A number of people have asked me about the little moon widget you can see at the foot of this blog, which shows the phases of the moon in real-time. In fact, the image is generated by the U.S. Navy's Time Service Department.

These lunar phase images were created by R. Schmidt from ray-traced images of the Moon. A Clementine spacecraft mosaic of the lunar surface was mapped onto a sphere, and scenes were rendered as a virtual Sun "orbited" the Moon. The depiction of lunar surface features suffers geometric distortion but the terminator is correct with respect to the spherical Moon.

So as you may have noticed, I've redesigned the site somewhat. There are some bits that work better than others, so I'll probably be tweaking it a bit this week, especially the side bars that I think look a bit harder to read now. But the overall layout is a little cleaner, with a menu bar above that you can use to access blogs by specific writers or on certain topics.

Please direct the inevitable deluge of complaints and criticisms into the comments below!

ETA: The design may switch back and forth as I work out the bugs, apologies in advance!

In the aftermath of major blogging landmarks like the BCA Statement takedown and the Jeni Barnett affair, I've received numerous e-mails on the subject of how it is that we manage to coordinate so much action so quickly on these key issues. Many thoughtful alternative medicine practitioners and anti-vaccination activists have speculated that there might be more behind some of our blogs than meets the eye... drug company funding perhaps, or a network of sock puppets created by Ben Goldacre. Well today, for the first time ever, I'm going to blow the lid off the whole skeptical blogging scene, and expose the secret cabal that runs the "Bad Science Community."

I'm overhauling the site theme now, with the aim of making things simpler, cleaner, easier to navigate, and more readable. This is the first theme I've created myself; It's a bit of a work in progress, and there are a bunch of things I'm not quite happy with yet, so please leave any comments and feedback you have here. Also, try out the new menu bar to find posts on particular topics, or by particular guest bloggers.

Argh! And we're down again, after the site borked itself. Damnit.