A small opinion piece about big opinion pieces.

The full stop in the title is intended, as I have been told that it sounds more assured than without.

Truth is, I am not very good at being opinionated in public*. People keep insisting that it is easy, so perhaps I am simply not a natural. This is a massive handicap, considering I am a PhD student, where it is expected of me to form opinions on literature that I read, and analyses of data that I collect. This does not mean that I am without opinion. I think that, while the projected HS2 railway that will serve London-Birmingham-Manchester could be a good idea – mainly because the current Virgin Trains services between MCR-LDN offer rather… demanding levels of customer service, and also if it allows the de-crowding of the capital – I do not approve of any alleged tweaking of the law** that took place for the ruling to be passed. I dislike overly flowery language in big tomes of importance to my research – because it takes just that little bit longer to process the information beyond the superficial – despite sometimes being guilty of the crime myself. I think it is sweet when people try to bowl other people over with big words and complicated grammar structures, but I don’t buy it. I think Queen Elizabeth II is cool, but otherwise don’t care much for the Royal Family. I am not a fan of Thomas Kuhn’s writing because I like a bit of narrative in the things that I read. I like wind-farms and the occasional piece of 60s architecture. I think nuclear power is the way to go for the time being, and that it is a shame that there is a need for an International Women’s Day.

Off the coast of the Netherlands, summer 2012.

Mind you, now I have just noticed a relatively significant increase in the number of followers of this blog, and am in two minds about whether or not I want to weather my laundry at all.

What was I saying again? Opinions.

Why are my opinions stymied?

The clear-cut answer and example: a fear of “doing it wrong”. Next to me on my desk is a fascinating-looking book*** that I am about to read and review. The author of this book is one of my supervisors. While I am aware that one of the reasons an academic may want to write a book is to either introduce new discourse into the field, or inject new arguments into old debates, this does not stop me from worrying about whether I will get the wrong end of the stick, and interpret their writing wrongly. To summarise, I am concerned I will offend the supervisor, or embarrass myself with my stupid opinions. To remedy this, I am telling myself that perhaps my point-of-view is, after all, valid as a particular interpretation of this book, and could still provide a teeny tiny insight into how the book might be received by an interested member of the audience. Teeny tiny. No big opinions here. Move along.

The more abstract example: as an early-career researcher, and a still relatively junior member of society (what with the ageing population and all), I sometimes feel like my opinion does not matter. There are always people who are better read, and more informed, who can provide a better opinion. Then again, we all read different collections of literature, and take different types of data, leading to, hopefully, some measure of expertise in our pinprick on the academic map. But what if we simply are not that gregarious? Is it then our fault that we chose an academic route, where we need to work up our moxie to give everybody a piece of our information-overloaded minds? Chances are that we are brewing away in private, over-thinking an argument far beyond those with the loudest voices, and any resulting opinion remains at the manky bottom of the laundry pile.

Thank goodness I have a belief in the stonking greatness of my project to forget all about this, some of the time.

Now, I would like to apologise for my opinions (except I’m not really sorry), especially to those who may have joined up for a nice bit of coffee-break science communication chatter (opinions!) or funny insight into my project (opinions and focus groups! Oh my!). I can only hope for your patience.

*where “in public” means occasions where others, likely strangers, will hear.

**”HS2 ruling a ‘victory’ despite unlawful compensation move” BBC News, 15 March 2013

***Helen Rees Leahy, Museum Bodies : The Politics and Practices of Visiting and Viewing, Ashgate 2012 – more about this one later.

Vanessa Heggie and Matthew Cobb talk about science-blogging

Jumbled up notes, but quite useful. All thoughts and ideas belong to the persons in the title, unless otherwise stated.

