Carnal Carnival, meta blogging, links.

I'm pleased to announce that I had a hand in inspiring a new blog carnival: The Carnal Carnival. With such wonderful theme topics as poop, pee, blood, and barf, you can surely understand why I'd be interested in being part of such a project. Actually I'm not so sure about the barf one... But, anyway, the first month's theme is poop, hosted by Bora, and you have about ten days to email your submissions (they don't have to be recent posts, dig as far back into your archives as you'd like) to carnivalcarnal AT gmail DOT com. I'll be hosting December's edition of the carnival, which will be about all things related to blood.

Hannah at Culturing Science posted today about being a young and/or inexperienced science blogger (inspiring a follow-up post by fellow FoS-er, Lab Rat), a category which I suppose I fall into. I don't really consider myself at a disadvantage as a science blogger just because the only initials after my name right now are B.Sc. Many of my favorite blogs are written by current grad students or very recent graduates. Having a master's or Ph.D. doesn't automatically make you all of a sudden a better writer or scientist, it just means you've progressed far enough to jump through certain administrative hoops and logged a lot of hours working on your thesis or dissertation. I understand that, being young, I'm going to make mistakes, but if you don't get things wrong once in a while, you'll never learn. Hannah and Lab Rat both also tagged me for the blogging with substance meme, which I've answered previously here.

Finally, a couple of interesting links: Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics has a really excellent post about the diversity of scientists on television, and Slate has an article on the underrepresentation of women in medical studies, an issue that I've blogged about before.