Better Living Through Chemistry

Welcome. I should begin in the grand tradition of first posts by laying out my grand vision of what you'll find in these pixels.  Really, it'd be as much to my benefit as to you. I'm curious to see what comes of it, or if it lasts more than a month.  I have a personal homework assignment of posting at least once a week, which definitely is to my benefit.

Last week I started a postdoc with [prestigious lab] at [even more prestigious university]. Astute readers will likely be able to sort out these details. I'll preserve my anonymity beyond that as I was raised in the internet age. This is going to be a professional blog and shouldn't contain anything incriminating or indiscrete.  But you never know when your coworkers will take offense at you pointing out their foibles to an audience of at least...ones of your friends.

Back to the prestigious university part, if you can't figure out who I am, you can at least trust that I am very good at what I do, even if I don't know much about what I'll be doing yet. I'm also very good at figuring things out. That's half the fun. So my opinions on the matters at blog will be at least reasonably well informed or annotated for speculation. At least in regards to science.

"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy."  -  Richard P Feynman

Back to the vision, I'm going with three parts:

1. Talk about my daily experience with science, especially adapting the the new position and relearning my field.
2. Talk about science in general, and what's cool in the world.
3. Talk about the sociology of science: how it's done, how it's perceived, and whether it works.

There are innumerable blogs on these topics already, you are by no means obliged to care about this one.


Adios,
-Alex