Oh for crying out loud; I beg the readers not to not lecture me on whether I want to call this place a “website” or a “blog”. It’s one of my “idiosyncracies,” as Richard called them yesterday, and I really don’t appreciate lectures (often with dictionary definitions) of what a “blog” is. Some of the comments have been positively prissy, or even nasty. You can call it what you want, but for Ceiling Cat’s sake deep-six the lectures and strong-arming! I happen to think the word “blog” is hideously ugly, and prefer the classiness of “website”. Okay, gentle (and not-so-gentle) readers, let us not continue this semantic debate in the comments below, for it will not please the management.
And, if you haven’t realized the tongue-in-cheekness of my position, give yourself a humor check!
In the meantime, Richard has clarified his endorsement of this website from yesterday. From the comments on yesterday’s post:
Dawkins has put the boot in. I love that man!
awww – you love us really!
Well, everyone except the Blog Police! 🙂
Sorry about the dictionary definitions, like I said the author is king (and his word rules)
Your site, your rules. I don’t really care what it’s called, I just like it.
I suspect you didn’t actually mean that typo! 😉
My god that Dawkins guy is militant.
And strident.
+1
Lol. But strident only for those whose sensitivity goes beyond discerning to hyperactively defensive of the fundamentally indefensible.
Boots, cats, food, idiosyncratic charm and a website of WEIT. What more could one desire?
You didn’t win that $500 million lottery yesterday did you?
What more could we ask? A daily diet of WEIT thought provoking website dialog and puss & boots. Truly a fancy feast.
Forget the dictionary. If you don’t want to call it a website, not a blog, that’s fine. All blogs are websites, but not all websites are blogs.
Even wordpress now states they offer websites and blogs when they originally offered blogs only… semantic shift (evolution?) is rampant.
Cats and boots, huh?
I’ve come to suspect that the deeper symbolism behind it is Jerry’s mission to demonstrate how religious apologists are constantly pussyfooting around the real issues.
Reply
I’m more sick of commenters referring to their comments as “posts”. A post is what you’re commenting ON, people.
Or when they refer to a post as a blog. That’s even more annoying.
I do make an effort to refer to WEIT as a website whenever I mention it on my blog*. It’s simple courtesy and respect. Prof. Ceiling Cat has enriched my intellectual life in so many ways, the least I could do is use his preferred nomenclature for what is really a type of website anyway.
*Like the good professor, I too find the word ‘blog’ quite ugly, but I lack his integrity and have therefore capitulated to using it.
How about calling it a Web Log – much less ugly, and more descriptive, as well as being the origin of the species 🙂
Whatever you want to call it Jerry, I don’t think it makes a difference, just as long as you keep on writing. This website is part of my daily life. I always look forward to your posts.
Cheers!
Actually, the website/blog distinction is a marvelous way to detect newcomers to this little community.
why don’t you throw back to 1996 and call it your “home page”?
You know, I still get a kick out of the thought that Richard might actually frequent WEIT enough to recognize my name…I just wonder what (if anything) he thinks of me, if he does….
b&
Be careful what you wish for…
my guess?
He’s annoyed by your narcissistic little sig.
Knock it off, Mr. Peterson. You’re making a lot of nasty cracks around here lately.
Professor Coyne, from now on, I will think of your website as a website. 🙂
And I have to agree: “blog” is an ugly word, well-suited to a creature descending from outer space or bursting from a test-tube, but not suited for the content here.
In the words of the great Sonny Boy Williamson, “I don’t care what you call it. You can call it whatever you want to. You can call it yo’ mammy for all I care.”
We love your website and your idiosyncracies!
…including the one about calling it a website.
My real name has a diminutive form that I loathe. (You may know of another, with brothers Louie and Dewey.) Yet this nick is another, a Scottish variant that I’m very fond of. There’s no accounting for tastes, including one’s own.
Since website is just a less specific term than blog, I don’t see how people can correct you and claim you’re wrong. Someone wouldn’t be wrong if they referred to a car as vehicle, to a biologist as a scientist, or to a creationist as an idiot.
Damned god christians!
I would have thought that since the word ‘blog’ is a contraction of ‘web log’ that a blog, strictly speaking is simply a website where a person posts a brief description of their daily activities. For obvious reasons this sort of thing is not very popular so most personal websites nowadays are more eclectic and interesting than a straight blog would be.
Anyway, Jerry can obviously call WEIT whatever he likes, but if we want to get pedantic about semantics then I think you can make a case that most of the websites called blogs are actually the ones that are misnamed.
Of boots and cats there is always this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/Pussboots.jpg
People, eh? Some of them just can’t function without arbitrary externally-imposed rules.
Had some prissy little granny-brain once give me an extremely hard time about the wiki to which I occasionally contribute, because the rules of said wiki did not match those which he thought a wiki ought to have. I was threatened with legal action. I confess that I was tempted to inform him about a personal orifice that he would not be able to see visually unaided into which I would have encouraged him to insert said legal action.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
“Ceci n’est un blog.”
I heard that in the melancholic voice of Henri le Chat Noir. 🙂
+1
A boot put in, but also food for thoughts.
blog (bleurgh)
n.
A potentially sickening experience.
Derived from Grog’s famous commentary “BL, Og!” (As in “Brachiosaurus Leftovers”.)
required reading. On blogs and vomiting.
http://www.roughtype.com/?p=548
You know, my father told me that he voted for George W Bush because he couldn’t stomach voting for someone with a surname of “Gore”.
no kidding.
By analogy, how about “bsite?”