Blogrolling: Bashir
December 13, 2010
Huh. I’ve seen the name on comments out and about on the science-y blogs but never really noticed there was a blog and clicked through.
I don’t know if you will like it or not, Dear Reader. I’ve lost touch with my audience since the move to Scientopia. Not sure why.
Anyway, I like this one. Go read.
It’s frightening to know how easily it could have gone otherwise
Take my current job as a postdoc for example: I got the position by accident. My now PI wasn’t even on my radar because he doesn’t really do anything relevant to my research area. I sent him an email because he was associate chair of the department and thus in charge (administratively) of a training grant in the department. I sent him a “What do I have to do to get a spot on this grant?” email. He wrote back “We’re pretty much full, so nothing. FYI I just got a grant from Big Institute in your research area so I need a postdoc. Now.”
Above is a map I quickly made of the “top 50″ departments in Bashirology
Why on earth would two full time teachers, with three small children (at the time), travel (by car) that far to take a few classes?
Because it was the nearest school that would take Negros.
This person had a few interesting stories regarding dialect and academia. Particularly one researcher who apparently could not code switch out of AAVE at all. As you might imagine she had trouble landing a job.
Update: an older version of the Bashir blog.
DrugMonkey 
December 13, 2010 at 7:35 pm
I noticed a Bashir comment on your blog last week and went over to visit. Really impressed, good stuff. Glad to have you around, Bashir.
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December 13, 2010 at 9:07 pm
I can’t speak for the rest of your readers, but I think Bashir’s blog is fantastic. Have added to my feed. Thx for alerting me!
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December 14, 2010 at 1:10 am
Dude, did you even tell us you were moving to Scientopia?
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December 14, 2010 at 4:00 am
Losing touch with your audience? WTF are we, chopped liver?
Excellent choice, DM. I’d say you’ve still got it.
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December 14, 2010 at 4:14 am
“I’ve lost touch with my audience since the move to Scientopia. Not sure why. ”
Dude, you seriously have 3 blogs. You still post at Sb, so why would the RSS-feed-lazy readers follow you over here when you still post over there?
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December 14, 2010 at 6:10 am
Gracias for the link.
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December 14, 2010 at 7:46 am
thank you for the stories, Bashir.
Candid, you may be right, but I think it is something more than just that. my commentariat has changed. and it is two blogs. nothing to see at WP.com DM, move along, move along 🙂
Dr. Becca, not saying that change in the reader/commenter pool is good or bad, just that the conversation is a bit different. and admittedly I’ve spent less time pissing people off and actively managing the conversations so perhaps it is partially that.
Juniper: Yes.
Now go over to Bashir’s joint and do some commenting!
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December 14, 2010 at 10:18 am
Thanks for the link, you are right that is an excellent blog. I’m so deep in my feed reader I don’t think it occurred to me you’re still blogging in several places (I’m probably following you both). But you are right, the atmosphere of comments is a bit different here vs Sb. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, just different.
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December 14, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Seems to me that Scientopia has simply attracted a different set of commenters. Could be that we are a young blog network, could be that we lack the feisty/annoying people from Sb. If you want more comments, maybe you need to start posting some outrageous shit.
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December 15, 2010 at 8:29 am
Candid I confess to being a little surprised (miffed?), assuming it is the case that readers are more loyal to a collective rather than a specific blog. Especially since I always thought that a certain core element of my commentariat was a bit unusual for the Sb distribution.
but as I said, I may be blogging a bit differently these days.
or it could be that some folks are using a different handle because they are registered on the WP system…
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December 15, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Thanks for the link to Bashir’s blog!
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December 15, 2010 at 5:39 pm
So what is Rivlin’s wordpress handle?
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December 16, 2010 at 4:01 am
I think it is both that a) People are more loyal to checking ScienceBlogs than we think and b) You have totally gone soft.
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December 16, 2010 at 10:22 am
I significantly changed my science blog reading after the ScienceBlogs diaspora. I used to live by the last-24h feed on scienceblogs and was more likely or not to click on certain posts depending on the author. I directly went to a few other non-collective science blogs (i.e. female science professor), but they were exceptions. The diaspora pushed me into seriously using RSS feeds because that was the only way to keep track of things. Readers that didn’t make such a change are less likely to read your posts.
Also, a non-trivial chunk of ScienceBlogs posts/comments were conversations between people who didn’t like each other. I’m sure that was sometimes stressful, but it sometimes made for interesting/entertaining reading. Perhaps a network of friends, like scientopia, just doesn’t have the drama to support certain levels of communication. Even your post on some of the people leaving Nature blogs was friendly. Maybe launching some invective on other networks will bring back the old days. Of course you can’t do that while maintaining a blog in every collective.
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December 16, 2010 at 10:45 am
Maybe launching some invective on other networks will bring back the old days. Of course you can’t do that while maintaining a blog in every collective.
I find your lack of faith in me to be insulting.
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December 16, 2010 at 10:50 am
oh and becca, Uncle Sollie hasn’t been spotted at the Sb blog for quite some time either. I worry about that dude…someday he’s gonna kick off and we’ll never know.
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