1. Write. 600-800 words once or twice a week to begin with. Shows commitment and consistency.
2. Worry not if there are no visitors – you are building a portfolio.
3. Get into a dialogue with the people in the field you want to work with.
4. Find science communication folk on twitter. Or better, find their communities.
5. Contacts are important, but keep an eye out for essay competitions, blog vacancies, etc.
6. Mix things up, opinion pieces and factual pieces, one is harder than the other, but it’s all practice.
7. Writing about your research can veer into simply-another-form-of-academic-writing; book reviews, or making-of blogs can include research, like a diary, but be more relaxed and allow you to showcase fun trivia that you find, that may not place in academic papers.
8. Cats are good.
9. You could take on a twitter alter-ego, e.g. write as an interesting historical character.
10. Read and comment on other peoples’ blogs, it’s just as big a part being one of the community.
11. Retweet anything you want, even if you think “all my followers follow X already”. In all likelihood, there will be at least one follower who doesn’t.
12. Find your own voice. Do not be an ersatz-sci-commer-that-you like.
13. Be brave and blog under your own name. Or at least blog under a constant pseudonym. Pick a suitable one.
14. Co-blog. Takes the pressure off overall output, but puts pressure on in the sense that you need to pull your load.
15. The sharing and readership of posts may be better an indicator of reception than the quantity or quality of comments.
16. Pop-sci and topical sciene unsurprisingly get more views. Troll-bait will get trolls. No surprises there either.
17. Bear in mind that sometimes people do not feel qualified enough to leave a comment. This links into the way you pitch your posts. Relaxed, quirky posts may fetch comments just because they invite them.
18. Blogs are allowed to change theme. Usually with the author’s circumstances. No biggie.
19. Established bloggers sometimes look for relief bloggers. If you have a thematic, well-written piece, it may just be worth emailing, and swapping the work for the exposure.
20. Vi Hart’s video-blog, recommended. Vlogs and podcasts can be good if you are interested, but you cannot skim through them, which is what most people do. (Personal note here: they can be good to insert into a blog every now and again just for a change in format and bring a bit of novelty. Perhaps your reader will like it. But they are more time consuming – you will have to script them, even an al-fresco pod will need to be “written” and edited.)
21. If you want to try the book-route, and have an idea, get an agent first! Popsci books are still a niche field, it is, so far (never say never), difficult to make money off them. Blogs will provide an audience for your book.
22. You don’t have to know about…stuff… to write a blog. You can write a blog about you finding out about something or somebody. If you’ve chosen a person though, aim for somebody who is dead. Living people will findit creepy. And frankly, you do know stuff – you’re an expert at being a student.
23. It’s perfectly acceptable to have different identities to your co-bloggers, it would be weird not to. As long as you have a common theme, it could be welcome to hear from different voices.
24. As long as your byline is constant, readers do not necessarily look out for your affiliations. At all. A relevant blog can be good for the job, if not, the employers will likely be indifferent.
25. If you are aiming for a writing job – a bad blog is better than no blog. (Where “bad” means boring or amateurish – not libellous and fictional. Well, unless you like to communicate your science through sci-fi adventures, in which case, make that clear.)
26. Learn about writing from other blogs. The structure is free to take.
27. Nerdblogs always find their readers. Always. You may have a niche audience, but they will read it all. As long as it’s well-written.

Social media truths

I wandered past an episode of the Garfield show on television, and then spent a full ten minutes shamelessly scrolling through the online archives.

As a science communicator, this one reinforced my belief in my cause…

Garfield on edutainment.

…although that is not saying I would not watch “Mr. Pituitary Gland’s clubhouse” – the pituitary gland does control all kinds of important functions of the body, from growth to kidney operation, and is amusingly not part of the brain, despite its location. Also, imagine the costumes.

This next one is particularly true, as far as I’m concerned.

Blogosphere on its bad days.

Obligatory disclaimer: Garfield is created by, and belongs to, the esteemed Jim Davis, and both above comic strips come from the official site. No infringement intended whatsoever.

I am out of town today, and wish you all a good day.

I never tire of watching these (as cool as the final frontier gets* **)

It is Friday. Nay, it is an excellent Friday. And what does one do on excellent Fridays? One watches youtube videos***. Duh.

I do have a predilection for videos of things that have been propelled, one way or another, into space, and then allowed to plummet back to Earth. Here are some of my favourites. Enjoy.

 

Do you have any recommendations?

* My opinion.

** I am aware that I have ended that title on a preposition. Apologies.

*** Not always. Please tell me I’m not the only one.

“Hi, I saw your profile, mind if I sit next to you? For the next seven hours?”

In media world, I suppose this piece of information is now ancient, but I am still intrigued. (I caught the whim of it via twitter, and here.)

KLM Airlines have proposed a “Meet & Seat” service for the allocation of seats on board their flights, using the information available on individual passengers’ social media pages (specifically Facebook and Linkedin). Let us have a look at their presentation video:

The company suggests that you can use the service to network, and possibly even find somebody with whom to share a taxi after the flight.

From personal experience, as lovely as it would be to have interesting company on a long-haul flight, seasoned solo long-haul flyers seem to prefer sleeping, reading a book to get away from day-to-day business, or tapping away on their laptops/tablets/gizmos. It is of course voluntary, so at least one can be sure that people who sign up for the service will be interested in conversation, and probably not otherwise have company. I nearly talked myself into sitting on the fence, but then thought: “what if they seemed alright on their profile, but are actually a massive, pretentious twat?” This is very cynical of me, but it could be a possibility. Again, personally, I have had the luck to alternately sit next to all manners of travellers, and find the change in in-flight entertainment rather pleasant. Sometimes it is nice not to have  expectations, which I believe is what will become of this tool.

…and all of this is aside from the fact that it seems mildly, to put it in colloquial terms, “stalky”. What do you think?