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This time around, we're talking to Doc Bushwell, Jim Fiore, and Kevin Beck of Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge.

What's your name?
Kevin: It's actually an unpronounceable rune, but I often go by Kevin Beck.

Doc Bushwell: My real name is mundane, but I don't want it to be searchable since I occasionally like to bite the corporate hand that feeds me. "Dr. Joan Bushwell" is my favorite one-time Simpsons character, and the name is worthy of a Bond girl. I began using this moniker on Kevin's long defunct message board, and it stuck. It's more acceptable than my previous nom de Net: "Samantha Janus and Her Gaping Anus."

Jim: Short, simple, easy to remember. Some of the folks at work call me "The Fire". I began to insist on this a few years ago when I discovered that there is an actor who goes by the name "The Rock". I assume his close friends just call him "The".

What do you do when you're not blogging?
Doc Bushwell: I herd a group of fiercely independent overeducated cats at a greedy pharmaceutical company, and I have the scars to prove it. I also wrangle a family of one husband and two teenagers and take pornographic photos of flowers.

Jim: I run, kayak, hike, bike, read, cook, play musical instruments, try to avoid work, bitch endlessly about politics, wax the cat, hose down the neighbors, try to build a transporter. You know, the usual stuff.

Kevin: Run (and regret running) marathons, read, write, hang out with dogs, reminisce, speculate, advise, condemn, flirt and rationalize. It's a busy life.

What is your blog called?
Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge

What's up with that name?
Doc Bushwell: I'm a devotee of pop culture, and watching "The Simpsons" on Sunday evenings is my family's equivalent of going to church. The show has plenty of references to science and scientists, including "Dr. Joan Bushwell," a spoof of the iconic Jane Goodall. Among my favorite bits of dialogue was this one between Lisa and Marge in "Simpson Safari."

Lisa: This is the place I've read about, where Dr. Bushwell lives among the chimps.
Marge: Oh, isn't that sweet? He named it after his wife.
Lisa: No, Dr. Bushwell is a woman.
Marge: Well, now I've heard everything.

This rings true to my experience as a woman scientist: "Not-a-man and surrounded by chimps."

How long have you been blogging, anyway?
Jim: Blogging, maybe 2 years, but I've been using bulletin board systems since the late 1980's.

Kevin: I've had an unruly online presence (the subtitle of my first personal page) since 1999. The format was bloglike although the software wasn't in place. I've kept and abandoned two or three other blogs that I know of since 2004, and the Chimp Refuge represents a nice intersection of the topics I tend to gravitate toward.

Doc Bushwell: I began blogging about a year and a half ago when Kevin lured me into occasional posts on his former heap o' verbiage, "Cognitive Emesis," but I have been blathering about science on message boards since the mid-90s.

Where are you from and where do you live now?
Jim: Utica, NY, at the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. Ditto.

Doc Bushwell: I am a bona fide hayseed. I grew up on a farm in east central Illinois. I have since lived in Madison, WI, Cincinnati, OH, Cambridge, MA, and now Princeton, NJ.

Kevin: Concord, N.H., home of...not much. I was a sophomore at Concord High School when one of our social-studies teachers was killed in the Challenger explosion. I was a close follower of astronomy and the space program at the time, and this was an extraordinary blow on several fronts, framing some the most lasting and vivid memories of my life.

Would you describe yourself as a working scientist?
Jim: I try to work as little as possible. As a friend of mine used to say: "It's work. That's why they call it work. If it was fun, they'd call it fun. But it's not, so they call it work." It's as good a motto to live by as any. My other favorite motto is "Fun is where you find it." Oh, and "Never stick anything larger than your elbow up your ass." That's pretty good too.

Doc Bushwell: Up until the last couple of years, I was a bench scientist. Currently, I am a middling manager who no longer gathers real data at the bench but who directs scientists much smarter than me. Add to this my constant quest to put out the fires of clusterfuckery which flame forth from upper management, and there's my work.

Kevin: In one of my most recent full-time jobs I was a research scientist by title, but in general the term "concert cellist" is actually just as apt as "working scientist." I've got plans in the works for my long-dormant physics degree that involve my more recent doings as a book editor and writer, but as with most everything I do, the picture there is not yet clear.

Any educational experiences or degrees you'd like to mention?
Jim: I'll keep my "educational experiences" private, thank you. Geez, and I had ALMOST forgotten them...

Doc Bushwell: My undergrad studies were pretty checkered and included an ill-fated stint as an architecture student between pre-med biology and botany majors. Thus, I can critically size up the aesthetics of a laboratory building. My other edumacational stuff is summarized in the "about" section of our blog.

What are your main academic interests, in or out of your field?
Kevin: What magazine is this going to be published in again?

Jim: I have an interest in digital signal processing, specifically anything that creates weird mutations of audio.

Doc Bushwell: Within my field, I am interested in enzymology and receptor biochemistry. I am especially interested in infectious disease, metabolic disorders, and neurobiology/neurochemistry. Outside my field...hmmm, well, plants n' stuff.

