vismap.jpgI was recently interviewed by Nature on the state of blogs and anonymity and whatnot and the interviewer had an interesting question: Why is the population of chemistry blogs so high relative to other disciplines? There have been a number of posts on why chemistry is so absent in popular media – (IMHO, it lacks the “God element” present in biology/medicine and physics, especially astrophysics, which makes it less interesting to the masses. The complexities and fuzzy logic employed by astrophysicists requires nothing less than a religiosity to believe some of the odd shit they sling out.)

Anyway, it’s disheartening that there are very few blogs about physics and biology compared to chemistry since the future is integrated approaches. If I could, I would seek out a lively biologist to team up with on the Chem Blog, but I know of none. It would be awesome to have a readable blog about either field, since I consider both of them too far off topic to be approachable.

Anyway, my response to the Nature interviewer (the interview should be available via pod cast next month) was that the chemistry blog-o-sphere had a number of very strong voices and drew a lot of inspiration to a lot of people. Particularly catalytic in that was Dylan Stiles, Paul Bracher and Paul Docherty. When asked if I was a strong voice, I arrogantly replied affirmatively, but that’s just my style and I was the subject of the interview in any case, so I had to have some degree of impact. I know that I have made no secret that I started blogging because of Dylan’s post on Otera’s Catalyst, which he employed in his recent Org. Let. publication. (I did not find it via Bengu Sezen, though I did exploit her to jump start my blog via trackbacks to Dylan’s, which is a wee shameful, but it worked. Besides, if Blogging really had any superstar it was her. It is, after all, the news that makes the reporter, not the other way around [though, with blogging, that argument can be contested].)

The walls are too high really to make a plea to people in other fields to start blogs, since I don’t think physicists or biologists frequent this blog, but if they WERE here, I would ask them to consider it.

UPDATE: Well, here is the podcast. I sound like a rambling douche, which is why I’m putting it all the way down here where no one will see it. It’s after the nanotube blahblah (the language is Hebrew, by the way.)

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