Blog Extravaganza: The Winners

Weird anatomy, criminal confessions, and a literal basket case

Photo cred: my dad

Back in May, I announced the Experimental History Summer 2024 Blog Post Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree. The prompt was “send me a never-before-published blog post, and if I like it I’ll post about it and send you cash.”

I got 104 submissions, and reading them has been a delight. I heard from folks all over the world: professors, playwrights, programmers, reformed kleptomaniacs, several cult leaders, and even Midwesterners. Now I’m here to announce the winners!

FIRST PLACE

“We’re not going to run out of new anatomy anytime soon” by Matt Wedel

I love this post. I love it because it exemplifies the scholarly possibilities of blogging—no journal would publish something like this, and yet it ought to exist somewhere. I love it because it’s thick with expertise, but it doesn’t talk down to anyone. I love it because it oozes with both a) appreciation for its topic, and b) blood. And I love it because it provides physical confirmation that humans are weird:

This is one of those things that might seem hard to believe unless you’ve experienced it, but we humans are crazy variable under the hood. In my program we encourage the students to log interesting variations on the whiteboard in the lab, not least so that everyone can beware of the variant anatomy while studying for their practical exams. […] To a first approximation, almost every human being has at least one anatomical variation notable enough that a med student would write it on a whiteboard.

I also love it because it brings new data to the “ideas are getting harder to find” debate, which is not even really a debate, it’s just people saying “ideas are getting harder to find” and everyone else going “yes yes, they sure are.” I find this discourse so infuriating that I’ve written two posts about it, so it’s refreshing to hear from someone on the frontier of knowledge, and reassuring that his take is “there’s still lots of frontier out there.”¹ As Wedel says:

So if there are macroscopic structures awaiting discovery in humans, imagine how much more true that will be of every other species that we haven’t been studying with extreme diligence and self-interest for millennia.

Matt Wedel is “an anatomist, paleontologist, and stargazer. He teaches human anatomy at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California, does research on the evolution of dinosaurs and birds, and writes the monthly Binocular Highlight column for Sky & Telescope magazine.” He blogs at Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week.

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SECOND PLACE

“The Best Antibiotic for Acne is Non-Prescription” by Siggi Prendergast

For legal reasons, I am not personally recommending that you smear Neosporin on your face. I am recommending, however, that you read Siggi Prendergast’s account of accidentally smearing Neosporin on his face, which he claims cured his acne. This post won my heart both because it’s a real scientific report of a self-experiment, and because it begins with a criminal confession:

My skincare routine used to be a terrifying amalgam of creams, most of which were acquired by a nasty (but skillful) shoplifting addiction. I needed only around 20% of these items, which is why I would place a product in the middle of my dorm hallway when no one was looking. Everyone knew it was me so every day after, I would nearly trip over whatever product had been moved back in front of my door.

If every scientific paper was this honest, I’d read a lot more of ‘em, and we’d solve more crimes.

I asked each winner for a short bio. Here’s Prendergast’s:

Hi, I’m Siggi, the author of this piece and a second-year dance major at the University of Illinois. My blog tends to be dominated by findings in biology that can draw my frenetic attention. Ironically, the subject in recent months has been the neural correlates of that very thing, attention.

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THIRD PLACE

“Medieval Basket Weaving” by

Rebecca Darley

Darley wins the title of “cleverest conceit for a blog post”:

A few years ago, a very senior manager at my then university liked to refer in meetings to ‘Medieval Basket Weaving’ as a hypothetical example of a completely pointless course. ‘Medieval Basket Weaving’ featured regularly as shorthand for the kind of nonsense we should all be getting rid of to make sure that our departments ran efficiently (read: cheaply) and made our students into useful people. 

Needless to say, I disagreed. I’ve never actually come across a course on medieval basket weaving, at least not accredited at university level, but I find the whole notion of things that are pointless to learn or teach a bit strange, and besides, baskets are cool! I did frequently find those meetings a bit pointless, though, and when that happened, I started wondering, what would a course on medieval basket weaving actually look like?

Darley then lays out a 10-week syllabus for “Medieval Basket Weaving.”

