APOD in running for 4th Annual 3 Quarks Daily prize

[owlice]

3 Quarks Daily is holding their 4th annual contest for the best blog and online writing in the category of science. This APOD is among the nominees, and voting is now open.

[RJN]

Here are the voting results, collected on the web from http://www.3quarksdaily.com/ at about 2 am this morning, when the polling were supposed to be closed already! I am sorry that I can't post the links -- to find those and read entries, please see the above post and links and sub-links therein. My understanding is that the top 20 popularity list is now composed, which plays a part in the creation of the short list picked by 3QuarksDaily editors, from which the winners are chosen by Sean Carroll of the Cosmic Variance blog. Note that Sean's blog entry tied for third place in the 2011 competition, even though that blog entry did not place in the top 20 in that year's initial popularity contest. So really any entry in this list can still win, and popularity may only be weakly correlated with the strength of the science writing. There are many really good entries!

Results:

13.7: Physics Vs. Philosophy: Really?:
0.35% (9 Votes)

3 Quarks Daily: In the Kingdom of Decay:
1.46% (38 Votes)

Above the Market: We Suck at Math:
5.32% (138 Votes)

Accidental Blogger: Psychology's Quest for Scientific Respectability:
0.96% (25 Votes)

Aetiology: Hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS): history and implications:
0.12% (3 Votes)

Alien Plantation: Agave de Mayo:
0.15% (4 Votes)

Amy Shira Teitel: Was NASA’s First Launch Delay its Most Significant?:
4.93% (128 Votes)

Antimatter: A tribute to Stephen Hawking:
0.39% (10 Votes)

Astrobites: Let’s Lasso Us Some Space Rocks: Asteroid Mining And You:
1.04% (27 Votes)

Astrobites: The WISE way to deal with 2.7 million images: a public data release:
0.15% (4 Votes)

Astrobites: This star lives in exciting times, or, How did Betelgeuse make that funny shape?:
0.08% (2 Votes)

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Red Aurora Over Australia:
14.14% (367 Votes)

Azimuth: Information Geometry:
0.04% (1 Votes)

Backreaction: The hunt for the first exoplanet:
0.73% (19 Votes)

Baloon Juice: I’m Shocked! Shocked To Find That There Are Neutrinos Going On Here:
0.04% (1 Votes)

Basic Space: Supernova turns inside out and kicks neutron star:
0.23% (6 Votes)

Beach Chair Scientist: An important call for more forage fish to remain in the sea:
0% (0 Votes)

Big in Science: Why Your Next Doctor May Be A Computer:
0.23% (6 Votes)

Boing Boing: What Fukushima can teach us about coal pollution:
0% (0 Votes)

Boundary Vision: Do scientific explanations have to ruin wonder? Stargazing and more with songwriter Jim Fitzpatrick:
2% (52 Votes)

Cedar's Digest: Purple Doesn’t Exist: Some thoughts on Male Privilege and Science Online:
2.04% (53 Votes)

Context and Variation: Vaginal pH Redux: Broader Perspectives on Douching, Race… and Lime Juice:
0.73% (19 Votes)

Cool Physics: Einstein, Darwin & the 21st Century...:
0.08% (2 Votes)

Cosmology Science Blog: Cosmic Microwave Angular Resolution Surprise:
2% (52 Votes)

Cosmology Science Blog: Observation of two early yet mature galaxies: Rare objects or is Big Bang model inaccurate?:
0.92% (24 Votes)

Delfikorakle: Pizza and Panini:
0.08% (2 Votes)

Denim and Tweed: Baby steps versus long jumps: The "size" of evolutionary change, and why it matters:
0.39% (10 Votes)

Disease Prone: Antibiotics with a side of steak:
0.04% (1 Votes)

Do the Math: Can Economic Growth Last?:
0.23% (6 Votes)

Doing Good Science: Methodology versus beliefs: What did Marcus Ross do wrong?:
0.08% (2 Votes)

Don't Mind the Mess: The Whole Truth About Autism:
0.08% (2 Votes)

Double X Science: From alchemist to chemist: What kind of chemistry is that?:
0% (0 Votes)

