2008 in Blog Posts

This was my first full year of blogging, and I'm pretty happy with what I accomplished. Here are some of the posts that have gotten the most attention.

For some reason, a bunch of people do Google searches for the word "loner." A lot of them end up at this March post on why Facebook is just about the right amount of interaction--maybe.

Blogging really started ramping up in May, with a short essay on the costs of breaking rules in writing (and why I'll do it anyway) and a guest post on science blog content at Greg Laden's Blog. The guest post just goes to show that if one wants lots of comments, one should talk about PZ Myers. Also from May, my recipe for the perfect margarita has stayed popular. Please just remember that it's dangerous.

In June, I flexed a little blogging muscle (with much help) to get a problem cleaned up that should already have been fixed, told a little story about too many ex-boyfriends, and spelled out my motto.

July brought one reason it's sometimes better to be vague in your science fiction than to be wrong, a lesson in how not to take critique (the closest I've come to jumping into the framing debate), and some musings about the utility of offense as a concept.

August featured a pair of posts on Muslim censorship of fiction. One event was very high-profile, with an interesting dimension not much talked about. The other was much quieter, perhaps deservedly so. Also, my views on "tolerance."

September was the start of my career in poliblogging. I put up my first post on Bachmann and weighed in on the economy, looking at the reasons the social safety net isn't obsolete and at the failure of our long-standing economic policy. Oh, and apparently I get into arguments occasionally.

I continued to beat on Bachmann in October. "Realists" and libertarians got theirs too. I also summarized a very long set of arguments over whether the concept of human races has any biological validity. Short answer: no. Then I went and got myself called a science blogger by a bunch of people by writing about the value of diversity. That was weird. To lighten things up: sensical nonsense and writing for wildly diverse audiences.

I got a little more sleep in November, but I still managed to make people cry, talk about religious belief, wave a flag for the defective, and argue about belonging and identity. That last one contains one of the more interesting comment threads on this blog--better than the post itself, I think.

December has seen me mashing up science and fiction in ways I never thought I would. I committed fanfic as illustration and used the literature/pulp debate to talk about how the language of science can be exclusionary. This month also produced what is already my most linked and viewed post ever: How to Hijack a Thread. Apparently, this "meta shit" works for people. Who knew?

So what will 2009 bring? There are a couple things in the works, here and elsewhere, but I'm not not one to count chickens and all, so you'll have to wait. Mostly, I hope the new year brings me the kinds of friendship and food for thought that the old one did.

Have a very happy new year, everyone.