"When you write, you can't stop and when you stop, you can’t start," says Sue.
if you are a regular blogger out there, don’t stop - even if you feel like your world is collapsing around you and you barely have time to breathe, let alone the grocery shopping and the laundry and the umpteen boring things that makes life go on in a socially acceptable fashion - even then you should continue. Or you will be a victim of inertia, just like me. When you write, you cant stop and when you stop, you can’t start - who else can you blame but good old Newton, with the apple on his head.
7 Comments:
and when you stop, you can't start - oh, tell me all about it.
Abi: I could reach you (only) through pkblogs.com, like this, as i mentioned in my email.
Anything new is exciting. So is the blog, for me. However, sometimes, I feel I am carried away by blogging. It appears that you (and also Arunn) are having some self doubts about blogging, that is why I see so many justifications from you people for blogging. All said and done, may be, I require people like you to tell me that what I am doing is right! Keep on writing
Since some of the people following this blog seem to be scientists, here is something that I wanted to do but could not since my training is in Pure Mathematics ( I hated the way Applied Mathes was taight in Madras University in my days). How about writing on some interesting science topics of interest and understandable to the common man and which have some everyday applications or help understanding newspapers on economic matters and such. One example is Simpson's Paradox in Statistics. In Melbourne university, they decided to increase the percentage of women academics. Over a period of ten years, they incresed the women's percentage in every category from tutor to professor but found that the percentage of women academics over all decreased. There seem to many paradoxes of this type in Statistics. Take Fluid Mechanics. How about Bernoulli Effect. Some experiments can be done by anybody and its applications to roofing. Recently there have been interesting experiments in watering orchards in Australia. They found that they could save on water (upto 30-40 percent) by watering different sides alternately. One can try to find interesting and useful topics in each one's speciality which are of interest to the common man and may help in encouraging rational thinking. One may not have to work too hard. There are many popular books (some Russian ones are still available cheaply in India) which can be recycled and already some organizations like http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/
Jana vignana Vedika (?) etc. Then one can try to organize these into regional language blogs. Sort of motto is 'Interesting and useful science for every man'. To end, here is an interesting post ( may or may not be true) about how standards are made:
http://www.vwclub.co.za/vwforum/viewtopic.php?p=106595&sid=c6ed705ed16f2e38fb18fb779114e152
Subhramanya:
Self doubt is what makes us perform better. Reflectionless thinking and action merely leads to misery for everybody.
On the other hand, most of what we write about why we blog etc. is a veiled call for others (scientists from India at least) to do it. I think Abi would agree.
Because, the moment we have started blogging, we already have justified to us about it and there it ends. I have said this earlier, at my blog.
gaddeswarup: some attempts have been and are being made at our blogs, in those lines suggested by you. Do keep visiting our blogs and suggest topics that would be attempted by us.
Arunn
Thanks for the information. Is there a list of Indian science (or part science) somewhere? I fool around a bit but I am trying to learn. Until an year ago, I did not know the difference between bacteria and virus or between DNA and RNA. I find that I am not alone among university teachers in such ignorance. I am trying to catch up a bit.
Swarup
gaddeswarup, please visit by blog. I have commented in your blog also, you are yet to see.
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