Content Roundup for November and December 2012

You may have noticed a lack of activity on this blog. I’ve been taking a break over the holidays. It was sort of a “skeptic sabbatical” to recharge my batteries and come up with a game plan for 2013. Regular posts will resume here presently.

I wasn’t totally idle during the last two months.  Not only did the Mabus story leap back into the headlines, but I was still doing Virtual Skeptics and some other stuff.  So here’s a rundown of what I did post or create during my so-called sabbatical.

Below are links to the content I’ve been involved with in the last month. It includes this blog as well as the material I post on other blogs, my podcasting activities, my best posts on Twitter as well as key shout-outs or mentions elsewhere.

In an effort to practice what I preach, I also document on a monthly basis what my contributions are to several skeptic-relevant crowdsourcing projects.

Read on to see what you might have missed…

Blogging & other Writing

Here were my blog posts this month.

Mentions and links elsewhere:

Podcasting & Video

I contributed segments to these episodes of Skepticality and Virtual Skeptics:

  • November 7: Virtual Skeptics Episode #13 – I talked about Balancer and Pundit Tracker.
  • November 13: Skepticality #195: Fake Science 101 – Fishbarrel, PunditTracker & TruthMarket
  • November 14: Virtual Skeptics Episode #14 – I talked about my skeptic sabbatical.
  • November 21: Virtual Skeptics Episode #15 – The second arrest of David Mabus.
  • December 5: Virtual Skeptics Episode #17 – Using Lanyrd to find skeptic events in 2013.
  • December 12: Virtual Skeptics Episode #18 – Dead people are liking things on Facebook.
  • December 19: Virtual Skeptics Episode #19 – AVN must change it’s name, Skepticamps in 2013.

Mentions on other podcasts and webcasts:

  • December 29: Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe #389: Year in Review – Very flattered to be named one of the best skeptics of 2012 by the panel.

Social Media

I posted on Twitter:

  • 230 regular tweets, including:
    • 8 “What’s the harm in…?” stories
    • 62 daily skeptic history facts
    • 61 retweets of other people
  • Plus 107 replies to other Twitter posts for a total of 337 tweets

Here are highlights, the tweets that were retweeted and favorited the most.

(9 retweets, 1 favorite)

(9 retweets, 4 favorites)

(9 retweets)

I don’t do political comments, but on US Election Night I couldn’t resist this:

(16 retweets, 1 favorites)

This one got the Penn Jillette boost:

(16 retweets, 12 favorites)

(8 retweets, 3 favorites)

A notable moment in November:

(13 retweets, 3 favorites)

(15 retweets, 2 favorites)

(16 retweets, 1 favorite)

(8 retweets, 2 favorites)

(5 retweets, 6 favorites)

(8 retweets, 2 favorites)

This one didn’t make the normal required 9 clicks but it made me happy:

(5 retweets, 1 favorite)

(9 retweets, 5 favorites)

(7 retweets, 2 favorites)

To get these as I post them, you should follow me on Twitter here.

Crowdsourcing Contributions

Here were my contributions to various projects in November and December:

I contributed 6 edits to Wikipedia.

I rated 3 sites on Web of Trust but left no new site scorecard comments.

I made 6 edits to the Skeptic History database. It now has 1,432 items in it.

I added no new rebuttals to RBUTR.

I made over 1,300 edits on Lanyrd – my guide to skeptic conferences (link in the sidebar at right) now contains 92 events, 24 coming up this year and 68 past events.  (The past events help complete speaker’s profiles with their past appearances, videos and so on).

And so begins 2013…