The Daily Kos community can own the decision over who goes on the Quark Expeditions trip in 2010 as the official blogger. Here are several reasons why I think that you should help send me south, or, as I put it before, "Freeze Me, Please!"
Maybe you like the idea of sending a Kossack south. There are, I think, two of us entered in the contest. I hope that you'll pick my entry. I'll make sure to include Daily Kos branded gear in photos or descriptions on the trip.
Maybe you want an experienced writer and blogger going on the trip. I have been blogging since 2004 at the Austringer and the Panda's Thumb. But my online participation goes back much further. I was a Usenet talk.origins regular from 1992 to 2002. I hosted a dial-up bulletin board service, Central Neural System BBS, from 1989 to 1997. I established the FidoNet echoes for "NEURAL_NET" and "EVOLUTION". I have contributed articles to the TalkOrigins Archive. I also have book chapters in "Why Intelligent Design Fails" and "Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism".
Maybe you like the idea of sending someone who is an expert in biology, so as to get informed reports on the expedition and the wildlife encountered. My doctorate was in wildlife and fisheries sciences, and in 2001 I was awarded the Society for Marine Mammalogy's Fairfield Memorial Award for Innovation in Marine Mammal Research. That was for my work on bottlenose dolphin biosonar sound production and estimates of bioenergetics of a key process in their sound production.
Maybe you like someone who can take stunning photographs to go with the blog posts. I earned my living as a photojournalist and in the studio before getting into life science research positions. If you look at the dust cover of Lauri Lebo's "The Devil in Dover", you'll see one of my photos there. If you watched NOVA's "Judgment Day" episode on the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case, you saw another couple of my photos. I have professional digital photo gear to take along, and you can visit my photo blog to see some of my work, including a bunch of dog sport event photography.
Maybe you'd prefer to send someone who can get good recordings of penguins on the ice and underwater. I spent several years working on bioacoustic research projects, and have my own hydrophones, microphones, and field recording equipment.
Maybe you would prefer to send someone who will pair up with another worthy person, since the Quark Expeditions contest winner gets a trip for two. I will be taking my wife, Diane Blackwood, who is also a wildlife biologist who has long experience in animal behavior research, having worked with greater prairie chickens, sage grouse, wolf spiders, beluga whales, and bottlenose dolphins professionally. She has also trained horses in dressage, dogs for flyball, agility, obedience, and therapy work, and raptors as a licensed master falconer. She has taught computer programming, biostatistics, physics, artificial neural systems, and marine ecology. Her insights are valuable, and will also inform my blogging on the trip.
Maybe you prefer that the effort you spend in voting be a token of appreciation for effort in public causes. I have been a consistent public advocate of good science education since the mid 1980s, working to oppose religious antievolution efforts to inject their narrow sectarian doctrines into the public classroom. I've been the maintainer of the TalkOrigins Archive since about 2000, co-founded the Panda's Thumb weblog in 2004, and run the AntiEvolution.org website as a resource critical of the claims of the religious antievolutionists. My personal weblog, Austringer.net/wp, often carries critiques of the sham that is "intelligent design" creationism. I was a liaison in 1997 in Texas when the National Center for Science Education helped coordinate those of us in Texas who opposed the creationists when they sought to subvert the textbook selection process. An email list of mine provided the impetus for the project that delivered the book, "Why Intelligent Design Fails" in 2004. I worked for the National Center for Science Education from 2003 to 2007, and while there I helped prepare the plaintiffs' legal team for the arguments made by expert witnesses for the defense. My participation may have had a role in the withdrawal of William Dembski as a defense expert witness. I also provided a complete list of textual correspondences in drafts of the "intelligent design" supplemental textbook, "Of Pandas and People", to plaintiffs' expert witness, Barbara Forrest, helping her sink the defense claim that "intelligent design" could be separated from the "creation science" that had gone before. I founded the Florida Citizens for Science advocacy group in 2005, and helped as an adviser to them in their struggle against antievolutionists seeking to change the new Florida science standards. They were able to deny the antievolutionists, including the Discovery Institute, the changes they sought in 2008. Since 2007, I have been working on research in digital evolution using the Avida artificial life software platform. I have spent the last six months on a project to extend the capabilities of the Avida-ED educational version of Avida.
Maybe you like tales of rising above adversity, and I do that each day as an ulcerative colitis patient first diagnosed in 1983, and who had a total colectomy in 2004. My health since 2004 is much improved, and I am ready to take a trip to Antarctica. I had to decline an opportunity to go there for research in 1997 because of my chronic illness then. I'd like to take advantage of this second chance.
I hope I have convinced you that I am both capable of the blogging duties and deserving of your effort in voting. Please make sure to get in a vote before the September 30th deadline, and "Freeze Me, Please!"