The Evil Monkey has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from a southeastern university. After a postdoctoral nightmare of Inquisitorial proportions, he is currently working in a laboratory and teaching at a local community college. He is still not sure why he wrote this paragraph in the third person, and for that reason is beginning to doubt his sanity. How many freakin' people can fit into his head, anyway? No wait, my head. Oh crap.
Scicurious is a graduate student wrestling with a PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology at a southern institution. She is a nerd, a geek, and also a dork, which takes up a lot of her free time. She sees nothing wrong with talking about herself in the third person, and wonders why Evil Monkey is so freaked out about it.
...and they shall have one!! The question:
How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically?...
Well the answer is... we don't!!! I'm definitely not going to be one of SEED's most prolific bloggers, but I would bet that most of us don't find the time, we make the time. Unfortunately this time may come at the expense of spouses, kids, hanging out with friends, exercise, fishing, whatever.
So perhaps the better question is... why do we do it? I can't speak for everybody, but I do it because this is one way I can repay the taxpayers. They shell out the bucks so that we can answer questions and solve problems for them, from idiosyncrasies of the quantum world to tackling major health crises. Some of the answers raise more questions, and unfortunately most problems don't get solved without significant investment of resources over the course of years or decades. The way I see it, the public deserves to know what they're paying for in the interim. After all, a deeper understanding of the world is the gift that keeps on giving, and it is only a matter of time until somebody takes the knowledge we've given them and invents a radical new technology that creates new markets, new jobs, and hopefully increases our quality of life.
Actually I suspect that some bloggers like PZ may actually have an easier time... as he is tenured faculty (you are tenured, right PZ?), his lesson plans are already laid out and his blogging interests may in fact serve to augment them when he updates them annually. Maybe I'm dead wrong, and if so I'm going to have to determine his secret. I'd buy him a beer but driving all the way to Morris for Drinking Liberally seems rather insane.
Comments
Tenured, classes all laid out (although that's about to change: I just got assigned the job of throwing out our first semester intro bio course and rebuilding it from the ground up), and yeah, science blogging is basically formalizing lecture and reference notes.
There are a few other secrets, but that'll have to wait until I answer this question myself.
Posted by: PZ Myers![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 15, 2006 10:46 PM
Intriguing. I'll have to watch you like a hawk, ye wizened blogmaster.
Posted by: Neurotopia | June 15, 2006 11:39 PM