There’s a Donald Miller quote I think about often: “Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.” That’s what Darley is doing here. You can ruin any subject by asking the wrong questions, and you can make any subject bloom by asking the right ones; a good teacher shows you the difference. Darley’s manager, on the other hand, is like a guy who thinks peanuts are disgusting because he doesn’t know how to take the shells off.

Rebecca Darley “is a historian, writer and editor. Her research focuses on the Western Indian Ocean and East Mediterranean in the first millennium CE, especially using coin evidence.” She also works as an editor, proofreader, and book coach. She blogs at

Coffee with Clio

and you can find her on LinkedIn here.

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HONORABLE MENTIONS

I couldn’t include every good submission I got, but here’s some of the best:

“Let Me Tell You a Story” by Barry Edelson

There’s an element of writing I think of as richness—you can tell there’s a depth of thinking, like the writer could have made this point ten different ways and deliberately chose this one. Edelson’s post is rich in that way.

People still put flowers on Stalin’s grave. To this day, one of history’s cruelest and most prolific mass murderers is held in high esteem by millions of Russians. As recently as a decade ago, a poll found that nearly half of the Russian people viewed Stalin’s rule as mostly positive. Say what you will about the dictator and his legacy: that is some kind of storytelling.

Barry Edelson is “the author of the online essay collection, The Pursuit of Worldliness, as well as op-ed pieces, articles and reviews for major publications. He has also written The Dream of the Prophet, a one-man play about Walt Whitman, and a trilogy of one-act satirical plays, Faith, Hope and Disparity.”

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“The Murdering Woodsman” by

Sirisha Papineni

There’s an art to the short blog post. It’s like a bit of close-up magic: you have to do the setup and complete the reveal before people walk away. Which is why it was a treat to read this short piece that seems like it’s about having tuberculosis, but ultimately isn’t:

A few years ago, I found myself exchanging stories with Lilly, a cafe owner. I work in India in the field of global health, and I mentioned how I’d been diagnosed with tuberculosis a decade ago. Her eyes lit up with surprise and a subtle delight.  “Wait--you mean consumption is a real thing?!” It was as if all the literary worlds depicted by Charles Dickens and Emily Bronte  suddenly came to life in her mind. I adored her reaction. It reminded me of a time at the airport when I stumbled upon a box of Turkish Delight (a confection I’d always believed to be fictional), and for a split second thought  “Oh my god, Narnia is real?!”

From Sirisha:  “I work in global health delivery, mostly in India and parts of Africa.  I recently founded a start-up that designs healthcare systems for Indian contexts—currently focusing on tuberculosis and trauma-related disorders. Though I spend half my time on research, my most meaningful insights have often come from understanding a singular data point and everything that shaped it to its very end. I decided to start the blog

N equals one

in this spirit.”

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“Three Days in North Korea” by Germán Reyes

Reyes’s post is sort of reverse-gonzo journalism: instead of sending an insane person to a sane place, you send a sane person to an insane place. I had no idea that you can pay for a tour of North Korea, where you can enjoy sights like this:

From the bus, we could see hundreds of people kneeling in a large square, praying and bowing. It was one of the most bizarre scenes I have ever witnessed. Apparently, they were rehearsing for the party’s anniversary celebration—at 4:30 in the morning.

Other highlights include: drinking from a magical well outside of Kim il-Sung’s birthplace, riding carnival rides at “breakneck speeds” (a luxury afforded only to foreigners), and this:

When we asked one of our guides what they were taught about foreigners in school, she replied, “They are also human beings.”

Germán Reyes “is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, where he focuses on behavioral economics and labor economics. Learn more about his research at germanr.com.”

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“What Did I Just See You Do?” by Juozas Cernius

Cernius certainly takes the prize of Weirdest Post. That’s a selling point for me—blog posts should be weird, or else they could have been op-eds or books or nothing at all. This one gave me that horrified delight of “oh no it can’t possibly be about that OH GOSH IT’S ABOUT THAT.” Here’s a “taste”:

Your boogers, I insisted, must be very tasty if you munch them like that.

It’s not fair, by the order of the universe,  that you should be the only one to enjoy it.

Juozas Cernius is “a Canadian photographer and filmmaker with global experience in Feature Documentaries, Broadcast TV, Short Films, and numerous independent projects, often revolving around human interest stories that promote positive social and environmental change. Sometimes he writes, too.” 

