It's All Geek to Me

I was looking for the video from my session at this year's ScienceOnline, and realized I had never shared it here. That was an oversight.

It's All Geek to Me from Smartley-Dunn on Vimeo.

The first part of the session works through the idea that some people are motivated by information, at least on a particular topic. It talks about the trade-offs that can occur in shaping your message to meet the needs of that audience or of a broader audience and brainstorms some ways of reaching both groups.

The last part of the session looks at what the presence of geeks means for an online community, and particularly for a community that is interested in more general outreach. In this section, we discussed the uses and pitfalls of geek culture, such as snark, in-jokes, and relentless pedantry. This is also where you'll find the moderators' dirty secrets.

ETA: See also this related (and well-timed) post on social diversity from Stef McGraw.

Writers Don't Spring from Zeus's Forehead Either

I've never done a proper fisking on this blog before, but someone seems to have been wearing his curmudgeon pants while reading yesterday's blog post. I use "curmudgeon" advisedly, in the sense that Jay Rosen does, given the nature of some of the sneers involved. Normally, I'd ignore something like this, but it's a misunderstanding that has been repeated elsewhere, although this is the only case I've seen that's reacting to my remarks in context and still missing the point.

Specifically, John Pavlus objects to my statement that "For her skills, sure, I would love to be Rebecca Skloot. It would not keep me from staying hidden. If I want to be recognized, I have to aspire to be Carl or Ed." Rather than characterize the response as anything more than curmudgeonly, I'll let it speak for itself in its entirety.

This is unfashionable to say, but the above idea strikes me as complete and utter horseshit.

Yes, the only reason I would object to Pavlus's statement is fashion. It has nothing to do with taking the idea out of its context, as I lay out below. Or perhaps it does.

Skloot is a world-famous bestselling author who wrote one of THE most read, praised, influential pieces of science journalism of the last decade (at least). (Plus she’s been on Colbert!) Ed Yong (for all his talent, and it is a lot) is internet-famous at best.

This, oddly, is exactly my point. In fact, in the post he's calling "horseshit," I said, "Rebecca frequently didn't make those lists, despite being widely lauded as having published the single best piece of science writing of 2010 and having reached an audience that most writers could only dream of. She never came first." This is a common problem when people make lists.

No, make that internet-famous among science bloggers. That’s like saying you’re king of the nerd table in a high school cafeteria.

Rebecca Skloot is also a science blogger. The blog is currently much more about the book, but I expect that will change when the craziness of her promotion and success steps down a little. She's not about to stop writing. She is part of the very community that frequently forgot to hold her up as an example, and all her success didn't change that.

I'm not sure what's supposed to be wrong with science blogging, but the use of a cultural slur in his simile suggests Pavlus finds something very wrong with it indeed. Thus, curmudgeon.

Write the next “Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and this precious “recognition” will soon follow, you can bet on it.

Here is the crux of the problem with this post.

Pavlus is a writer, among other things. I have trouble imagining that he doesn't understand how much work and practice it takes to develop the skills that are on display in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. And there's a reason writers groups and writing partners are widely recommended: It's much harder to develop those skills by yourself.

Skloot didn't develop her writing skills in a vacuum. She got a degree in writing and developed her skills among the magazines. She received feedback from editors and other aspiring and professional writers. And she blogged, receiving feedback more directly from readers.

In addition to her training and practice, Skloot attributes her success to "persistence, thick skin, pre-query research, more thick skin and more persistence." She also notes that the social aspect of dealing with other writers is "invaluable. It's also good to just get together and whine, because writing is hard. You help each other through it."

In other words, writing skills and writing careers do not develop in social isolation. Nobody just sits down one day and taps out The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, not even Skloot.

Also, there are limited options these days for even very good science writers to develop in a professional setting and receive the encouragement of professionals. Paid publishing jobs diminished over the last few years, which makes feedback from readers and peers more important than ever--particularly if we wish to increase the quantity of quality in our science communications. Thus blogging, and the visibility of that blogging, are highly relevant when we want to discuss who will become the "next Rebecca Skloot."

Saying, "Produce the work of breathtaking craftsmanship, and then we can talk about what you need to develop your craft," is 100% backwards.

Of course, Skloot also marketed her ass off.

Indeed she did, and well. The self-promotion discussion is happening at Kate Clancy's and Dr Becca's blogs, however, rather than mine.

But these two facts strike me as about three or four orders of magnitude more salient to achieving “recognition” than the fact of one’s gender.

They are indeed more relevant--if the topic at hand is popular success. This one was about visibility among peers. Those are different.

Seriously: who gives a rat’s ass whose name appears first in the program notes at some science-blogger love-in? Not Skloot, I’d wager. She has more important things to worry (and write) about.

I didn't suggest Skloot should get involved in the talk over who was cited. There's almost never any upside for any writer to get involved in discussions about their career or published work (see Anne Rice and Amazon reviews). But that doesn't much matter, as the discussion is actually about newer writers.

As for ScienceOnline: None of this happened in the program notes, which were linked from my post, but to which I otherwise didn't refer. There were bloggers, yes, plus entertainers, educators, researchers, technical developers, high school students, etc. And what's wrong with bloggers? Beyond that, what's wrong with a "love-in" (particularly when one is referring to the group of diverse colleagues getting together to share experiences, ideas, and challenges that ScienceOnline actually is)? After all, Skloot herself gave the keynote address in 2009, participated thoroughly in 2010, and hopes to again in 2012.

No, for the reasons I've already laid out, this conference and the community that participates in it are important to developing science writers. Their ability to fully participate in that community, and to be recognized by that community, matters. They give a "rat's ass" about it. So do I.

Hidden Women, Hidden Writers

The biggest problem with ScienceOnline (and one of very, very few) is that there are too many interesting sessions happening at the same time. One of the ones I regret missing was "Perils of blogging as a woman under a real name". Luckily for me, Kate Clancy discussed the session and the discussion before and after the session on her blog.

I recommend her full post (and comments) highly for any woman operating in the public sphere, not just science bloggers. For now, I'd like to highlight a couple of the challenges that others have noted we face.

• There is serious friend bias in who gets promoted in the science blogosphere, and it ends up that men promote other men quite a lot (in order to avoid potential defensiveness, I will say that we did also discuss several notable exceptions). We need to share the empirical evidence about the fact that people like to read people who are a lot like them, as a kind of sensitivity training for men, to help them train their brains to appreciate many different voices.
  
• We are all very, very tired of making a point on a blog, on twitter, or in a meeting, being ignored, having a man make the same point, then having that man get all the credit. Very tired.

• Both the attacks and appreciations are different for women bloggers. We get unwanted attentions and compliments on our appearance, surprise that we are an authority on certain topics or have an interest in male-dominated topics, or are bullied in a way that feels gendered when a man decides we are wrong on the internet.

