is it worth blogging about science?
one of my doubts about blogging is that it really ought to be more about science
I worry when I see my ratio of random entries creep up, fillers, random rants, political stuff
but I am not terribly interested in being a conduit for press releases, or in doing gee-whizz lay person outreach, or even in patiently explaining the basics - for one thing those niches are already filled by competent and interested bloggers
so while on my current visit to the Kavli Institute, having it as part of my task to blog an ongoing workshop on an actual focused research topic is quite interesting.
To me.
So, my choice of how to do is to do more pointers and flavour of the conversation, rather than detailed point-by-point discourse, with full cites; the cites I do put in are placemarkers and for information or by request, and are not meant to be comprehensive
I personally find it an interesting thing to do, it, to me, captures the flavour of actually doing the science - the uncertainties, the hot points, the bouncing around between issues, the tradeoffs between observations, theory and technique; the blind alleys and the non-issues and the going around in circles.
But, it is not exactly a hot button for the readers. There is a consistent and loyal readership of the Kavli stuff, but it is a small group.
A random taunt of string theorists, or political rant will easily increase the readership by a factor of 3-10.
Fortunately, I am not doing this to maximize readership... just interesting.
To me.
And it makes sure I show up to most of the discussion sessions on time, and pay attention, most of the time.
Hard keeping up when people get to talking though.
If you look at conference proceedings from 20 years ago, there's isn't much of interest in the talks themselves. However, transcription of discussion after talks used to be common, and reading the discussions is still fascinating.
Conference proceedings (and transcription even more so---I guess it got expensive) have seemingly gone the way of the dodo. But blogging is an interesting substitute.
Those of us in the 'consistent and loyal readership' for the Kavli program and nasa tidbits much appreciate the content over the rants.
I find that whenever I blog about actual papers, my commenters all clam up and disappear. This is kind of demoralizing.