A Question

Posted on December 26, 2006 by | 7 Comments

What is the oldest science blog?
Not medicine, not technology/gizmos/gadgets, not conservation, not nature writing, not atheism – a real science blog?

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7 responses to “A Question”

  1. Markk's avatar Markk | December 26, 2006 at 11:57 pm |

    Hmm… Park’s physics weekly predated the word blog, but that is what it was.
    I can think of any number of Computer Science type things that today would be called blogs that were from the mid 80’s – one person putting out ideas with others responding, but people weren’t thinking along those lines. When was the word blog invented?

  2. Jonathan Vos Post's avatar Jonathan Vos Post | December 27, 2006 at 1:05 am |

    It must be John Baez’s “This Week’s Finds” (for fuzzy value of week).
    See here for his home page:
    http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/
    and here for this week’s “This Week’s Finds”
    http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week243.html
    In fact, this is sometimes said to the the first blog of ANY kind!

  3. Rob Knop's avatar Rob Knop | December 27, 2006 at 2:18 am |

    Beyond the term… what are the necessary defining conditions for something to be a blog?
    One can, without much effort, trace the link between the newspaper op-ed (followed by letters to the editor that reference it) and the blogs on (say) scienceblogs.com. The former clearly isn’t a blog, the latter clearly is. But where between do you draw the line?
    One might also consider (say) the “broadsheets” of Enlightenment-era England precursors to the blog.

  4. Lukas's avatar Lukas | December 27, 2006 at 7:08 am |

    “This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics” is quite old, but I’m not sure if I’d call it a blog.

  5. Mustafa Mond, FCD's avatar Mustafa Mond, FCD | December 27, 2006 at 11:37 am |

    Hmm… Park’s physics weekly predated the word blog, but that is what it was.

    Speaking of which, I am having trouble accessing that site. Has Park packed it in, or has he been hacked?

  6. coturnix's avatar coturnix | December 27, 2006 at 2:34 pm |

    Would this count as a blog:
    http://www.hiltonpond.org/
    OK, let’s define a blog as a frequently updated web-page with the most recent updates being on top (i.e., in reverse chronological order) with a possibility for readers to leave comments on each entry.

  7. Markk's avatar Markk | December 27, 2006 at 4:27 pm |

    Re: Bob Parks – seems to be going – here is one way to get to it
    https://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=bobparkswhatsnew&D=1&F=P&H=1&O=D&T=0