I pulled these points out because Christie Wilcox focuses on them in her follow-up post, "I've never been very good at hiding". Again, read the whole post.

Why isn't there a girl version of Ed Yong or Carl Zimmer? Why is there no woman in the elite list of the most well known science bloggers? The excuse that there aren't enough high-quality female science writers just doesn't cut it anymore. They're out there, and they have been for years. Incredible women like Sheril Kirshenbaum have been standing up and taking the full brunt of the internet's misogyny with the utmost grace. We have to be honest with ourselves as a community. The problem isn't that the women aren't there. It's that they aren't being taken as seriously.

...

I'm not so complacent. I shouldn't have to hide the fact that I am a woman just to be seen as a brilliant scientist or a great writer. And I am young and bull-headed and perhaps just naive enough not to hide. You might notice my looks first, but I'll be damned if you don't hear my words, too.

Christie is issuing a challenge to those who would engage with her based on looks to just try to ignore her work. It's a good challenge. It's bold. She's right that she's damned good and very hard to ignore, but...but...

But.

Having our work tucked neatly out of sight behind our bodies is hardly the only way women writers stay hidden. Talking about our bodies is hardly the only way to fail to engage with women. There is always the much simpler option of just...failing to engage.

Christie wants there to be female Ed Yongs and Carl Zimmers. Ed comments that she might also aspire to be the next Rebecca Skloot. While I appreciate that he's bringing high-profile women science writers into the discussion, his comment misses the point.

Look at the mass of discussion that was generated around ScienceOnline2011. A number of people brought up examples of great writers to emulate. Those lists all started, "Carl Zimmer, Ed Yong, (another male writer--Steve Silberman or David Dobbs or...well, you get the point)." Only after that point, if the list continues, do any female names appear. Rebecca frequently didn't make those lists, despite being widely lauded as having published the single best piece of science writing of 2010 and having reached an audience that most writers could only dream of. She never came first.

For her skills, sure, I would love to be Rebecca Skloot. It would not keep me from staying hidden. If I want to be recognized, I have to aspire to be Carl or Ed.

This isn't unique to science writers. It's part of the reality of publishing as a woman. I get it writing about politics. Google sent ripples out from the Digital Book World conference yesterday when it came out that they were surprised romance was the top-selling genre of e-book. Of course it is. Romance is the top-selling genre of book, period, year-in and year-out. It's just invisible, being women's fiction, unless it's written by a man. But then it's literature, not romance.

Now, there is one way for a female science writer to gain immediate attention for a post. They can write for women or about women. They can write the equivalent of romance.

(To clarify, women are a critical audience, and it's important that they be well-served. I love Kate's suggestion about developing an Old Girl's Club. However, if we're going to talk about any kind of equality, we should note that women already read men and take them seriously. Women see men. The reverse can't always be said.)

Look at the comment section of Christie's post. Now look at the comments on any of her other ScienceOnline posts. Look at how many times each has been retweeted or otherwise promoted and by whom. This post about being a woman while blogging blows them all away in its first half day of publication, and it gets disproportionally promoted by men compared to her other posts. Look at the attention Kate's post has received. It has a huge comment section and has been cross-posted to David Dobbs' Wired blog.

Don't get me wrong. Attention is good. Attention is wonderful. We'd just like to get the same kind of recognition when we write literature that we get when we write romance. In short, guys, we're tired of lapsing into invisibility when we do the same things you do. That's why we aspire to your positions, not Rebecca's.

So if you want to help (I know that a great many of you do, and I appreciate that), it's time to figure out how to incorporate women into your "serious" science writing work. Do you always go to the same one or two male science bloggers when you want to cite an explanation of something? Branch out. Keep a list of reference posts if necessary. Do you highlight a few female bloggers when they write about community or equality? Treat their science posts the same way. Do you think Rebecca is an amazing science writer whom we should aspire to emulate (and I know the answer to that one)? Say so. Repeatedly. First.

Engage with us. Argue with us when you think we're wrong. Talk about us when you think we're good. Go overboard in mentioning us occasionally, since nobody else is doing it. Work to mix us in to general conversations about writing. If you want us to be recognized as science writers, engage with our science writing.

Until you do, Christie can tell people to "bring it" as much as she likes. They're still not stopping by.

Geeks, Nerds, and Mundanes

This letter was prompted by a high schooler attending our session at ScienceOnline2011. I think, however, that it's worth saying to an awful lot more kids.

Dear Stacy Baker's students:

First of all, thank you for so many of you attending the It's All Geek to Me session. You added a multi-generational perspective that's hard to achieve in a conference setting, and you cracked us all up more than once. You also asked good questions.

Now, please let me apologize for how I handled one of those questions. I should have been ready to answer the nerd-vs.-geek question, but I wasn't, and I mangled it badly. My joke about "I hang out with geeks with social skills" was only a joke, but it's not remotely funny outside a group of people who know what I actually think about the subject. To anybody else who's been called a nerd, it's just hurtful. I'm very sorry about that.

"Nerd" is a stereotype, of course. A nerd is that person who can't make conversation, can't ever think of the right thing to say, can't dress the way everybody else does (clothes being another form of communication), has awkward body language. A nerd is a person defined by their inabilities. A nerd has no social skills. And since humans are pretty much defined as the social animal, a nerd is somehow impaired in his or her humanity.

It's an ugly stereotype. This is what I meant when I said I don't use the word because it's exclusionary.

What I didn't get around to saying was that it is also nonsense. Social interaction is critical to humanity, but it is our capacity for abstract thought that sets us apart much more. Geeks who don't fit in socially among non-geeks tend to do very well in the realm of abstract reasoning. There's absolutely no basis look down on these geeks and plenty of reasons to look up to them.

That's not the only reason it's nonsense, either. It isn't that people classed as nerds have no social skills (despite my stupid joke). Everybody, even the most developmentally delayed person, has some social skills. If you have the ability to make someone laugh on purpose--not everyone all the time, just someone even once--you have advanced social skills. Humor is hard. It requires empathy, understanding others' expectations, coordinating timing, negotiating taboos, and a host of other joke-specific considerations. You can't be purposely funny without social skills.

So why do people say nerds don't have social skills? Well, largely because they're not using that empathy. Also because they're looking at the question from the limited perspective of their own culture.

One of the things we talked about in the session is how valuing information very highly shapes social interaction. If you get enough people together who value information to that degree, eventually those ways of interacting become their own set of agreed-upon social rules. At that point, you've got a culture.

In this case, you've got a geek culture, or a geek subculture, since geeks aren't in the majority. It doesn't look like the mainstream culture, but that doesn't make it any less valid--just different. Being able to successfully navigate the geek subculture isn't any harder or easier in terms of requiring social skills than navigating mainstream culture. It's also just different.

