Month: December 2004

I don’t even know how to begin to give this site a rating. It is a blog of very self-explanatory nature because it is called “blog.bioethics.net” and therefore one assumes it is a blog about bioethics. That would be a correct assumption. Bioethics is a subject which touches every one of us in some profound way, so it is simply a fascinating blog.

It was started by the founding editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB) and is hosted by two other associate editors of AJOB. They are all PhDs and really like to blog. I say this because of the great number of posts each day–so much to say, so much to do! (It must be a thrill to get information out there so quickly when before they had to wait until AJOB was published.) In the “What is this?” sidebar heading you find out these men started the blog because “bioethics clearly needs a good blog” and they are “trying to create it.”

What I found almost immediately was that this blog wasn’t simply scientific jargon regurgitated. It has humor. As you would imagine stem cells are an ongoing topic on the blog. On one post called “Pigs Never Need Die Again,” someone writes about a recent Johns Hopkins stem cell group study on pigs with heart problems. The last sentence reads “No word on how they recruited pigs with heart problems to the study.” (chuckle)

I hope more and more people find out about this blog and leave some much needed comments. There is no authority on bioethics like these guys, so learn somethng new from them today.

I do wish they would archive some of their articles instead of running them all on the main page. I mean, when you are posting and updating several times a day, posts from October don’t need to be on your main page. (Think about the poor suckers who still use a dial-up connection!) Archive, doctors, archive.

blog.bioethics.net

Blog Bioethics.net opens to a plain white page with simple header and minimal sidebar distractions, as you would expect in a blog of this type. No nonsense here.

This blog is written by the editors of The American Journal of Bioethics. Why? ” . . .bioethics clearly needs a good blog and we are trying to create it. ” Simple enough reason I expect. However, when I visited their online Journal, it seems that much of the same material is covered there.

The entries begin in September of 2004, so this is a fairly new place, and the comments are still thin. Though the authors clearly welcome them, and perhaps over time, some give and take will develop.

The content consists of short introductions that link to articles of interest in the bioethics field. They are concise and to the point. The liberal use of acronyms makes many of the entries practically incomprehensible to this reader, but since the target audience would most likely be familiar with the institutions and concepts referred to, I suppose it is of little consequence. But if the authors want to capture interest a casual reader who may stumble onto their site, a little more clarity would be a good thing.

This is a specialized blog, and would appeal to the obvious audience. I found it a bit dry due to the fact that they mainly stick to “the facts” and do not actually put out a clear opinion about the articles cited. If this is their goal, they are succeeding. However, if they want to start a conversation, perhaps a bit more openness would spark some debate.

Time will tell which direction this blog takes.

blog.bioethics.net

I was very pleased to see a site called “A Wacky Southern Housewife” come up for review. Why? I like wacky. I like Southern. A marriage made in heaven. The site wasn’t disappointing so much as standard wacky Southern housewife fare. I did enjoy myself while there, so don’t think I didn’t like the site–quite the contrary.

“Call me Scarlett” started her blog in early 2004 and uses a standard blogger template (the green one with the leaf-like photo at the top). I sure wish she’d change her archive format to a simple word like “April” instead of 04/01/2004-4/30/2004. She writes about her life in what I assume is Georgia, due to her links about Atlanta, Marietta and the like. From piecing together her archives, she seems to have 3 children, allergies, and likes blogs from the U.K. There is more, but you will be able to piece it together for yourself.

It took many months before Scarlett got her first comment, but to her credit she kept on blogging. You can see her writing taking shape over the course of time, and I’m glad she’s stuck with it. My biggest complaint is that there are too many posts like this (mundane, quick comments) and not enough like this (heartfelt and humorous trials of a wacky housewife.
A Wacky Southern Housewife

A Wacky Southern Housewife is…well, about family. And while most blogs about family are pretty boring, “Scarlett” (her puedoname), is actually pretty funny.

She talks about her husband, kids, mother-in-law, and Toys ‘R’ Us is a frequent topic, but while these are traditional topics of a family-oriented blog, Scarlett seems to have a knack for noticing the little things. Like evesdropping on the elderly couple in front of her when they mention how they bought 10 gameboys for all their grandkids last Christmas, and her express desire to mug them in the parking lot.

That’s good stuff.

Her blogging engine is blogger, but I wouldn’t expect a housewife to use Moveable Type or WordPress, considering that they’re a little more difficult to set up. I guess what I’m focusing on here is that Scarlett has a nice way of expressing the mundane details. So it made the subject matter easier to read and not as boring as it could have been.

I gave this blog a 4. Nice job. A Wacky Southern Housewife

The Taipei Kid huh? Don’t know what or where Taipei is, so I ventured on in. Next thing I noticed was the url: wanna be my friend.com. Very nice url to snag there. Sure why not, I’ll be your friend. Of course you may not want me to be by the time this review is over.

The site loads to a generic black with white and grey text movabletype template. While it is nothing to shout about as the popularity of this template has diminished, it did diminish for a reason. With nothing spectacular to really “look” at, I took a read.

The title of the site is “Rants and raves about Taipei and false childhood memories”. Again, an original title, but still not a clue as to what is going to happen here. The posts are a mix of things in the news and what is going on in his life.

One of the more recent political based posts caught my attention when he said he was on tv talking about the election. This got me looking for a link for an about me page to find out more about him. Unfortunately I was unable to find one of these. So I continued my quest to figure out who this author is.

The writing of this site is amazing. The author knows how to starkly get his point across when he wants to, and knows how to just tell it like it is. This is very rare with bloggers as most don’t know how to do this.

After reading the site I still sat back and said “That’s it?”. Still at a loss for who the author is, which is a shame because I really enjoyed the writing. Let me rephrase that, I am at a loss for where he is going with the site. There is a mix of what is going on in Asia and the US, and his life, but it seems more to me like a run on sentence. The writing is good, but I just didn’t quiet get it. I am sure in a day or two after it has sunk in I will say something along the lines of now I get it, but as of writing this review I haven’t.The Taipei Kid