Wampum

How can Jane Hamsher not be nominated? Her writing keeps me going. It's like having an award for best Punk Rock Writing and failing to nominate Joe Strummer...

Please correct the omission.

I like Jane a lot too, but did I actually miss your nomination for her somewhere, as I went back through all threads and could not find one? I had one for Redd specifically. I compiled what I got in December.

(Edited after I re-checked all comment threads.)

Two questions. First, how dare your kids, like mine, insist on eating every single day?

Second, who is joe Strummer?

I'll just fire up the WayBack Machine, set the dial for mid-December, 2005, when the nominations were open, and wrap myself in the borrowed glory of a wicked dead white guy and post a Critique of Pure Nomination, or not, depending on whether I was too preoccupied playing air guitar to the Clash. Or the Sex Pistols. Or ... WayBackThen.

Dude. You missed the boat. Try not to miss the vote too.

A correction: Bean hasn't blogged on "Alas" for quite a while - certainly not in 2005. So - much as it pains me to say it - her "best writing" nomination should be credited to her own blog, http://coolbeanscool.blogspot.com/ , and not to "Alas, a Blog."

Thanks, Barry. Fixed. I should have caught that myself.

Yo, babearama...

You guys keep using MLW's OLD linkage.

it's strictly www.myleftwing... etc now.

No Soapblox in the links. Slows it up.

Mwah.

MSOC

Okay, you only did it the ONE time.

Just keeping you MLWers on your toes ;-)

Please add Jesus's General (patriotboy.blogspot.com) to your list of contenders. His is one of the sites that keeps me from losing my mind.

I think The War in Context http://warincontext.org should be included in the "wider recognition" category. This guy covers the Middle East so well he wins praise from journalists covering that beat.

Please people, the nominations are long over.

Just wanted to mention that my blog was nominated for most humorous blog but didn't show up on that nomination list:

Circle Jerk at the Square Dance: http://cjsd.blogspot.com

Thanks!

(Sorry about that. Will fix it right away.)

There seem to be several blogs that were nominated for Best Expert but don'tappear on the list -- Lawrence Velvel, Cosmic Variance, Daily DeLay, 3Bulls...

Was there some extra filter applied to determine if someone was an "expert"?

Velvel and Cosmic Variance were oversights - I thought I had included them, but I had a point where my machine crashed and I lost a few. I'll add them. Daily Delay, which I often read, I thought of more as a "single issue", but I guess it could be considered "expert". As far as 3 Bulls - I couldn't figure out from the blog or the "About" their expertise.

The "filter" is essentially, would the blogger be considered an "expert" in that field outside of the blogosphere and/or do they make their living in that field? For example, I might believe I have the inside angle on Abramoff and Indians here in the blogosphere, but in the real world, I work either as an ethnohistoric archaeologist or political operative, depending upon mood and opportunity. Unless we find out Abramoff was dealing in stolen NAGPRA grave goods (and used the money to fund Tom Delay's 2004 field campaign), I can't really claim to be an "expert" now, can I?

I've actually made a NAGPRA arrest. You can expert on grave goods, but I got dibs on the arrest expertise. What is "money"? Who is "Delay"?

Mr. Koufax, I just wanted to bring it to your attention that a blog I nominated for "Most Deserving of Wider Recognition" has inadvertently been left out of your list of nominees: The Dees Diversion (formerly named DED Space). Please don't leave this worthy candidate out of the loop! Thanks.

If I may quote THYCWOTI (The Hottest Young Conservative Writer On The Internets/Yosef):
"I nominated Three Bulls! for the Best Expert Blog for, get this, our work as scientists who shoot lasers at crystals in the Puget Sound while solving differential equations on diagrams of the cellular structure!"

It kind of a specialist niche, because it also involves Killer Android Chipmunks with lazer eyeballs. Since no one else really covers it, I can understand how it is hard to compare our work to others, we have a much lower bar. Yosef also manages to "web log" using Windows 95. If that doesn't require expertise, I don't know what does.

I'm very disappointed that you don't regard Three Bulls! an "expert" blog. I've not only found it to be the only reliable source of the latest information on non-conventional structural biology techniques, such as shooting LASERS rather than X-Rays at macromolecular (i.e. protein) crystals for diffraction analysis, but I, as well as many of my colleagues in this relatively esoteric field, regard it as a "must visit" site for scientists and those with a scientific "bent" to learn the latest scientific "lingo", as it were.

And it appears to be the only blog that doesn't discriminate against cats, as long as they can type.

I hope you'll reconsider your decision.

Just a quick note regarding our nomination. I believe we were nominated under the Group Blog header, but we ended up under the Blog Community header instead. It's really up to you if you want to change us over to Group Blog. Quite honestly, our site meets the Group definition perfectly, and doesn't meet the Community definition at all.

Again, it's up to you. You seem to genuinely want to have small errors like this brought to your attention, which is the only reason I did so. I hesitated based on how busy you obviously are right now, and honestly, it's not a big deal to us.

No matter what you do, thanks for the extreme efforts involved in pulling together and running the awards. I hope you're able to get past the computer problems.

Tom from the Two Percent Company
http://www.twopercentco.com/

(Tom - I hope never to be too busy to respond to such a gracious request. I know I was torn when trying to decide (as you were nominated also for community), so I will certainly go with your opinion and switch categories - MBW)

who is joe strummer?

who is john lennon?