While someone from the geek culture may have a difficult time navigating the mainstream culture, it's not the case that geek culture is easier. Someone from the mainstream culture won't be able to easily navigate the social expectations of geek culture either. There are really only two differences. The first is that people in geek culture feel more pressure, as the minority, to accommodate someone from mainstream culture.

Second, there are different words for people who "invade" each culture from the other unsuccessfully. Those who are strangers in the mainstream culture are called "nerds." Those who are strangers in the geek culture are sometimes called "mundanes." It's not any nicer or less judgmental a word than "nerd." It's just coming from a different source.

So the real answer to "What's the difference between geeks and nerds?" is that a nerd is a geek outside of her or his culture. And that's why I don't use "nerd." It's just one more word that says, "Your kind isn't welcome here."

Now, as for the reason I made the joke I did. To understand, you have to know a certain amount about my past.

I really did grow up with limited social skills. I was very shy, and I grew up in a house where getting things wrong had consequences that no kid should have to deal with. Since developing good social skills requires a lot of trial and error, I was pretty backward in that respect.

A little later, I spent a lot of time as a poor geek in an area where the geeks were mostly well-off. If geek and non-geek are different cultures, so are poor and rich, or even poor and comfortably middle class. This was a disadvantage for me in that I moved between cultures where I never quite fit in. If I was with the geeks, I was behaving "wrong" for their socioeconomic culture. If I hung out with my class, my interests (and thus I) bored them to tears. I didn't meet their cultural expectations for entertainment.

I was always under pressure to conform to a culture that was a major mismatch to my identity. On the other hand, that situation taught me so much more about cultures, acceptance and exclusion, and the variability of what is "right" than being comfortable could ever have done. I learned a huge repertoire of social skills adaptable to most situations. And I became the kind of communication geek who could and would propose a session about navigating the cultural expectations of geeks and non-geeks.

Ironically, that joke came out in that session at ScienceOnline because I was as close to being in a room of my peers as I ever am in a group of more than about ten people. My mistake was in assuming that shared geekhood would provide enough shared background for everyone to understand what I would mean by "geeks with social skills."

I apologize for taking that for granted, and I hope this post helps.

Readings in Geek Communication

This post continues the setup for a session I'm running at ScienceOnline 2011 with Maria Walters and Desiree Schell called, "It's All Geek to Me." We'll discuss what we can learn about communicating science by looking at differences between a general audience and science's most solid audience--geeks.

Geek is not the default in our society, so when someone describes the differences between geek and non-geek communications, they tell us about geeks. Still, by looking at what geeks do "differently," we can gain insight into both geeks and non-geeks. The following are posts that tell us what sets geeks apart from everyone else.

Toni Bowers at TechRepublic lays out how the communication mismatch is generally addressed and asks a question that reframes the problem:

“The tech worker, the geek, is a problem solver; the businessman, the suit, is a people influencer. The geek likes to fix things, the suit relies more on people skills,” said Zetlin. Technology for suits is a “means to an end”-business success-while for geeks (who see themselves as outsiders and artists) it’s a “living, breathing thing.”

This is one of the reasons you hear so many career professionals advising IT folks to develop good communication skills. The better able you are to interpret what the business folks are asking for and turn it into a useful tool or technology, the better off you’ll be.

So should the other side of that equation be the suggestion that business people hone up on their technical skills? Well, you certainly don’t hear that as much. Wonder why that is?

A post and comment thread at Geek Etiquette specifically looks at differences in behavior:

The best is enemy of the good. Geeks often seek perfection, where non-geeks are more prepared to accept “good enough”. Lots of arguments occur around this.

Relevance mismatch. Geeks think some things (eg. how someone dresses) should be irrelevant, and largely disregard them. Non-geeks tend to place greater emphasis on personal grooming and dress codes. Conversely, non-geeks might think that something like desktop operating system is irrelevant, when it’s highly important to geeks. Either group will disregard what they consider “irrelevant”, not realising it’s relevant to the other party.

Another Geek Etiquette post takes on multitasking and balancing it with non-geek expectations for interaction:

If we’re not running a sideband conversation about the presentation topic, we’re often googling for more information on the presenter’s topic, or downloading and trying out the code in real-time. Those of us who are presenting later on are probably working on our slides at the last minute, and those of us who are taking time off from work to attend probably couldn’t do so unless we kept up with our email. All worthwhile things, one might argue.

On the other hand, the one-day London Perl Workshop last December didn’t provide WiFi, saying (in their FAQ) “it’s rude to type during someone’s talk and when you’re out of talks you should be socialising :)”

And yet one more Geek Etiquette post addresses geek literalism and the differences in producing and interpreting verbiage with only social content:

Most non-geeks have outbound tact filters: they filter what they want to say and add polite noise as it passes through. Geeks have inbound tact filters: they take bare communication with no politeness and just wrap it in assumed politeness as they interpret it.

When non-geeks talk, geeks think the polite sounds they make are redundant.

When geeks talk, non-geeks just think they’re being incredibly rude.

Adam Bluestein at Inc. magazine produces a user manual for geeks that discusses motivating geeks and the particulars of geek psychology:

Systematic thinking. Geeks see nothing magic about technology, only problems to be broken down and solved. "They tend to view the world in black-and-white terms," says Frazer. "They're very good at looking at a problem and reducing it to its component parts."

Wrong? Never. Geeks often have a powerful intellectual vanity. That makes it hard for them to admit mistakes. Hence, the plethora of expressions that blame the victim (see glossary, below).

Competitive nature. Being smarter than their peers is really important for geeks. Developers are constantly honing their skills with the aim of doing something that no one's been able to do.

Rands in Repose provides a similar guide for women dating a geek (a nerdy one in this case):

Nerds are fucking funny. Your nerd spent a lot of his younger life being an outcast because of his strange affinity with the computer. This created a basic bitterness in his psyche that is the foundation for his humor. Now, combine this basic distrust of everything with your nerd’s other natural talents and you’ll realize that he sees humor is another game.

Humor is an intellectual puzzle, “How can this particular set of esoteric trivia be constructed to maximize hilarity as quickly as possible?” Your nerd listens hard to recognize humor potential and when he hears it, he furiously scours his mind to find relevant content from his experience so he can get the funny out as quickly as possible.

Bex Huff discusses one implication of the geek's strong problem-solving drive:

Now... empathy is not easy, and its extraordinarily difficult for engineers.

Most technical people have been brainwashed by years of "education" into believing that there's a "right way" to do everything, and that its our job to fix it. When something is "wrong," we want to dive in and tell everybody how to make it "right" again. Its a trained compulsion. This is why engineers make lousy lovers, but excellent terrorists. In both cases, its a lack of empathy that dooms us to this fantasy world of absolute right and wrong, making it impossible to see things from another perspective.

Sound like anybody you know?

Finally, a favorite of mine and one from a geek culture that isn't a computer culture. This has more to do with interpersonal interactions than online communication, but it's still worth reading for insight into the different ways geeks and non-geeks process social interaction. Cally Soukup summarizes a talk by a speech therapist on how science fiction and fantasy fans communicate differently than "mundanes."

