Faithful readers, welcome to our new digs here at Discover. And stalwart fans of Discover, welcome to Cosmic Variance. We are thrilled to hear that our change in color scheme portends the Death of the Blogosphere. Who knew we had such power? Blogs are yesterday’s news, anyway, but we’ll putter gamely on for a while, just to keep up appearances.
To any new readers who might wander by, feel free to poke around a bit to get a feeling for the place; the archives are accessible from the sidebar, and we also have an About page. This is an extremely bloggy blog, in the sense that we are guided by whatever we want to talk about at the moment, rather than any externally-imposed idea of what should be talked about. Everyone should read one of the following two paragraphs, but not the other one:
One of the features of Cosmic Variance is that we are all working scientists, whose main activity involves doing research. We try to bring some of the excitement and inside scoop of the research process as it occurs. True, we change things up now and then with non-scientific posts, but that’s the price you must pay to attract the eyeballs of the common folk; the meaty posts about the glory of Science will always be a mainstay (and you can even use equations!).
One of the features of Cosmic Variance is that we are all working scientists, but we are also human beings. We try to highlight the human side of the scientific enterprise as we explore the wider world of ideas. True, there are occasional technical posts about some point of current scientific contention, but that’s the price you must pay to keep your academic credibility; the playful, discursive, interdisciplinary excursions will always be the fun part of the blog.
Hope that makes everything clear.
There may be some shaking-out process as we complete the transition over to the new site, so let us know if things work less effortlessly than usual. (Some of the last few comments might have been lost — sorry about that.) We’re happy to have found a new home.
Nice! One of my favorite blogs, now under the umbrella of one of my favorite magazines! Congrats guys.
I’d like to second the complaints that the author is not listed at the top of posts.
Cosmic Variance is dead! Long live Cosmic Variance!
(The Cosmos hath given, the Cosmos hath taken away. Blessed be the variance of the Cosmos.)
Congratulations! I hope this move marks the beginning of a public revival of interest in science and technology.
Discover editorial staff:
For the record, our editorial staff is run by Satan himself, and our servers are powered by burning sacrificial animals.
You really, really need a technology upgrade and a new boss.
Can you get your new Discover overlords to add a “Posted by: ” line at the top of the post, so we don’t have to look at the end to know who we’re reading?
Also: in Firefox on Mac OS X, if I don’t have my browser window sized to fill almost the whole screen (1024×768), the text is being displayed right up against the left edge of the browser window. A few spare pixels there would be nice. (This could be a browser rendering issue, but I suspect it’s something poorly designed about the page.)
I’ll pile on with the others and request that the post author’s name goes at the top with the title. Otherwise, I wish you all happiness in your diggs.
I can only agree with previous commenters with regards to the color scheme and post author’s name, although i’m sure we’ll all get used to it regardless…
Also thanks for the tip boreds – adblock plus works like a charm.
Miss the CMB but its not the end of the Universe. Oh it has advertisements, I never noticed, I thought everyone used Adblock.
Well as long as the RSS feed keeps working I’m happy.
Discovery: fine (I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords)
ads: fine (its how things work now)
new design: unspeakably bad
For shame on that last part. Seriously; the old CV was distinctive. This look, to put it in plain internet speak, sucks.
A lot.
You should change it.
oh, I can’t use adblock, I work in a highly technical web development environment and Adblock borks some things in strange ways. But, I don’t care.
Lab Lemming, we’ve uncovered the problem with LaTeX. The procedure is no longer to begin with
; it’s to begin with $latex and end with $.
So $latex y = e^x $ becomes
$latex y = e^x $.
$latex D=N(e^{lambda t}-1)$
Woo-hoo!
Aesthetics matter.
A third for getting the author’s name at the top of the post.
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