Double X Science: Pregnancy 101: Peas made me puke, but not just in the morning:
0.15% (4 Votes)

Double X Science: Real science vs. fake science: How can you tell them apart?:
0.27% (7 Votes)

Double X Science: The path from science to alarmism: How science gets twisted before it gets to you:
0.04% (1 Votes)

Eastern Blot: Make history, not vitamin C: 0.23% (6 Votes)

Empirical Zeal: The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains:
4.97% (129 Votes)

Empirical Zeal: What it feels like for a sperm, or how to get around when you are really, really small:
2% (52 Votes)

Eruptions: The Mysterious Missing Eruption of 1258 A.D.:
0.15% (4 Votes)

Eruptions: The Right (and Wrong) Way to Die When You Fall Into Lava:
0.39% (10 Votes)

From the Lab Bench: Old News for Carbon Dioxide, New Threats for Climate Change:
0.12% (3 Votes)

Gaines, On Brains: Seeing into the future? The neuroscience of déjà vu:
2.31% (60 Votes)

Galileo's Pendulum: Is Cosmology in Shambles?:
0.39% (10 Votes)

Good Thinking: Mammograms and PSA Tests: What Your Doctor Needs to Tell You:
0% (0 Votes)

If We Assume: Plots as Art:
0.65% (17 Votes)

Information Processing: "Only he was fully awake":
0% (0 Votes)

Inkfish: Life Advice: Think More about Death:
2.16% (56 Votes)

Inspiring Science: Through the gut: how plants in food regulate genes in animals:
0.19% (5 Votes)

Katie Ph.D.: What exactly is a genetically modified plant?:
0.73% (19 Votes)

Not Exactly Rocket Science: A world within a tumour – new study shows just how complex cancer can be:
0.19% (5 Votes)

Nottingham Science Blog: Interview : Prof Alfonso Aragón-Salamanca:
0% (0 Votes)

Of Particular Significance: What’s a Proton, Anyway?:
0.31% (8 Votes)

Percolator: Birds Lose Their Magnetic Maps as Scientists Reverse Direction:
0% (0 Votes)

Physics Buzz Blog: Physicist Uses Math to Beat Traffic Ticket:
0.04% (1 Votes)

Puff the Mutant Dragon: Do vaccines contain toxic chemicals?:
0.08% (2 Votes)

Quantum Diaries: Helicity, Chirality, Mass, and the Higgs:
0.23% (6 Votes)

Resonaances: How to make a line:
0.08% (2 Votes)

Science Sushi: Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture:
2.20% (57 Votes)

Science Sushi: Time – and brain chemistry – heal all wounds:
2.81% (73 Votes)

Scientific American: Why Is Memory So Good and So Bad?:
0% (0 Votes)

Scientific American Guest Blog: Catalytic Clothing–Purifying Air Goes Trendy:
0.04% (1 Votes)

Scientific American Guest Blog: Reflections on biology and motherhood: Where does Homo sapiens fit in?:
0% (0 Votes)

Scientific American Guest Blog: The educational value of creative disobedience:
7.05% (183 Votes)

Scientific American Guest Blog: Too Good to Be True: Sea Mammals, Plastic Pollution and a Modern Chimera:
0.04% (1 Votes)

Scientific American Guest Blog: Trayvon Martin’s Psychological Killer: Why We See Guns That Aren’t There:
2.93% (76 Votes)

Scientific American Guest Blog: Your Appendix Could Save Your Life:
0.12% (3 Votes)

Sentence First: "Who to follow" is grammatically fine:
0.04% (1 Votes)

Shtetl-Optimized: My visit to D-Wave: Beyond the roast-beef sandwich:
0% (0 Votes)

Side Effects: Antidepressant Withdrawal Syndrome: Findings, Recommendations, and Resources:
0.46% (12 Votes)

Skulls in the Stars: The secret molecular life of soap bubbles (1913):
0.15% (4 Votes)

Southern Fried Science: Climbing Mount Chernobyl:
0.15% (4 Votes)

Starts With A Bang!: So, you’ve learned that the Sun is going to explode…:
0.27% (7 Votes)

Starts With A Bang!: The Most Astounding Fact About The Universe:
0.39% (10 Votes)

