{"id":17,"date":"2006-06-12T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-12T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/2006\/06\/12\/a-mathematical-meme-from-janet\/"},"modified":"2006-06-12T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2006-06-12T08:30:00","slug":"a-mathematical-meme-from-janet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2006\/06\/12\/a-mathematical-meme-from-janet\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mathematical Meme from Janet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Janet over at <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/ethicsandscience\/\">Adventures in Ethics and Science<\/a> has tagged all of us newbies with a Pi meme. As the new math-geek-in-residence here, I&#8217;m obligated to take on anything dealing with Pi.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>3 reasons you blog about science<\/b>\n<ol>\n<li> Because I genuinely enjoy teaching, and the one thing that I regret<br \/>\nabout being in industry instead of academia is that I don&#8217;t get to teach.<br \/>\nBlogging gives me an opportunity to do something sort-of like teaching,<br \/>\nbut on my own terms and my own schedule.<\/p>\n<li> Because I&#8217;m obsessed with this stuff, and I love it, and I want to try<br \/>\nto show other people why they should love it too.<\/p>\n<li> Because I&#8217;m a thoroughly nasty person who enjoys mocking idiots.\n<\/ol>\n<li> <b>Point at which you would stop blogging<\/b>: This is an easy one. If it were to stop being fun.\n<li> <b>1 thing you frequently blog besides science<\/b>: I could cheat here, and say math. But that would be cheating, and we know math geeks never cheat, right? So that leaves music. I come from a family of musicians; my older brother was a professional french horn player and composer (before he went nutso and became a fundie ultra-orthodox rabbi); my younger sister is a music teacher. As a techie, I&#8217;m the black sheep of the family :-).\n<li> <b>4 words that describe  your blogging style<\/b>: I&#8217;ll pick words that I&#8217;ve gotten in real feedback from readers. (1) informative, (2) engaging, (3) obnoxious, and (4) arrogant. (Guess which ones were feedback from people who were targets of bad-math critiques?)\n<li> <b>1 aspect of blogging you find difficult<\/b>: dealing with rude commenters.\n<li> <b>5 SB blogs that are new to you.<\/b>\n<ol>\n<li> <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/afarensis\/\">Afarensis<\/a>. No, it&#8217;s not new to SB, but it&#8217;s new to me.\n<li> <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/clock\/\">A Blog Around the Clock<\/a>. I used to read one Coturnix&#8217;s blogs back at the old home; now he&#8217;s merged three blogs into one here. Good stuff.\n<li> <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/chaoticutopia\/\">Chaotic Utopia<\/a>. One of my fellow newbies who&#8217;s got an obsession with fractals.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/framing-science\/\">Framing Science<\/a>. The intersection of science and politics.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/terrasig\/\">Terra Sigillata<\/a>. Taking on alt-woo medicine.\n<\/ol>\n<li> <b>9 non-SB blogs<\/b>: In no particular order:\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/bigdumbchimp.blogspot.com\/\">Big Dumb Chimp<\/a>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/rockstarramblings.blogspot.com\">Rockstar Ramblings<\/a>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pandagon.net\/\">Pandagon<\/a>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.feministe.us\">Feministe<\/a>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/world-o-crap.com\/blog\">World O&#8217; Crap<\/a>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nielsenhayden.com\/makinglight\/\">Making Light<\/a>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/dneiwert.blogspot.com\/\">Orcinus<\/a>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/milieu.alexyoung.org\/\">Milieu<\/a>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/atrios.blogspot.com\/\">Eschaton<\/a>\n<\/ol>\n<li><b>2 important features of your blogging environment<\/b>: this one is actually hard, because I don&#8217;t really have a single blogging environment. Best I can come up with is my IPod, and a network connection. (I constantly look at various online sources like wikipedia, mathworld, and various peoples webpages to check what I&#8217;m writing.)\n<li> <b>6 items you would bring to a meet-up with the other ScienceBloggers:<\/b>\n<ol>\n<li> My powerbook. (Or MacBook if I ever get around to upgrading.)\n<li> Geeky t-shirt.\n<li> Sunglasses (to mask the glare of PZs fame \ud83d\ude42 )\n<li> A bottle of good rum. (inside joke)\n<li> A Zagats guide. (What&#8217;s the point of getting together with fun people, and <em>not<\/em> going out for good food?)\n<li> My lovely wife. She&#8217;s also a hopeless geek (computational linguistics), and a true expert at finding the very best food wherever she goes. Plus she can read maps, which I can&#8217;t. (I&#8217;m actually learning disabled &#8211; maps mean absolutely nothing to me. I have no idea how people use them to get places. Really.)\n<\/ol>\n<li> <b>5 conversations you would have before the end of that meet-up:<\/b> I&#8217;m going to cheat a bit&#8230; A couple of convos that Janet wants to have would involve me, so I&#8217;ll just join in.\n<ol>\n<li> With both Abel Pharmboy and Janet about being from NJ.\n<li> With Janet about math jokes.\n<li> With Orac about the kinds of goofy sciffy we both seem to like.\n<li> With Tara about Findlay, Ohio. I spent four years of my childhood outside of New Jersey, and that was in Findlay Ohio, In another of these memes that circulate around the geeks of the blogosphere, Tara mentioned that she grew up in that miserable little town. I&#8217;m curious to find out if it changed after my family left.\n<li> With Abel Pharmboy, about alt-woo medicine. I&#8217;ve been meaning to take on some of the stupid mathematical arguments used by alt-med types, but I haven&#8217;t had the patience to sit through the gunk of their sites to track down the stuff where I can offer something new.\n<\/ol>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Janet over at Adventures in Ethics and Science has tagged all of us newbies with a Pi meme. As the new math-geek-in-residence here, I&#8217;m obligated to take on anything dealing with Pi. 3 reasons you blog about science Because I genuinely enjoy teaching, and the one thing that I regret about being in industry instead [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chatter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}