This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
So, last night I sent out the official notifications to all the finalists selected for this year's Open Lab anthology, and within the hour, Twitter was aflutter with folks sharing their excitement at the news. Which is great -- I love bringing good news to good people -- but the original plan was to make a formal announcement sometime in January. I had this post all ready to go, however, and there doesn't seem too much point in waiting until January now, is there?
First, I'd like to reiterate something Ed Yong said on Twitter. This is an anthology comprised of a selection of 51 OF SOME of the best blog posts in 2011 -- not THE 51 "best" posts. It's a critical distinction because, let's face it, there's likely many gems out there that didn't even get nominated, and there were several posts we would have loved to include but had to cut to get the count down to 51. Also, some things work great in blog format but don't translate well to print. (I have high hopes for what might be possible with e-books in the future, however.)
I am not kidding when I say winnowing down 720 entries was an incredibly painful process. I absolutely could not have done it without the help of all the volunteer reviewers (a full thank-you list will be forthcoming later). Even so, Bora and I engaged in much mutual handwringing, particularly over the last 10-12 cuts we were forced to make.
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In the end, we looked at the overall balance of the anthology and picked those that fit the bill for what was missing -- humor, personal reflection, short-form, long-form, diversity of topic and writerly "voice", etc. -- but any one of those cut dozen or so "contenders" would have also made fine additions to the anthology. (And as this year's editor, I automatically removed my own nominated post from the running; I simply couldn't justify including it when so many other worthy posts were under consideration.) I think we ended up with a good, diverse mix, and (amazingly) an almost perfect 50/50 split in male and female bloggers, although that wasn't by design.
So without further ado, I give you the finalists for this year's Open Lab anthology.
1. Anthropology in Practice (Krystal D’Costa): Unraveling The Fear o’ the Jolly Roger
2. The Artful Amoeba (Jennifer Frazer): Bombardier Beetles, Bee Purple, and the Sirens of the Night
3. The Atavism: The origin and extinction of species
4. Black Ink Obelisk (Aubrey J. Sanders): Somata (poem)
5. Blogus scientificus (Alex Reshanov): Shakes on a Plane: Can Turbulence Kill You?
6. Body Horrors (Rebecca Kreston): This Ain’t Yo Momma’s Muktuk: Fermented Seal Flipper, Botulism, Being Cold & Other Joys of Arctic Living
7. Boing Boing (Lee Billings): Incredible journey: Can we reach the stars without breaking the bank?
8. Boing Boing (Maggie Koerth-Baker): Nuclear energy 101: Inside the “black box” of power plants
9. Context and variation (Kate Clancy): Menstruation is just blood and tissue you ended up not using
10. Dangerous Experiments (Joe Hanson, It’s Okay To Be Smart): On Beards, Biology, and Being a Real American
11. Deep Sea News (Miriam Goldstein): DON’T PANIC: Sustainable seafood and the American outlaw
12. Empirical Zeal: (Aatish Bhatia) What it feels like for a sperm
13. En Tequila Es Verdad (Dana Hunter): Adorers of the Good Science of Rock-breaking
14. Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Kimberly Gerson): Romeo: A Lone Wolf’s Tragedy in Three Acts
15. Expression Patterns (Eva Amsen): Make history, not vitamin C
16. The Gleaming Retort (John Rennie): Volts and Vespa: Buzzing about Photoelectric Wasps
17. Guardian Science Blog (Karen James): Space shuttle launch: ‘I feel the percussive roar on the skin of my face’
18. Highly Allochthonous (Chris Rowan): Ten million feet upon the stair
19. History of Geology (David Bressan): It’s sedimentary, my dear Watson
20. Laelaps (Brian Switek): The Dodo is Dead, Long Live the Dodo!
21. The Last Word On Nothing (Ann Finkbeiner): Science Metaphors (cont): Resonance
22. The Loom (Carl Zimmer): The Human Lake
23. Neuron Culture (David Dobbs): Free Science, One Paper at a Time
24. Neurotribes (Steve Silberman): Woof! John Elder Robison, Living Boldly as a “Free-Range Aspergian”
25. Not Exactly Rocket Science (Ed Yong): The Renaissance man: how to become a scientist over and over again
26. Observations of a Nerd (Christie Wilcox): Why do women cry? Obviously, it’s so they don’t get laid.
27. The Occam’s Typewriter Irregulars (Richard F.Wintle): Genome sequencing, Shakespeare style [combined with] Genome Assembly – a primer for the Shakespeare fan
28. Oh, For the Love of Science! (Allie Wilkinson): The distance between your testicles and your anus, ‘taint unimportant
29. Pharyngula (PZ Myers): Dear Emma B
30. PLoS Blogs Guest Blog (T. Delene Beeland): Saving Ethiopia’s “Church Forests”
31. The Primate Diaries (Eric Michael Johnson): Freedom to Riot: On the Evolution of Collective Violence
32. PsySociety (Melanie Tannenbaum): Sex and the Married Neurotic
33. Puff the Mutant Dragon (“Mutant Dragon”): Sunrise in the Garden of Dreams
34. Reciprocal Space (Stephen Curry): Joule’s Jewel
35. Sciencegeist (Matthew Hartings): I Love Gin and Tonics
36. Scientific American Guest Blog (Casey Rentz): How to stop a hurricane (good luck, by the way)
37. Scientific American Guest Blog (Cindy Doran, The Febrile Muse): Tinea Speaks Up—a Fairy Tale
38. Scientific American Guest Blog (Deborah Blum, Speakeasy Science): A View to a Kill in the Morning: Carbon Dioxide
39. Scientific American Guest Blog (Andrea Kuszewski, The Rogue Neuron): Could chess-boxing defuse aggression in Arizona and beyond?
40. Scientific American Guest Blog (David Manly, The Definitive Host/Lab Spaces): Mirror images: Twins and identity
41. Scientific American Guest Blog (Rob Dunn): Man discovers a new life-form at a South African truck stop
42. Scientific American Guest Blog (Jeremy Yoder, Denim and Tweed): The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Natural Selection and Evolution, with a Key to Many Complicating Factors
43. Scientific American Observations (George Musser): Free Will and Quantum Clones: How Your Choices Today Affect the Universe at its Origin
44. Skulls in the Stars ("Dr. Skyskull"): Mpemba’s baffling discovery: can hot water freeze before cold? (1969)
45. Superbug (Maryn McKenna): File Under WTF: Did the CIA Fake a Vaccination Campaign?
46. There and (hopefully) back again… (“Biochembelle”): In the shadows of greatness
47. This May Hurt A Bit (Shara Yurkiewicz): Fragmented Intimacies
48. The Thoughtful Animal (Jason Goldman): Rats, Bees, and Brains: The Death of the “Cognitive Map”
49. Uncertain Principles: Faster Than a Speeding Photon: “Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam”
50. Universe (Claire L. Evans): Moon Arts, Part Two: Fallen Astronaut
51. The White Noise (Cassie Rodenberg): How addiction feels, the honest truth