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Blog housekeeping

Tornadoes

I had planned on posting about this last night, but a late night in the O.R. kept me from it. Consequently, Chad beat me to it, but better late than never, I say.

I join Chad in apologizing to my readers for the tornado ad that started running on ScienceBlogs earlier this week and includes a Flash animated tornado that flies over the page. I don’t mind advertising. Really, I don’t. After all, something has to pay for ScienceBlogs, and, as much as I like to think my writing is good, I doubt that many people would pay Seed for the privilege of reading it. However, I detest web ads that interfere with content, and ads that animate over the text of a web page almost always do just that. Consequently, I was not at all pleased the first time I saw that tornado. Not only is it distracting and annoying, but, as Chad points out, it destroys the functionality of any links that it happens to “fly” over in Safari and, from what I’ve heard, a couple of other browsers. When that happens, you have to refresh the page to get the links to work again, but if you do you’d better be fast about clicking on the links, because the tornado will fly over them again shortly after you refresh. (The mechanism that’s supposed to keep it from repeatedly doing that that doesn’t seem to work that well.) I assure you that the reaction among us ScienceBloggers has been nearly universally negative.

Please feel free to leave your comments about the ads right here. All I ask is that you refrain from profanity.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

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