OK, hopefully you have all seen this already. It’s John Hawks’ “How to Blog, part 1” and the follow-up “Grad Students and Blogging“. It’s all interesting stuff, if you want to know Hawks’ views on blogging (most of which are pretty obvious given how he runs his blog). BUT the cool part is that our gelada-studying Beast Ape (I’m trying to respect your right to be anonymous here, but I think our paltry list of readers will be able to figure out who I mean) inspired and thus was quoted in Hawks’ grad student follow-up:

“One reader wrote:

I was wondering if you could speak to graduate student blogging. I recently started a new blog under a pseudonym. I used to write a blog under my real name, but I’m in the process of scrapping it in favor of my new cryptically-authored blog. I did this for several reasons: (1) I was not pleased with the format of the old site/server, (2) I was embarrassed by my earlier posts, since the blog was largely an experiment in writing colloquially about science, and (3) I feared reprisals, especially with regard to funding/ the opinion of my work from faculty. I know you advocate using your real name when blogging for faculty, but what about graduate students? Do you know of dissertation committees viewing blog-writing as wasting valuable research time? Is there any data on the relationship between regular blogging, tenure, grant acquisition, etc.?”

Yeah! That’s him! Go read Hawks’ blog for his response. Kudos to Beast Ape for getting quoted. Apparently he’s also quoted on Aliza’s postdoc journal. If I found the right quote (not sure, so correct me if I’m wrong), I think he says “I thought of ice-cream today.” Pearls of wisdom, left and right!

So now the question: Don’t you wish your name was associated with either of these two quotes? How’s being anonymous going for you so far?