I haven't yet attempted to answer any of the Ask a Science Blogger questions, but I think I'll give this week's question a shot. The question is:
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, I'm not a grad student, a post-doc, a scientist or anything that suggests that someone actually works hard to earn a living, but this is a question I've gotten from others as well. This is especially true because I'm probably one of the most prolific of the bloggers here, frequently posting 5-10 new items every day. But I certainly can't answer for anyone else, as the answer for me lies in my particular circumstances. My "day job" is in the mortgage business, and I work for myself out of an office in my home. Thus, I don't have to punch a clock or answer to anyone else. And the nature of the mortgage business is that most of my time is spent waiting. I fax off a request for a title policy, an updated insurance form or a payoff letter and it may be several days before I get it back. So my day consists of short bursts of job-related activity - a phone call with a client or lender's rep, for example, or a short time taken to submit a set of documents online or by fax - followed by....well, nothing. So that gives me a great deal of time to work on my writing, which I hope will ultimately replace mortgages as my primary means of financial gain.
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Is your e-mail address still ebrayton AT crystalauto DOT com? I've e-mailed you a few news items in the past few months and I haven't heard anything, even about net neutrality. Now I'm just curious.
Don't worry, I'm not a stalker. ;) I just guessed that net neutrality would be an important issue for you.
Yes, that's still my email address. If I haven't replied to an email you, or anyone else, has sent, please don't take it personally. The blog itself doesn't generate all that much email, but I'm on several mailing lists that do and sometimes things just get lost in the mix or I just don't have time to respond except to those things that really catch my interest (which is not to say don't send me items you think I might be interested in; several posts I write every week are the result of someone emailing me a link to something they think I might be interested in). As far as net neutrality goes, I just don't know enough about it to give an informed opinion. I've seen arguments on both sides, but haven't given much thought to evaluating them.
"As far as net neutrality goes, I just don't know enough about it to give an informed opinion. I've seen arguments on both sides, but haven't given much thought to evaluating them."
I'd say there are more than two sides, because "net neutrality" is being used to refer to multiple things. There are some basic principles (e.g., the "four freedoms" in the FCC's August 2005 policy statement) and there are specific regulatory proposals (e.g., in multiple different bills and amendments). There are proposals about nondiscrimination of traffic (not blocking sites based on content), about nondifferentiation of traffic (not allowing QoS tiering, or disallowing different pricing for different classes of service), about Internet service unbundling, about common carriage and network interconnection, and so forth. The Wikipedia article on network neutrality does a pretty good job of giving the basics, but most of the people arguing about it online are talking past each other and don't understand the current technical and legal structure well enough to avoid saying things that are incorrect or foolish.
I think most people agree that they don't want ISPs blocking access to legitimate sites, but there's plenty of disagreement about what consequences follow from that.
I work in the customer service department of a major national wholesale home equity lender. Maybe I've talked to you before. If so, I apologize for the poor service. :)