What we say in those large word groupings is also different. We tend to use complete sentences, and complex sentence structure. When we pause, or say "uh", it tends to be towards the beginning of a statement, as we formulate the complete thought. The "idea" or "information" portion of a statement is paramount; emotional reassurance, the little social noises (mm-hmm) are reduced or omitted. We get to the heart of what we want to say -- if someone asks us how to do something we tell them, not leading up to it gently with "have you tried doing it this way?"

This leads us to body language. Our body language is also different from mundanes. We tend to not use eye contact nearly as often; when we do, it often signifies that it's the other person's turn to speak now. This is opposite of everyone else. In mundania, it's *breaking* eye contact that signals turn-taking, not *making* eye contact. She demonstrated this on DDB; breaking eye contact and turning slightly away, and he felt insulted. On the other hand, his sudden staring at her eyes made her feel like a professor had just said "justify yourself NOW". Mutual "rudeness"; mixed signals.

We use our hands when we talk, but don't seem to know what to do with our arms. When thinking how to put something we close our eyes or look to the side and up, while making little "hang on just a second" gestures to show that we're not finished talking. We interrupt each other to finish sentences, and if the interrupter got it right, we know we've communicated and let them speak; if they get it wrong we talk right over them. This is not perceived as rude, or not very rude.

So, what other good resources are there for describing the differences between geeks and non-geeks in communication and expectations?

I Am Geek; Hear Me Mutter Pedantically

This post is an introduction to a session I'm running at ScienceOnline 2011 with Maria Walters and Desiree Schell called, "It's All Geek to Me." We'll discuss what we can learn about communicating science by looking at differences between a general audience and science's most solid audience--geeks.

It's been months since I last saw a geek. He was emceeing a burlesque show and occasionally entertaining us with old standards like pounding a spike into his nose. He was a lousy emcee but a pretty good geek.

That's where the term geek came from--performers who got very good at doing things most of us would never even consider. Of course, these days the term has been co-opted by people who do not generally bite the heads off chickens, and geeks of old are mostly known as freaks, lumped in with those with physical features unusual enough to be worth paying to see. Geek has changed.

Still, the origin of the term is useful for understanding the modern geek. In particular, understanding that geeks are set apart by their interests and the lengths they'll go to to pursue those interests is critical to understanding geeks as an audience. And there may be no better place to go for an explanation than Patton Oswalt's recent piece on geek culture.

I was too young to drive or hold a job. I was never going to play sports, and girls were an uncrackable code. So, yeah—I had time to collect every Star Wars action figure, learn the Three Laws of Robotics, memorize Roy Batty’s speech from the end of Blade Runner, and classify each monster’s abilities and weaknesses in TSR Hobbies’ Monster Manual. By 1987, my friends and I were waist-deep in the hot honey of adolescence. Money and cars and, hopefully, girls would follow, but not if we spent our free time learning the names of the bounty hunters’ ships in The Empire Strikes Back. So we each built our own otakuesque thought-palace, which we crammed with facts and nonsense—only now, the thought-palace was nicely appointed, decorated neatly, the information laid out on deep mahogany shelves or framed in gilt. What once set us apart, we hoped, would become a lovable quirk.

Our respective nerdery took on various forms: One friend was the first to get his hands on early bootlegs of Asian action flicks by Tsui Hark and John Woo, and he never looked back. Another started reading William Gibson and peppered his conversations with cryptic (and alluring) references to “cyberspace.” I was ground zero for the “new wave” of mainstream superhero comics—which meant being right there for Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Neil Gaiman. And like my music-obsessed pals, who passed around the cassette of Guns n’ Roses’ Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide and were thus prepared for the shock wave of Appetite for Destruction, I’d devoured Moore’s run on Swamp Thing and thus eased nicely into his Watchmen. I’d also read the individual issues of Miller’s Daredevil: Born Again run, so when The Dark Knight Returns was reviewed by The New York Times, I could say I saw it coming. And I’d consumed so many single-issue guest-writing stints of Gaiman’s that when he was finally given The Sandman title all to himself, I was first in line and knew the language.

Geeks are specialists, uber-specialists in fields that other people scratch their heads over if they even know they exist. Geeks are informational deep-divers in their own esoteric specialties. Geeks are...well, they're a lot like scientists. Many of them are scientists.

They are also the main self-selecting audience of science communicators. After all, who but a geek gets excited about opening up new sources of information by learning how to read scientific literature? Who else has overcome (or never internalized) the social prohibitions against asking dumb questions in order to participate in their own education? Who else fills the comment sections of various science blogs with their own vaguely related bits of esoteric knowledge to create the fascinating conversations that can happen there?

I phrase it that way because there is a "who else" who are not geeks and who don't self-select for engaging with science communicators. They're still an important audience to reach. To the extent that science communication has a game plan for changing the world, they may be an even more strategic target audience than geeks.

This non-geek audience, however, has different goals for how they spend their time than the geeks do. They are often distracted and distractable. Instead of wanting to incorporate all the knowledge there is, they're looking to have information winnowed down to that which is relevant for them. They're ready for the 50,000-foot view rather than the deep dive.

This geek/non-geek dynamic is, of course, a bit of a simplification. Your average non-geek may have a head full of sports statistics or bread recipes, available on a moment's notice, and your average geek has plenty of topics in which s/he just isn't that interested. "Geek" is as much a method of engagement as anything else, and which method a person brings to a particular piece of science communication depends greatly on the topic at hand.

Then there is the pseudo-geek, the person who takes the broad but shallow dive. Patton Oswalt again:

The problem with the Internet, however, is that it lets anyone become otaku about anything instantly. In the ’80s, you couldn’t get up to speed on an entire genre in a weekend. You had to wait, month to month, for the issues of Watchmen to come out. We couldn’t BitTorrent the latest John Woo film or digitally download an entire decade’s worth of grunge or hip hop. Hell, there were a few weeks during the spring of 1991 when we couldn’t tell whether Nirvana or Tad would be the next band to break big. Imagine the terror!

But then reflect on the advantages. Waiting for the next issue, movie, or album gave you time to reread, rewatch, reabsorb whatever you loved, so you brought your own idiosyncratic love of that thing to your thought-palace.

This is the person who has absorbed the easily available information on a topic but hasn't engaged to the level of grappling with it. In science communication terms, this person knows the Wikipedia articles and the three paragraphs available in a textbook overview of the subject but has no idea what the recent studies say or what the disagreements in the field are. This is the person who shows up in the comments of a blog post discussing a tricky issue to tell you that you suck because you aren't saying what "everyone knows" about the topic.

All three of these engagement methods or types of audiences require different treatment. There are plenty of people out there telling geeks how to reach non-geeks, but ironically, much of that information alienates its intended audience by not treating them as the geeks they are. Bora had a lovely take a while back on what such a book would look like if written by a geek for a geek audience.

