Why I'm Blogging
How does one stand out from 20.9 million? I don't expect this blog to be read by millions (or even tens...), but it will serve as a place to organize thoughts, ask interesting questions (maybe even answer a few sometimes), and serve as a clearing house for all the babble I come up with but never talk to anyone about.
It will also be a place to engage with a good friend who has moved across the country at the same time as me. A blog certainly can't replace late nights cruising around the suburban slums of Morris County, New Jersey while musing on things big and small and pretending we know more than we actually do. But those moments are thousands of miles away and several years in the past, so a new medium will have to do.
So who am I? And, perhaps more importantly, what will I write about? To both questions, I can honestly answer 'I don't know'. Nominally I'm a PhD student studying geophysics at a major Bay Area university. But I'd also describe myself as a politically disillusioned libertarian skeptic who perhaps should be studying economics rather than earth science. That description is subject to refinement or change, and this blog should help in that process.
When you're a grad student in a science department, most of your written output is in equations rather than prose. This blog will force me to write more, and that can only be a good thing.
I searched for a quote to finish this first post, and found the following from Joan Didion:
"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."
It will also be a place to engage with a good friend who has moved across the country at the same time as me. A blog certainly can't replace late nights cruising around the suburban slums of Morris County, New Jersey while musing on things big and small and pretending we know more than we actually do. But those moments are thousands of miles away and several years in the past, so a new medium will have to do.
So who am I? And, perhaps more importantly, what will I write about? To both questions, I can honestly answer 'I don't know'. Nominally I'm a PhD student studying geophysics at a major Bay Area university. But I'd also describe myself as a politically disillusioned libertarian skeptic who perhaps should be studying economics rather than earth science. That description is subject to refinement or change, and this blog should help in that process.
When you're a grad student in a science department, most of your written output is in equations rather than prose. This blog will force me to write more, and that can only be a good thing.
I searched for a quote to finish this first post, and found the following from Joan Didion:
"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."
posted by John V at 2:02 PM
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