Ok, so I started a blog...

I have always thought blogs were a complete waste of time. Everytime I thought about blogs, I thought of cooking recipes, movie reviews, travel spots, computer geeks, teenagers posting their latest myspace-pictures, amateur journalists and writers, and frustrated poets. I mean, not exactly the kind of things I would be interested in doing, right?

Wrong! I've been lazy, that's all. There are thousands of things you could write about, things that could (actually) interest other people, things that could mean something for someone. During this last year I've been seeing a lot of blogs of researchers explaining their research, so I thought "I could have some of that". But then again, my research is not something that you can easily make a conversation about. I'm not sure how many people could be interested in knowing if I could estimate this population parameter, simulate that population behavior or finally maximized catches and minimized risk at the same time... Nah, that sounds boring, I'd rather go and read the cooking recipes.

So, you may be wondering why did I start this in the first place. Well, the thing is that I love explaining things to people. I cannot tolerate those arrogant scientists that always speak in technical terms that only them can understand. I believe that science is fun and as such, should be taught in a fun way, which leads me to my second motivation: since a lot of people think science is boring, they tend to ignore it and widen the gap that already exist between scientists and non-scientists. If everything in science was abstract or stayed in the lab, that would be ok (well, not really) but let's face it, this world is going to hell and the least we could do is at least try to know why. That's why I believe in the concept of 'popular science' (remember Carl Sagan?) and the huge responsability that we, scientists, have with people. We need to reach out and let people know what we're doing.

And then I started a blog...