There's much less information out there on how to communicate with geeks. In another post tomorrow, I'll collect some of the information that exists. [Update: now available here.] Be forewarned, however, that it largely doesn't come from peer-reviewed research, a fact that will make geek audiences twitch. However, it does give a (default) non-geek perspective on communicating with geeks that should shed some light on the differences between the two.

Then, come Sunday morning at 10:15 EST, my co-moderators (both with plenty of experience translating from geek to non-geek and back) and I will host a discussion on how understanding the differences between these audiences can help us define and reach the target audiences for our own communications. And we'll try to find a productive solution for dealing with those pseudo-geeks.

I believe the session should be live-streamed; I'll add a link as soon as one is available. It can also be followed on the Twitter hashtag #scio11, and we'll try to have at least one person in the room monitoring that feed for anyone who wants to participate remotely.

I hope to see you all there.

Science Online 2010--Trust and Critical Thinking

Our session from Science Online is now available online. I think we ended up talking about trust more than critical thinking, but it means we still stayed on topic, at least. Thanks to Greg, Desiree, PZ, Dr. Kiki (from left to right) and our "audience" (almost all of whom participated) for a great session.

Credulity, Skepticism and Cynicism

You've met them. "Oh, those scientists. They get their funding from the government/industry/political think tanks. They're just producing the results needed to keep their money flowing. They'll say anything it takes. Besides, it's not like they don't make mistakes. Even Newton and Einstein had it wrong."

You've met the others, too. "My friend told me about an Oprah show where she talked to a writer who explained how the universe really works. I always knew it was a special place made just for me."

We've got a problem to solve. Stop by Quiche Moraine and add your suggestions.

ScienceOnline2010

W00t!

Goliath's Rules

One of the fun parts of WisCon is always getting to meet people I should have met long ago. This year, I finally got to spend a little time talking to Lynne and Michael Thomas. Amusingly, I found a link to the following article on Lynne's blog while checking out how productive she'd been at WisCon.

David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.

In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, David initially put on a coat of mail and a brass helmet and girded himself with a sword: he prepared to wage a conventional battle of swords against Goliath. But then he stopped. “I cannot walk in these, for I am unused to it,” he said (in Robert Alter’s translation), and picked up those five smooth stones. What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”

It's a fascinating New Yorker article on how effective throwing away the rules--particularly the unacknowledged ones--can be and on the consequences of breaking them. Keep reading past the chunk in the middle that's padded with a business profile. Some of the best parts are at the end.

MythOS

I did something odd this weekend. I saw a friend's book for sale, and I didn't buy it. Not because I didn't want it. Not because I didn't want to port it home 250+ miles. Certainly not because I couldn't afford it.

I was being nice.

It wasn't officially out yet, and there were only a few copies. Besides, I can get a copy signed any time I want, more or less, and most of the people at WisCon only had access to Kelly for the weekend.

Today, however, MythOS by Kelly McCullough is officially out, and everyone can grab a copy of their own. I highly recommend it and not just because Kelly's one of my best friends or because I had some tiny little influence on the final product. I recommend it because Kelly is one of the few writers I've read who can write a romp with serious thematic elements. I have to point them out to him sometimes, but they're there, and neither they nor the wild ride of a story are compromised by fitting both in.

Don't let yourself be put off by the "Book 4 of 5" in the promotions. MythOS takes Ravirn and Melchior out of their normal Greek milleiu and drops them somewhere rather different. There's plenty of time to get your bearings as they get theirs. In fact, you may find Loki and Fenris more familiar than they do...sort of. The hand of Tyr, however, will surprise you, no matter how well you know your Norse myths.

You can check out the first chapter on Kelly's site, and there's an interview of sorts with him at SFNovelists, where you can find out what kind of character he is. Or you can just go pick up the book. It's worth it, I promise.

Everyone Should Interview Bora

I managed another first this morning. I've been hosting Atheists Talk for a couple of months now, but I just did my first interview this morning. I've been a little nervous about doing one, because I tend to think before I talk and dead air time is, well, dead.

As it turns out, I don't think it could have gone any better. Okay, I admit that I cheated. I interviewed Bora--about ScienceOnline'09. I had a charming guest, whom I've met before, talking about a subject we both know and care about. The only real challenge was making it an interview instead of continuing on with conversations we'd already started. I think we did a pretty good job with that, though.

But don't take my word for it. You can judge for yourself with the podcast.

And kudos to Mike, who managed both "Zivkovic" and "Zvan" in one introduction before wisely moving on to using "Z" in place of both of our last names.

Atheists Talk--Bora Zivkovic

Science is moving onto the internet. Collection of data, collaboration between researchers, communication and critique of results, teaching and learning--all are increasingly being done online. ScienceOnline, held January 16 - 18 in 2009, is a conference dedicated to discussing the intersection of science and online technologies. Bora Zivkovic, one of the founders and organizers of ScienceOnline will join Atheists Talk Sunday, February 1, to talk about the purpose of the conference, the results of this year's sessions, and why it's important to meet your online colleagues in person.

Produced by Minnesota Atheists. Directed and hosted by Mike Haubrich. Interview by Stephanie Zvan.

• The ScienceOnline'09 conference wiki.
• The conference program.
• Blog and media coverage of the conference.
  

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Listen to AM 950 KTNF on Sunday at 9AM Central to hear Atheists Talk produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call the studio at 952-946-6205 or email us at radio@mnatheists.org.

ScienceOnline'09--The Conference

Is it remotely necessary to state at this point that I am no liveblogger?

If the day and a half before the conference was for running around and meeting people I'd only talked to online, the conference itself was all about cramming my head full of ideas it will take me the next year (or more) to fully unpack.

Well, actually, it started with meeting more people. We had breakfast with Jean-Claude Bradley, whom I hadn't met even online and who probably thinks I'm the dullest conversationalist in the world. This is only true when I'm working on a mere four hours of sleep, due, in this case, to a combination of overstimulation and husbandly snoring. I was more concerned with getting coffee in me than anything else, I'm afraid.

I did, however, manage to catch Glendon Mellow on his way out of the restaurant long enough to say, "Hi," and promise to talk later. From that point until the start of my session, I remember only a very few things: scandalizing the shuttle driver, who disapproved of the bare legs below my skirt ("That's how you get a cold, young lady."); packing very snuggly into the shuttle; finding more coffee but not being willing to wait for the espresso; Anton starting the conference with a toot on some kind of plastic instrument; discovering that I'm too short for a podium, which I fully expected; discovering that the podium had no place for my coffee, which I didn't expect at all.

Then it was time for Science Fiction on Science Blogs. I'll write more about this later, because I think where we ended up deserves its own post. I wasn't surprised to hear people talking about being afraid to be considered "lightweight" for talking about SF, but the idea that developed about using SF as a signifier of shared geekiness was kind of cool.

