I'll be away for a few days (starting fairly soon), and I may even be completely unable to access the 'net. Since I don't have time to do one of my long, fact-ridden articles, it occurred to me to do something that I haven't done before. I'll tell you what's on my slate for the future of the site. Not that people use slate anymore, but a Notepad window makes a fine substitute.
You may have noticed that I will often end an entry with an allusion to future scribbling on the subject. I haven't been kidding about that; there are notions simmering away for all of them.
Something that I have wanted to do since the beginning is pure science education. The first in the queue in that genre is a condensed course in genetics-- from the DNA strand to the organism-- which will no doubt be broken up into several lessons. I will then study commas, in order to divine whether I should have used such devices in the preceding two sentences (just kidding).
I have at least two articles in the hopper that are of a controversial nature. I am not afriad of controversy as such, but I refuse to make a spectacle out of it that is all sound and fury. I yearn to share knowledge with others, out there in the marketplace of ideas, so it would be foolish to scare my customers away via gratuitous... there must be a word for it, but I can't think of it. Anyway, those two are being handled gently, becuase this is a rational place-- not the Jerry Springer show.
Since it appears that there are (roughly) 524,288 excellent blogs in circulation these days, I will endeavor to link to some of them when it is appropriate to the subject matter. Why, I might even try to open a debate with another blogger at some point. (Yes, I have an idea.)
Let's see... ah, yes-- fiction. I may not read as much as I would like like, but books and other sorts of fiction will need to have their virtues and vices extolled. Bonus if I also manage to find non-fiction somewhere.
My coverage of space exploration and its attendant technologies has been pathetically little-- especially when contrasted with my large enthusiasm for the subject. I feel that my space proposals are both grand and reasonable, but I may not be the most impartial judge of that-- so that's where my highly objective viewing public comes in.
I reckon there's enough things to talk about to last a very long time. Just to use genetics as an example, once I explain the basics (unless you already know the basics), there are all sorts of neat things to discuss. Disease-causing bacteria, housecat coat patterns-- and you'd never guess how downright interesting fraternal twins in cattle can be. And then there's politics, which will no doubt always be a distraction. At any given time, there will be someone in a position of power doing something stupid. It's probably encoded in their DNA.
Posted by Mitch at March 24, 2004 01:50 AM