Dave Appell: remember the messenger

David Dobbs has a long measured response up to David Appell's strange argument that Pepsi's "free speech" rights were violated during the recent ScienceBlogs kerfuffle, by way of which he casts some aspersions on the character and agenda of specific bloggers. Here's the thing about Appell, he has a long history of confused and surly criticisms and interrogations of others and himself. I know that history because I first became familiar with Dave Appell in May of 2002. In between pointers and commentary on physical science, his primary beat as a science journalist, he would offer some personal reflections, frustrations, and worries. I'm not big into bloggers who "overshare," especially science bloggers, so I tried to ignore that as I focused on the substance of Appell's posts. But he popped up again in subsequent years with what I felt to be peculiar and emotionally driven behavior. First, in early 2007 ...