Plenty of others who attended have also written about the session. Ryan Somma has a good overview, and Chris Clouser has another. Henry Gee was somewhat disappointed, although he's not very specific about what he was looking for out of the session. Glendon captured the two most original thoughts to come out of the session. John Dupuis and Acmegirl both noted that certain items must be discussed any time the subject comes up.

One thing I noted at the session that I will repeat here: it's obvious that many scientists are fans of science fiction. What should also be obvious is that many SF writers are fans of science. If you're a scientist who wants to have some impact on the science in SF, Google your favorite (living) writers. These days, many to most of them have blogs. Start participating in the comments, and tell the writer that s/he has fans who are scientists. Then just see how quickly you get used as a resource when the writer is working on something in your field.

Oh, yeah, and I'm hugely flattered that a certain blogger who claims to have ADHD sat through the entire session.

I skipped out on the next set of sessions to decompress from mine. Yes, it went fine, but that never stops me from being a stress monkey. I made sure that Lou met the two people on the top of his list, PalMD and Bob O'Hara, which I did by turning around at the end of the coffee line and saying, "See those two people about six feet away? Yeah, that's them." Then I hung out with him and Bob. Eva Amsen joined us, and we talked some more about the SF session and her work as a science fiction fact checker.

Everybody else tried to get online to blog about what they were doing. We were a bit much for Sigma Xi's wireless, and it kept kicking people off. I was perfectly happy to have left my laptop at the hotel. I just kicked back and drank my coffee. Well, I probably mocked something in there too, but that's reflexive.

Then it was off to Rhetoric of Science: Print vs. Web. There was some good stuff about the role of editors and about not abandoning things like the methods and results sections of scientific papers that are structured to communicate the greatest amount of information between scientists in the shortest possible space (yes, that was Bora with the conservative position). Still, the use of language as a gatekeeping mechanism, both to keep science from nonscientists and to determine who gets to be a scientist, was prominent.

Lunch exposed the greatest weakness of the Sigma Xi center--the lack of conversational-sized social spaces. There are much larger spaces, but those tend to also be traffic paths. I grabbed a chair back in the conference room I'd just come out of and ended up having lunch with Lou and Pal. We chatted a bit about pseudonymity and coming out, and I noted with amusement that one can tell when a blogger has set up shop under a new pseudonym to talk about something different. No blogger starts from scratch knowing how to do some of these things.

Done with food, I wandered around a bit. I ran into Glendon again, and we chatted about how strange it felt to have everyone talking about pseudonymity when the point of an artist being online is self-promotion. We also talked about making money from free content without advertising. People are doing it, but it's hard to get a handle on how many--and on how many a market can handle.

I apologized for being distracted, explaining that I was still expecting to see Betül but wasn't quite sure that we'd recognize each other. I'd been watching for her all morning in the milling crowds without luck. I had, however, noticed someone badge-sniff me and disdain to recognize my presence, which was totally worth seeing.

Anton called us all to attention again to give a very secular thanks for our lunch. I was going to catch up with Greg to find out how the life transitions and gender in science sessions had gone (the sessions I thought I could be pretty sure would be covered on blogs galore), but he and Acmegirl were deep in a discussion of the same, so I just sat back and listened. Not too surprisingly, someone had taken the discussion as an opportunity to talk about what he'd do if he found out "his" students/employees/prized possessions were blogging under pseudonyms. I don't remember what I'd originally intended to attend after lunch, but this discussion was too interesting to walk away from.

There wasn't much contention in the race and science panel, but it did start out by covering what felt like some very basic ground. It got more interesting after a bit, when people focused less on the need to treat the subject seriously, which I felt everyone understood, and focused more on what worked. I thought the two most interesting points came from the moderators. Acmegirl noted that while mentors are good, people shouldn't expect to have all their needs met by one mentor. Multiple mentors can offer perspectives on all your complex issues. Danielle Lee talked about working with kids who were in trouble and pointed out that science offer them a chance to succeed without having to fit in with all the other kids. Science as subversive activity--love it.

Then it was time for the art and science session, moderated by Glendon. Now, Glendon had been on an art-as-parasitical-on-science kick for a couple of months, probably feeling a little bit of impostor syndrome at being a non-scientist moderating sessions at a science conference (I know I was). He was disabused of the idea quite quickly. The more interesting ideas to come out of this session for me were that scientists make artistic choices frequently in determining how to represent data and that they frequently borrow the symbolism used in art to convey their points. Glendon is still collecting examples of art that has inspired science, so if you have one for him, let him know.

Coming out of this session, I heard my name called. I shouldn't have worried. Betül is Betül, and there is no mistaking her for anyone else. Nor would it have been possible to miss her. She and Karen Ventii had driven up together and gotten to the conference a bit late. I have no idea what Betül and I actually said to each other. It was just cool to finally meet. I did catch up with what Karen's been up to since she quit blogging. No plans to resume any time soon, unfortunately.

The last session I attended for the day was on social networks for scientists. No, I'm not likely ever to use one, but I do have an interest in what facilitates the formation and maintenance of communities. The session ended up being largely about what not to do to create a social network, namely just try to get people to show up and hope they'll connect with each other. Specialized social networks that do work (Flickr for photographers, Ravelry for knitters) are organized around content. The Nature Network seems to be the closest comparable site for scientists, but it's hampered by some very clunky technology that was not meant to do what it's been doing.

Then the sessions were over for the day. Back at the hotel, I got to check out some very cool photos from Ben's shoot for the day before it was time for the big dinner. I finally got a chance to introduce myself to Abel Pharmboy on our way in. After that, though, well, there weren't many spots at the big tables left, so I felt a little unsocial as Ben, Greg, Lou and I grabbed a table together. It's ironic, of course, because the conference was the first time I'd met Lou, but it's not as though we don't know each other.

Luckily, the buffet line wandered right past our table. We chatted with Tom Levenson about a Darwin project he was working on. We talked a little more with Betül and Karen. I took forever to flag down a server to ask for water instead of sweet tea. I ran into Scicurious getting seconds (and feel a little better about her not starving any time soon). Our food got cold as she told me about a project that she wants to take on and that I can't wait to see. (Somewhere during the weekend, she also told me the secret of getting DrugMonkey to buy your drinks, although I don't think it'll work for me.)

Four hours of sleep caught up with me somewhere in the middle of dinner, and I pumpkined shortly thereafter, whereupon I discovered the fatal flaw of a confernce like SO09. My brain would not shut off. Between that and the hard drive noise that I thought was Ben's photos uploading to the server at home, I only added another five hours of sleep to my total for the weekend.

The morning brought the unwelcome news that the noisy hard drive was not Ben's, but mine, which should have been idle all night. Getting the machine to shut down was a pain. Getting it to restart took two tries. Then I shut it back down, packed, loaded the car and went to breakfast.

