I despise negativity. I like to be realistic and pragmatic and all that stuff, but having a positive attitude is something that is absolutely required, IMHO.

You guys get me when I am pissed off, a lot of the times. That tends to get me inspired to write. I am really not a pissy person at all. Although who among us is not grumpy sometimes?

When it comes to work and family and friendship and all of that, positivity is the only way to go.

It seems in the blogsphere that people tend to be extremely hard on each other (me included, of course). It can be emotionally taxing when people beat on you and the overall harshness of the debate can be a bit much at times. Lord knows I can dish it out and, for the most part, I think, take it. Text, even with liberally sprinkled smilies, just can’t communicate good natured ribbing very well. Attempts to be polite (as I learned) can be taken as condescension. All in all it seems sometimes that all of our guns have hair triggers, ready to rip new assholes.

No real point here. I do try to be positive and conciliatory on my blog at times, but mostly I write when I get annoyed. So that is a selection effect.

PZ said:

<blockquote…the creationist camp thinks the rhetoric of loud poseurs ignorant of biology, like Ann Coulter, constitute “facts,” while the serious research of thousands of biologists, of which they have no knowledge, is not only a matter of mere opinion, but is false. It’s not just backwards, it’s insanely backwards.

Yes. Insane is the term you are looking for. I beat and beat and beat this dead horse, as does PZ and the whole free-thinking gang and it just seems to make the creationists close their eyes and ears even more.

THIS IS SCIENCE. ANY ARGUMENT MADE AGAINST EVOLUTION NEEDS TO BE WELL-RESEARCHED, PEER-REVIEWED AND PUBLISHED! Op-ed pieces or bullshit like Coulter’s book do not qualify. Do the science or shut the fuck up.

These idiots SO want to believe that God waved a magic wand that they will reject the hundreds of thousands of papers written by PhD’s over the last century that clearly and thoroughly support evolution.

Disclaimer: I am not calling religious people idiots. I am calling creationists idiots and I’m calling people colossal idiots that think that a century of good science is a war against God by a bunch of godless liberals. This debate has nothing to do with God. It’s a debate about science. If you have an alternative scientific theory, publish it. These weak, redundant and unsupported jabs at evolution are desperately lame.

Rocketboom loses its famous face

I find this amusing. Rocketboom is big. They are on the cusp. They are like a band that just got a huge record deal and then breaks up before they make the record. It is dumb and dumber in vlogdom.

This relates to the overall odd thing about the blogsphere: most people do not have a business attitude when they start these endeavors. They just sort of fall into it. Being a partner in a business is hard. It takes more loyalty than a marriage. It takes a stubborn commitment to each other. It takes a lot of trust, too. It also takes money and a realistic view of how to sustain and grow the business.

I’m sure Amanda and Andrew will do fine. But it just illustrates the dangers of starting a business without thinking about it as a business. As the stakes go up, the cracks begin to show.