The last book you read?
Jim: I have a bad habit of reading more than one book at a time. The last two were Chris Mooney's "The Republican War on Science" and David Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding". Mooney's book is eye-opening yet depressing at times. Hume's work is thought provoking and filled with commas. I suspect his nickname was Santa Clause.

Kevin: "Letter to a Christian Nation." I felt the whole time as though I were slowly tamping a bunch of blasting powder into a cannon or perhaps arming a nuclear missile, although so as not to overstate the experience I should instead liken it to a five-hour orgasm. Before that it was a Jeff Foxworthy book and I've just moved on to a personal account of an accomplished female athlete with a rampant eating disorder. I read a lot.

Doc Bushwell: My reading habits are similar to Jim's. On the simultaneous docket now are and "Primates and Philosophers: The Evolution of Morality" by Frans de Waal and "The Century of the Gene" by Evelyn Fox Keller.

What is your idea of a perfect day?

Jim: I eat a lot of chocolate and don't get sick.

Kevin: One in which I can both account for everything I did and not panic over how I'm going to keep my stories straight.

Doc Bushwell: Hanging out with close friends.

What's your greatest habitual annoyance?
Jim: People who are not competent at their jobs or everyday functions (it's called a "turn signal" people, and by the way, why are you trying to do three things while driving when it's abundantly clear that you can't do ONE thing reasonably well?).Yes.

Kevin: Incurious people. Mental sloths who sell out their own intellects because it's cheap and convenient. There seems to be a lot of that these days, though I can't possibly believe that it reflects in any way on the current president. Oh yeah -- sarcasm. That one gets me too...

Doc Bushwell: The irritating predilection of Jersey folk to use the term "traffic circle." It's "rotary," damn it! "Rotary!"

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Jim: I rarely read fiction. I liked Bizzaro Superman though. And Spiderman. Johnny Quest was pretty cool too. As far as "real books" are concerned, I rather liked "Moon-Watcher" from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now there was an Australopithecus I could relate to.

Kevin: Special Agent Dale B. Cooper, Clinton "Skink" Tyree, Ignatius J. Reilly, Ben Richards, Will Hunting, Cornelius Suttree. There's a pattern there, although I defy an army of shrinks to clarify it.

Doc Bushwell: Maddy Rierdon (Lucy Lawless) from the truly superlative made-for-TV movies, Vampire Bats and Locusts. Now there was a woman scientist who kicked butt. Lessa from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern. She rode around on a white dragon and telepathically communicated with it. Imagine...straddling a big lizard that knows your thoughts almost before you do!

Your favorite heroes in real life?
Jim: The word "hero" would be too strong, but I appreciate the efforts of people like Gandhi, Newton, Einstein, et al. (for different reason of course). On a more everyday level, I have enjoyed the creative output of Frank Zappa.

Kevin: To be honest, it's probably someone I've never heard of. I kind of like it that way. Among better-known people I've actually met, Bill Rodgers would be up there. Christa McAuliffe. Carl Sagan. Peter Gabriel.

Doc Bushwell: I am far too cynical to have any "heroes," all of whom invariably have feet of Play-Doh, but there are plenty of people whom I admire. My 90-some year old mother and my (late) father are among them.

What's your most marked characteristic?
Jim: I am a 48 year old male US citizen with less than 10% body fat. In this age I think that's a relatively unique characteristic.

Kevin: My inability to adequately summarize my salient features on command or demand.

Doc Bushwell: I am an insufferable dilettante.

What's your principal defect?
Jim: PRINCIPAL defect? Now I have to RANK them??

Kevin: Dwelling on the past, zanily advance-validating an obviously uncertain future, and urinating on the present as a result. I'm an anti-spiritual being in this way.

Doc Bushwell: I must be the most boring woman on earth.

What quality do you admire most in a person?
Jim: Nothing fancy, "just being human". Odd, considering the name of the blog, don't you think?

Kevin: Self-honesty. It's so, so much harder than it seems it ought to be. Perseverance that is not blind is another one.

Doc Bushwell: An irreverent sense of humor with a healthy dose of self-deprecation.

Who are your favorite writers?
Jim: Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins. The list goes on.

Kevin: What Jim said, plus Carl Hiaasen, Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, John L. Parker, Jr.

Doc Bushwell: All of the above plus Barbara Kingsolver, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Anita Roy, and Ursula K. LeGuin

What would you like to be?
Jim: I don't know, but if it includes a license to kill, that'd be a plus.

Kevin: Able to transport myself back into my 18-year-old self, knowing what I know now (which ain't all that much, but it's all relative). Stereotypical, perhaps, but the fun we could have...

Doc Bushwell: Similarly, I would like to transfer my finely aged and experienced brain and its collected wisdom into my 18 year-old body. I was going to say that I wanted to be in the same classes as young Jim and Kevin, but that's just too incestuous. For the sake of genetic diversity, I'd hang out with the FrinkTankers and the fearsome armadillos that lurk in their trousers.