Rene Batac
(first posted Mar 24, 2010)
Filed under General Interest
This is the first of the (hopefully) continuous series of general interest articles from members of the group. In this feature, let me describe how I envision this regular feature of our website to be.
This is meant to feature insights from group members on several issues, research-related or otherwise. Think of it as a group blog, a place where Felix can write about the Catholic Church, Ekkay can write about her latest escapades, Sir Chris can vent out his frustrations on the recent trends of the market and Tons can write about Ainah. By "General Interest" we mean "General Interest": no specific topic, whatever interests whoever.
As for specific topics I have in mind on the next articles to appear here, maybe Ekkay can describe her preparations for her trip to New Mexico (and how bureaucracy can oftentimes really suck). Or Sir Chris can do a Gus and write about his stock market portfolio and how physicists can do good (or can they?) in these tradings. Tons may help him in this, or perhaps he can write about his new passion for running and how eight thousand runners filled in the entire Ayala Avenue (his research is, after all, about clogging). Felix - well, he can tell you almost everything that Wikipedia can tell you, but can he now talk of falling in love? Maybe JR can help him. Irene can describe in detail the very long saga of the two IJMPC paper acceptance she has had - Tons and myself can also do a follow-up on how we can relate (been there, done that). And Jen-Jen can talk of informal relationships - who knows, maybe Che and Brian can be of help here?
Of course, we are not the type who can deliver column articles at the rate broadsheet columnists do. Most of the time, we shun writing (fine, Che doesn't); which is precisely why we chose a career in the sciences, in the first place. So to maintain a continuous flow of fresh articles, we may assign somebody to write for a particular time. Like, since it's graduation time, maybe Irene can write a piece on graduation. The hope is to eventually make posting here a habit or a routine.
As physicists, whose past time is constructing Barabasi-Albert models of social networks, we, of all people, know that we are part of a larger society whose behavior is not readily attributable to those of the individual components summed up. In other words, we, as a microscopic part of the social network, have a duty and purpose to do - and that is to generate knowledge. If we do not have the capability to communicate what we do to the other parts of the "network", we are like disconnected nodes: we do not participate in the dynamics of the bulk.
Aside from communicating with other researchers, it is a must that we know how to address the general population, the laymen who would be scared of Python not because it is a difficult programing language but because it is a snake. The general interest column would best train us for this purpose. ●
