap views about their disciplines, and connect to a wider public. For these academics, blogging isn't a hobby; it's an integral part of their scholarly identity. They may very well be the wave of the future

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This really is what Guy and I want to argue and also when Farrell continues like this:

Academic blogs offer the kind of intellectual excitement and engagement that attracted many scholars to the academic life in the first place, but which often get lost in the hustle to secure positions, grants, and disciplinary recognition. Properly considered, the blogosphere represents the closest equivalent to the Republic of Letters that we have today. Academic blogs, like their 18th-century equivalent, are rife with feuds, displays of spleen, crotchets, fads, and nonsenses. As in the blogosphere more generally, there is a lot of dross. However, academic blogs also provide a carnival of ideas, a lively and exciting interchange of argument and debate that makes many scholarly conversations seem drab and desiccated in comparison. Over the next 10 years, blogs and bloglike forms of exchange are likely to transform how we think of ourselves as scholars. While blogging won't replace academic publishing, it builds a space for serious conversation around and between the more considered articles and monographs that we write.

I could not agree more.

Apparently there is such a thing as a blog carnival where, a showcase of good blog posts are gathered together on one blog and the posts are all about one theme. The 'about' section copied below comes from Tangled Bank. Bloggers put themselves forward for inclusion on a themed post.



Welcome to the Tangled Bank, a version of the "Carnival of the Vanities" for science bloggers. A Carnival is a weekly showcase of good weblog writing, selected by the authors themselves (that's the vanity part). Every other 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.

Tangled Bank makes a 'call for posts and then gathers them together in one post. Here is one all about scientific life.

It seems a bit like peer review is going on, but as a commeneter said on Tangled bank, it is more like Self-review.

Anyway ... I went to the newly refurbished city hall in Sheffield last Wednesday to see a funny man Russ Noble.

It amused that someone set off the fire alarm before the performance and we all had to leave the building. The waiting staff were not enthusiastic:




The building itself was very pretty inside and here is one shot. There are more on Flickr here.

But what has this to do with the carnival of blogs?
Not a lot. But it did strike me, in a moment of apophenia while I was there, and not managing to blog that night, that stand up comedians gather together random instances of the everyday and turn them around and upside down, inside out for analysis.
And so do we I think, in ourblogs, our own little showcases, or 'cabinets of curiosity' as Kate would say.

That's all.