A stroll along the Tangled Bank

Another of PZ Myers's splendid ideas has come to fruition. He has innaugurated The Tangled Bank. The Bank is... well, why don't I just quote Prof. Myers:

In cooperation with several other of us geeky science types, I am pleased to announce our own version of the "Carnival of the Vanities". A Carnival is a weekly showcase of good weblog writing, selected by the authors themselves (that's the vanity part). Each 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.

Tangled Bank is not so much a blog as a sort of floating metablog, a collection of commented links to posts contributors have made on their own blogs. The idea is that the reader will find, conveniently collected in one easy-to-use place, a variety of articles on all manner of things, united only by that very broad definition (and its breadth is important!) of 'science- or medicine-related'.

There is, nonetheless, a Tangled Bank mother-ship website. There you will learn more about the project, including how to contribute; you'll also find an index of who's hosting the Bank when, with links to their websites.

Full disclosure: Prof. Myers was kind enough to include one of my spider posts in the first round. I say this not to blow my own horn (though I am dead chuffed) but to underscore the ethos of the project. You needn't be a professional scientist to participate. Certainly there are pros taking part; but even then, what they post is not the passive-voice-only stuff you'd find in a peer-reviewed journal. As it says on the 'home' website:

Anyone can submit an entry. Even if you don't routinely write about medicine or biology, if you just happen to have written about your gall bladder surgery that week or the pileated woodpecker that has taken to waking you every morning, if you think you've said something interesting and insightful, send it in.