Yes, the conference did serve fruit and pastries and muffins, but it was nice to start the day with a slow, sit-down meal. Breakfast discussion on Sunday was of natural and man-made climate change, with Jean-Claude and Greg again and joined by James Hrynyshyn. Then back to Sigma Xi.

Ben had come along that day, since he didn't have a shoot and because I thought he'd be helpful to Glendon in his blog images session. I didn't feel there were any sessions at 9 that I really needed to attend, so I showed Ben the conference center.

We were out there for about 10 minutes when someone came out of the impact factor session. She needed a break (already) and more coffee and looked to be on the verge of tears. "I want to support open access, but if I don't publish in a journal with an impact factor of X, I won't have a job. My advisor won't get tenure. What am I supposed to do?"

That was the statement that really crystalized the conference for me. So many of the conclusions in so many of the sessions were really, "This needs to be changed/recognized as irrelevant/valued more," but they weren't being uttered by people who were in a position to change the policies we were all talking about. How many people at the conference were on search committees or tenure committees? How many review for journals?

The attendees at this conference were, on average, young and early in their careers. At least three-quarters of them were younger than I am. They're not in a position to make most of the changes we discussed. They will be in a few years, but should the changes wait that long? If not, how does everyone get the buy-in of the people who are able to make the changes? Do people need to start dragging their older peers, their PIs and department chairs and deans to ScienceOnline? And how do they balance the need to make changes with the preservation of their own careers? I don't have any answers.

It was in a considerably more thoughtful mood that I ducked into what was left of Pal's Blogging 101 session. Oh, the joy of trying to run a live demo on intermittent wireless. Still, he is every bit as entertaining in person as on the blog and PalCast, and the session finally provided some incentive for me to fix a gaping hole in my sidebar.

Acmegirl stopped me after the session to ask my advice on a blogging project a friend of hers wants to start. She was actually the second person to seek me out for advice at the conference. It was very weird. Cool, but weird. Extra cool because they were both such interesting projects that I'm tickled to get to play even a tiny part in them.

Then it was on to "Hey, you can't say that!" This session was about blogging coming into conflict with employers. There were some very interesting stories to come out of this, but I did feel that we spent too much time treating blogging as something totally new, rather than another form of public speech. There are precedents for how public speech can and cannot affect your employment (without a contract to specify otherwise). Running some of this down is one of the things I added to my to do list after the conference. You'll see it here when I put the information together.

The final session I attended was on blogging networks. I can't sum this session up any better than Eva did, so I won't even try.

Then it was all over but for lunch and travel. Mmm, baklava. I chatted some more with Glendon and Blake. Funny how the artists and the writers end up converging. Betül and Karen stopped by on their way out, and Betül gave me a nazar, so I now have my own "superstition hanging from a chain." At this point, I completely lost track of whom I said "Hi" and "Good-bye" to.

Having tons of time left before our flight, we grabbed Greg and headed over to Red Hat so Ben could have his picture taken out front. Yes, we're geeks.

This time in the airport, it was Greg and I geeking about blogging while Ben followed along politely. We compared notes on the sessions we'd both been to and filled each other in on the ones we'd seen separately. We also chatted about the things we each wanted to follow up on from the various sessions.

We parted ways before security, since Greg ended up on a different flight than we did coming back. I'd warned him coming out that Ben and I were a pain to go through security with, since Ben traveled with photo gear and a bunch of electronics. Ironically, I was the only one who got held up in security. My boarding pass got the random code printed on it that meant I got patted down and some poor, overworked TSA guard got to swab down two laptops, one backpack, one purse, my shoes, and my coat. She didn't look happy. Adding to the irony was the fact that no one blinked at Ben's bag o' stuff, so he had to wait for me.

The flight back was uneventful. I finished my first readthrough on my friend's beta draft of his novel and made some notes on my dying hard drive about the conference. The train ride from the airport was much more interesting, as a group of young women held an earnest discussion of what types of tattoos and piercings were "okay" and what kind made a girl a skank. "They do that in Dallas." "Yeah, but Minneapolis is no Dallas." Hee. I wish I could have recorded it.

Then, finally, we were back home. The conference was over, except for digesting all the ideas to come out of it--and appeasing the cats after our absence.

I'm so going again next year.

ScienceOnline'09--The Pre-Show

It was about fifteen below (Fahrenheit) when we got on the plane. They warned us that we'd want our coats on the jetway. They were right. We giggled a little bit at the "cold weather" warnings that everyone in NC was posting.

This was Thursday, as we traveled to ScienceOnline'09, and we meant me, my husband and Greg. I was half expecting PZ to be on the same flight, as there's only one direct afternoon flight between Minneapolis and Raleigh. We didn't find out until Friday that he wasn't coming.

Greg and Ben had geeked out about open source software over lunch, as fully expected, but we weren't seated together on the plane, so I got about half of a beta draft of a novel read for a friend. It would have been more, but the toddler on the lap next to mine protested being told to take a nap by banging his head into my arm. C'est la vie.

We could tell we were at a blogging conference as soon as we unpacked and headed down to the hotel bar. GrrlScientist was sitting at a table across from Bob O'Hara and Blake Stacey. The number of laptops out varied but was never less than one. Once we got drinks started and dinner ordered, everybody introduced themselves (except Blake, who had wandered away) and chatted for a bit.

The contingent who'd shown up early enough to attend the early bird dinner got back about the time we finished our food. Bora acted as the official greeter by telling us about his multi-stage Facebook research project. Even if you haven't met him yet, I'm sure you'll be unsurprised to know that he isn't quite so much human as a force of nature. (A very charming force of nature.)

We also met Danica Radovanovic about then, as well as the cutest overlords ever. We pulled another table up to the sprawl that was now half the bar and chatted with Grrl, Bob, Henry Gee and Alex Ley until it was time for bed.

I finally met Blake the next morning at the breakfast buffet and can attest, after having seen him eat, that he is indeed a grad student. Most of the people there on Friday headed out to the coffee cupping, but Ben and I had a project of indeterminate length to complete that day, so we hadn't signed up for anything.

While waiting for Lou, who was a necessary part of the project, Greg, Blake and I competed for title of former geekiest high school student. I'm not sure who won, but I know I lost. gg wandered by during the competition and introduced himself.

The project deserves its own post when it comes to fruition, so I'll only say that Lou was held up by traffic, that there are stories that will never be blogged by me (having next to nothing to do with us, just with the people we were working next to), and that we accomplished it in record time. Oh, and that I was reminded how simultaneously cool and strange it is to meet someone in person who you know pretty well, but only electronically. Particularly so under the circumstances.

Unsurprisingly (we were at a conference), getting back to the hotel meant heading back to the bar. Lou couldn't stay for the evening, but he wanted to say hi to a few people. We walked into the tail end of the Sblings pizza party.