Starts With A Bang!: Why is there something instead of nothing?:
0.39% (10 Votes)

Talk Nerdy To Me: My Evening With Stephen Hawking:
0.04% (1 Votes)

The Beast, the Bard, and the Bot: Are Humans Still Evolving?:
0.08% (2 Votes)

The Crux: What Is the “Bible of Psychiatry” Supposed to Do? The Peculiar Challenges of an Uncertain Science:
0.04% (1 Votes)

The Dayside: Sine-wave speech recognition in Mandarin:
0% (0 Votes)

The Hammock Physicist: Einstein Got It Wrong, Can You Do Better?:
0.35% (9 Votes)

The Loom: Neanderthal Neuroscience:
0.23% (6 Votes)

The Mermaid's Tale: Forget bipedalism. What about babyism?:
2.50% (65 Votes)

The Neurocritic: Little Evidence for a Direct Link between PTSD and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy:
0.15% (4 Votes)

The Neurocritic: The Disconnection of Psychopaths:
0.31% (8 Votes)

The Primate Diaries: Freedom to Riot: On the Evolution of Collective Violence:
2.27% (59 Votes)

The Scorpion and the Frog: Decisions, Decisions:
0.42% (11 Votes)

The Scorpion and the Frog: Snakes Deceive to Get a Little Snuggle:
2.31% (60 Votes)

The Scorpion and the Frog: The Love Hormone of 2012:
1.04% (27 Votes)

The Scorpion and the Frog: Why This Horde of Idiots is No Genius:
0.69% (18 Votes)

The Sky's the Limit: Saturn's Rings Explained...:
1.66% (43 Votes)

The Spectrum of Riemannium: Time of Flight:
2.12% (55 Votes)

The Stochastic Scientist: Carbon monoxide as therapy?:
0.81% (21 Votes)

The Thoughtful Animal: Can You Hear Me Now? Human Noise Disrupts Blue Whale Communication:
0.23% (6 Votes)

The Thoughtful Animal: Contagious Yawning: Evidence of Empathy?:
0.81% (21 Votes)

The Thoughtful Animal: Four Loko Is Just Like The Copenhagen Philharmonic:
0.15% (4 Votes)

The Thoughtful Animal: Hyenas Give Up Eating Garbage for Lent, Hunt Donkeys Instead:
0.04% (1 Votes)

The Thoughtful Animal: Music and Memory: Robert Sherman, Voice of Your Childhood, Dies at 86:
0.08% (2 Votes)

The Trenches of Discovery: The War of the Immune Worlds:
1.77% (46 Votes)

Theobrominated: How can a flower like this exist?:
0.04% (1 Votes)

Three-toed Sloth: In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You:
0.04% (1 Votes)

Uncertain Principles: Watching Photons Interfere: “Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer”:
0.12% (3 Votes)

viXra log: Higgs Boson Live Blog: Analysis of the CERN announcement:
2.62% (68 Votes)

Weird Things: Oh quantum causality, we hardly knew ye…:
0.15% (4 Votes)

Where is Yvette?: Artie Aardvark’s Amazing ASTRON Adventures:
0.08% (2 Votes)

Why We Reason: Does Pinker’s “Better Angels” Undermine Religious Morality?:
4.20% (109 Votes)

World Science Festival: E.O. Wilson’s Controversial Rethink of Altruism:
2.50% (65 Votes)

Write Science: Pigeons, the Internet, and the Meaning of Science:
0.12% (3 Votes)

Write Science: Smartphones and the Enduring Silence of the Cosmos:
0.31% (8 Votes)

Total Votes: 2596
esurveyspro.com

In sum I would like to thank APOD's readers again for sticking with us and demonstrating that old APOD remains relatively popular even in today's web world. The winners will be announced on or around 2012 June 25. - RJN

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdail ... -2012.html

[geckzilla]

I think I made it through a whole 3.5 articles and didn't vote because of that. Such a long list!

[RJN]

The list of nine finalists can be found here: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdail ... lists.html . Oh well, the APOD nominated is not on the list. At least this list is more manageable to read! Thanks anyway to the judges and good luck to the rest of the entrants.
- RJN