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“Review: A History of Goldsberry” by

Dayten Rose

I love a post with a twist, and this one has several: you think it’s a book review, but then it’s actually a travelogue, but it’s actually a ghost story, but then it’s actually...well, I won’t spoil it.

They told that Frank Shimek was no mere store owner. His own eulogy would eventually call him the “mean miser of Macon County,” and those that knew him would say “finally” when they spoke of his demise. He fished pennies from the donation trays of gas stations. He sprayed mustard on the wood-paneled wall of a diner. He beat his kids. He hid a fortune.

Dayten Rose is a “freelance Midwestern culture writer who gets serious about fun and games on his blog

Supernormal

. He wants to go to Antarctica.”

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“Fighting the Last (Economic) War” by

Kevin Whitaker

Whitaker’s post is a great example of an underused blog format: the short book review, where you draw a few interesting bits out of a book, add some insight to them, and then get outta there, ‘cause there’s a whole lotta books to read.

As someone who came of political age in the early 2010s, I thought everything must be new and unprecedented. But bailouts, austerity, free college, disparate treatment of minority neighborhoods, private business leaders pulling strings behind the scenes, and even young protestors “occupying” public buildings were hot-button issues in New York’s fiscal crisis a generation earlier.

Kevin Whitaker is “a data scientist, writer, and researcher. He blogs about books, technology, parenting, and other random stuff at

Kaleidoscope Mind

.”

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“The Search for the Perfect Grandma” by

Thomas David Reed

Reed has that rare mix of “interesting philosophical conundrum” and “wacky caper involving magical honey that makes you go bonkers”:

I’d not heard of mad honey before but it’s basically the product of bees that feed on a particular type of rhododendron native to Nepal and some parts of Turkey. Mad honey contains grayanotoxins, which can cause hallucinogenic effects as well as euphoria, dizziness and nausea.

[…]

One afternoon, Kyleb decided the time had come and ate several spoonfuls of the prodigal honey whilst at home with his grandma. The problem: he chose the wrong grandma. Inexplicably, Kyleb took the mad honey while chilling with his white evangelical Christian grandma, not his here’s-a-powerful-drug-for-you-to-try-honey Nepalese grandma.

Tom Reed “likes to write, read and think about AI and the history of philosophy. He lives and works in the UK.” He writes

Thomas’s Substack

.

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A CLOSING EXHORTATION

Last thing. I got a lot of notes from folks who were like “I’ve been thinking of starting a blog, but I keep hesitating!” Some of those folks are among the winners! Blogging ain’t for everybody, but a lot of people seem to get close to starting one, and then they stop for bad reasons. If that’s you: don’t do that! This is your push! Post your stuff!

People get hung up because they think there are rules to this kind of thing, like “you have to post all the time.” Nah dude, post once a decade if you want to—it’s not like there’s Blog Police who will show up at your door if you don’t produce enough content. I still think about a post called “Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail” and it’s from a blog that hasn’t been updated since 2017!

I get riled up about this because I’ve seen so many people say things like “wow I never thought anything would come of this silly blog thing but it’s changed my life forever for the better.” Here’s one. Here’s another. Here’s three more². Here’s mine! I recently heard from someone trying to hire a writer; I pointed him to my friend’s Substack, and he got the job. If you’re teetering on the edge of making a blog, chances are there’s more upside than you realize. It’s kinda like getting dressed up to go to a party and then you’re like “hmm maybe I’ll just stay home instead, what if I don’t like the party” but then you go to the party and have a nice time and maybe meet someone and fall in love forever. So go to the party!

And with that, I hereby call to a close the Summer 2024 Experimental History Blog Post Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree. Thanks to everyone who submitted, thank you to Violet Henriques and Slime Mold Time Mold for being a second pair of eyes on the submissions, and thank you to the paid subscribers who make both this blog and this jamboree possible. Because of you, the jamboree continues eternally in our hearts.

1. Wedel started this post in 2020, so he didn’t write it just to tickle my biases, although I do appreciate having them tickled.

2. Okay technically this is about a podcast rather than a blog, but in the Big Family of Content, blogs and podcasts are siblings.