Note Status: About twelve pages, and about a third done. Objective is to get the majority of the text written tonight and cite tomorrow. I know it sounds strange, but it's sort of the "build the skeleton, then flesh it" style of writing that works for technical papers. Need more coffee. This rough draft is going to be very rough.

Momentary Query: What's going on at The Truth Laid Bear's Ecosystem? I'll admit that I don't pay much attention to my rank in his system, and only go there on the days when I'm heavily engaged/procrastinating. But it's a nifty technical achievement, and so when my curiousity about the strangeness of Pagerank is satisfied, I take a peek at how I'm doing at the Bear's.

Today I discovered I devolved, which isn't an unusual occurence: my rating on his site bounces up and down between marsupial and bird. But take a look at this:

• My graph
  
• Heidi's graph
  
• Carey's graph
  
• Crescat's graph

Each site peaks on December 30th and moves sharply downward thereafter. Sure, the graphs are entirely the same. But they do show a striking similarity. Is this a hiccup in the Bear's system, or has there been some strange shift in the fabric of the blogosphere? Inquiring minds want to know.

UPDATE AND D'OH: Not three minutes after writing this, I clicked on the homepage of the Ecosystem. I rarely check that page itself--normally I link through someone's link to the system and manuever from there. So I missed this headline:

Announcement: December 30, 2004
Major Ecosystem cleanup activities are under way. If you have a problem with your listing, now is the time to drop N.Z. Bear a line. All blogs listed in the Ecosystem will experience significant changes in link counts and ranking over the next several days. Do not be alarmed. Remain calm. All will be well!

Mystery solved in under three minutes. Indeed, it was never a mystery. Time to get back to work, then.