Blogging Darwin

John Whitfield is embarking on a quest: He's going to read On the Origin of Species by Darwin's birthday (Feb. 12). Not only that, but he's blogging about it.

Having just picked up a copy at my local half-priced bookstore--and despite being in the middle of three other books--I think I'm going to try to follow along. I can't guarantee that I'll respond to every chapter, but as I've never actually read it, I figure now's as good a time as any. If nothing else, by the end I'll at least be able to counter quote-mining creationists with "Have you actually read the book?" and not be hypocritical.

1000 words

One of my favorite lazy-Saturday-afternoon-with-a-book book series is Lillian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who.... In one of them (I can't remember which), she makes reference to an activity that the main character's English teacher used to have him do: pick a topic from a dictionary or encyclopedia and write 1000 words on that topic.

I think this is a pretty cool idea, and an interesting way to practice writing without going back over the same topics over and over again.

So, I am going to try to start doing that. I will post the results here. We'll see how it goes! With any luck, I'll learn some interesting things, and you'll get more interesting posts.

Boring First Post

Yes, boring--I have several ideas for posts, but haven't had the time to think them through. But as my blog looks incredibly weird without any posts at all, I wanted to put at least one up--just to see how it looks.

More to come later. I hope to use this blog to review books I've read; talk about interesting topics in science, grammar, and education; and generally write about anything else that strikes my fancy.