Just updated WordPress, the software behind the site. I’ve checked everything I can think of, and it all seems to work. If something’s not as you expected, just holler.
I’m blushing. Luigi unavailable for comment
One great resource for doing that is the Swedish-based Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, which I recently added to my blog diet. Many of the stories you’ll find there have been written up elsewhere (often on Worldchanging), but I don’t know of any other news-aggregator-style blog that covers the subject so well. If you’re into this subject, you should be reading it.
Thanks to Alex Steffen at WorldChanging, to which I have long subscribed. Seriously, it’s always nice to be appreciated.
p.s. Alex, You can’t believe everything you read in a domain name.
Mapping
As Luigi pointed out, we have a new facility here: mapping. Our idea is to add more value to the posts, by making it easy to see where on Earth they relate to. And by the same token, you can click on the Map page and see all the geo-referenced posts. ((For some reason that I have not been able to figure out, the map is centred on Nigeria, which was the very first post I tagged. At least, it is here. But you can zoom out and drag the map around to find the region you are interested in, so I’m not too bothered.))
We won’t be tagging the little Nibbles, and we aren’t too sure how we are going to cope with single stories that refer to lots of places. Maybe tag just one, maybe think of something else. But for now we think this is, as the young people say, wicked cool, and we hope you find it useful.
As to how I did it, I didn’t have to do very much. The blogging software we use, WordPress, has brilliant people writing plug-ins that add all sorts of functionality. All I did was add one of those — GeoMashup by Dylan Kuhn — and then figure out how to get it to display here. There’s a lot more we could do to improve the map page … and maybe we will.
Meanwhile, I cannot for the life of me figure out why the Map link from Luigi’s post on those long-crowing chickens goes to the right place, but does not show a pin. Most mysterious. some of the others aren’t showing pins either. I need to investigate. So I investigated, and it seems there’s nothing wrong after all. Must be some kind of browser cache voodoo. Enough.
Descendant from a Tangled Bank
Welcome to anyone sent here by the estimable Derwin Darwin II’s time-travelling Tangled Bank blog carnival. In addition to the ag-ec posts we wanted people to see and comment on, he’s individuated a few posts that might be of wider interest to the community here. First off, Larry Moran’s two-part series on penicillin resistance: before 1960 and after 1960. I’m never too sure whether to delight in the diversity of useful organisms that produce antibiotics, or tremble at the waste of bacterial (and not just bacterial) sensitivity that intensive and simple agriculture causes.
There’s a questionable rant about rice engineered to express cholera antigens from S.A. Smith.
Thinkevolution.net has a personal take on the bee shortage and colony collapse disorder. Her dad is a beekeeper.
And the chicken — a species close to my heart — gets a good going over at Matt’s Behavioral Ecology Blog.
Thanks to Greg Laden for giving Derwin Darwin II the space to blog.
Pardon our appearance
Oh no! Something has gone horribly wrong. Content has vanished without trace from our new improved look. I’m working on it. Or rather, I will be later in the day. Sorry.
Later, that same night …Â
OK, we’re more or less back in business here. Still some tweaking and such to do — header pictures, for one thing — but basically fine. And it has prompted us to take a step towards something we’ve been discussing for a while: a three column layout. Or maybe everyone hates that idea? ((Testing the footnotes))