I hinted once or twice that I had news coming, and this is it: I've signed up to be a blog contributor at Forbes writing about, well, the sorts of things I usually write about. I'm pretty excited about the chance to connect with a new audience; the fact that they're paying me doesn't hurt, either...
The above link goes to my contributor page there, which will be your one-stop-shopping source for what I write at Forbes. There are two posts up this morning, a self-introduction, and an attempt to define physics and what makes it unique. The "Follow" button has an option for an RSS feed; this isn't full-text, but that's not my decision to make. I can't do anything about the inspirational-quote splash pages, either, so don't ask.
What does this mean for Uncertain Principles here at ScienceBlogs? Less than you might think-- I'm not moving the whole operation, mostly because Forbes is interested in a specific set of things, and some of what I do is more appropriate for ScienceBlogs. In particular, more math-y physics education sorts of things will stay here (like last week's angular momentum posts), and a lot of the inside-baseball stuff about academia. I'll be sort of feeling out what goes where for a while, I'm sure, but you can expect new content in both places.
I have been and continue to be happy with ScienceBlogs and the folks who run it; they've done right by me over the years, and I'm happy to continue to support them. This move is a chance to write for a new platform, reaching a different audience than we get here at SB, and I'm excited to have that opportunity. And, of course, many thanks to Alex Knapp for inviting me to write for Forbes.
So, that's the exciting news in Chateau Steelypips. The other big news is that today is the first day of Spring term classes, so I need to get back to my day job, now...
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Maybe you could put in a good word for the physics of climate change, for which Forbes seems to have a serious blind spot?
Congratulations!
Reading bloggers with multiple blogs, I've seen a technique that works well is always posting a crosslink to new content on the "other" blog from the "home" (personal) blog. It doesn't have to be much, just a one or two sentence post saying basically "Over at my other blog, I've just posted an article about X. Here's the link" If you don't, people tend to forget you have multiple blogs.
Also, be wary about including names of companies in your Forbes blog. Apparently, reminding people Fermi was successful without the help of Google caused their stock to drop 0.43%.
Yeah, I'll be doing a lot of cross-linking, though I suspect the major flow of traffic will be in the opposite direction...
As I said on Twitter, I'm childishly tempted to sprinkle my Forbes posts with random company names, just to see the irrelevant ticker symbols sprout. I hadn't realized there was a casual link there, though-- I'm going to have to call my broker before posting, now...
(Note to self: get a broker.)
Apparently, reminding people Fermi was successful without the help of Google caused their stock to drop 0.43%.
At the time I read it (yesterday morning), Google was up 0.49%. But maybe I read it earlier than you did, and their stock dropped as word of Fermi's success spread.
You will have to be especially careful when mentioning companies whose stock you own. (If you own any--I do only because I have inherited stock; most of my investments are in mutual funds.) There are laws against insider trading and pump-and-dump schemes.
Note to self: get a broker.
Don't say that too loudly around the people at Forbes. They probably assumed you already had one, because they, and their target audience (the investor class), already do.
Though, surprisingly, I feel like Forbes has had a decent run of articles focused towards Millenial readers.
Congratulations! Please try to keep them honest in their science coverate. In recent years in their blogs they have written some real whoppers about "low energy nuclear reactions" that are long on wishful thinking and amazingly short on critical thinking for people who supposedly are all about estimating financial risk.