The guard was changing as people prepared to go to the wine tasting, so we got waved over and sat down across from Zuska. I introduced myself to Dave Munger, trying to keep the fangirl suppressed. He asked, "Are you the same Stephanie who comments a lot on Greg's blog?"

"I...uh....yeah." I may have blushed. Zuska can probably tell you.

James Hrynyshyn held out his hand next. As I said my name again, someone on my left shouted an echo, which is how I met Scicurious. She...I'm not sure how to describe her, except to say that trying to keep up with her would probably tire Bora out and she's positively fabulous.

Somewhere in the middle of passing pizza around and getting drinks, ScienceWoman joined the party. When the subject of where we were from came up, she said, "You look like you're from Minnesota." I had no real good idea what that meant until she said, "I'm from [town in the region big enough for me to have heard of it]," and I thought, Yeah, okay. She looks like she's from the upper Midwest too.

More shuffling of seats ensued as more people headed toward the wine tasting and others got back from other errands. PalMD came in after a failed nap attempt and admitted that no, he doesn't sleep. Life is just too interesting. We talked for a little bit about high-maintenance people managing to attract each other and quitting the internet as a form of blood pressure medication.

Zuska and I chatted for a little bit after the wine tasters all left. We compared notes on getting used to the idea that other people were interested in the things we wanted to blog about and on finding readers in completely unexpected places. Talking about lurkers brought us to the concept of the paralysis of good intentions (although I didn't use the term until talking to Greg about a tangentially related topic later that night). I suspect some of it was a bit of dry run for her thoughts on the subject of allies.

Then we lost more people to the WISE event, and I got to listen in on a cool conversation between Greg and Greta Munger on the evolution of cognition. I can't do it justice, so I won't try to reproduce any of it here.

We did attend one organized event on Friday, since Dave recruited us to fill out their reservation for dinner at Serena. The place came highly recommended and didn't disappoint, although they were out of a few items. The conversation was even better. I kept bouncing back and forth between a conversation with Josh Rosenau and Salman Hameed and talking to Tom Levenson. The part I remember most clearly was discussing Bora's shock value post with Tom. We both felt it was two posts in one and each agreed with him fairly strongly on one point and disagreed with him slightly on the other--Tom and I each championing a different point--but I think we agreed with each other almost entirely. I haven't figured out the math on that one.

I had just ordered a second tall beer at the hotel when Dave insisted we come along. I'd finished it quickly and found a microbrew on the menu at Serena that I'd never seen at home, so I was not entirely sober by the end of dinner. I was back at the hotel at the bar, winding down and sobering up while talking to Greg when the squid and the lobster entered. Shortly thereafter, the sea shanties started.

That seemed a little weird, which told me I was tired. I've seen much, much stranger things. So I said good night and headed to bed. I had a nine a.m. session to run, so it seemed like the wise thing to do.

After all, the conference hadn't even started yet.

Whither Allies

I'm back from ScienceOnline09, with an inaccessible laptop hard drive holding all my notes, and I've gotten one mostly full night's sleep in the last four. It would be wiser of me to hold off on blogging contentiously until I'm better rested. In fact, I have a ton of comments I'm dying to respond to. Instead, I'm writing this, and I ask a small amount of indulgence in the reading, because I think it's important enough to write even under less than ideal conditions.

I had a number of very nice chats with people before the sessions they were moderating about the topic of the session. Not surprising. Most of the moderators were a little overprepared and very invested in the topic, as they should be.

One of these discussions was with Zuska in the hotel bar. We were talking about lurkers and who reads her blog, and I made a comment about the risks allies take in opening their mouths and the inevitability of screwing something up. She agreed and said something about the responsibilities of allies when that happens.

Janet is now saying something very similar at Adventures in Ethics and Science.

You can't tell just by looking which purported allies have had a crystalizing experience. When people who say they are allies let you down in the crunch (which happens a lot), it's hard to trust that any ally can be relied upon. Thus, one lesson for allies (beyond the importance of being reliable at crunch-time) is not to be surprised or offended when you're not immediately recognized as an ally. Saying you are doesn't count for nearly as much as showing you are.

Let me say something now: You can't count on me.

Of course, you can't count on your parents to step up when your uncle is being an ass about your college choices. You can't count on your best friend to know what you need to hear about your date. You can't count on your sweetie(s) to know what you want for your birthday. You can't count on you to do what's best for you when you're feeling tired and unmotivated. As comfortable as it would be and as useful as it is sometimes to act as though the opposite were true, you can't count on people, even the people who are supposed to be on your side.

There are a couple of reasons you can't count on me. The first one is implicit in the examples I just gave. I don't know what you need or want at any given moment. The fact that I recognize you as part of a marginalized group tells me that you're marginalized. That's all it tells me, because part of being an ally is recognizing that marginalized and stereotyped groups are just as diverse (if not more so) than the mainstream.

The second reason is one I brought up talking to Zuska. I'm an ally, in part, because I don't deal well with authority. This means that it's easier for me than for some to look at the reasons given for marginalization and say that they don't make sense. However, it also means I take a step back any time someone says allies should behave in a particular way.

On top of that, I'm dealing with my own issues of marginalization. Some are relatively small and many are problems of privilege, but they're still real and part of the reason I understand marginalization. I may not have brought them up because, well, I've been listening. But that doesn't mean that I don't sometimes have to take a step out of your fight to fight my own.

So, no, you can't count on me. What you can do, though, is tell me what you would like me to do in a given situation, know that I'm likely to say an enthusiastic "yes" if I can (as I did a couple times this weekend), and know that I don't make promises lightly. Well, you really can't know those last two, but those are the areas where I want to be called on the carpet if I screw up.

That's a lot of speaking for myself, I know. But in the end, that's all I can do. I'm not your ally because I feel sorry for you and think you need caretaking. I'm your ally because I believe you have things to say I want to hear. I'm your ally because I believe in the intrinsic value of diversity and basic human dignity.

I hope that's enough. It may not be, in which case, you have every right to decide I'm not your ally. That would sadden me, but I understand that trying to change your mind would waste energy we could both put to use better elsewhere, just as trying to change me would be.

We don't achieve diversity by insisting that we all be alike.

***

As an aside that's nothing of the sort, I also want to respond to DrugMonkey's comments to Janet's post. If you follow this blog or DrugMonkey, you'll know that there was a big to do last month involving a commenter on DrugMonkey who I and some other DrugMonkey regulars felt was a trollish poster child.

Now, I had two purposes in mind in pointing out the trolling. One, I've developed an interest (perhaps even an unhealthy fascination) with that kind of thing, and two, I wanted to give people a place away from the fray to react to the manipulation. I thought both worked.

Then I saw this comment from DM:

Some, see Stephanie Z's post, consider you to be nothing more than an unrelenting disruptive troll. and suggest that I should ban your ass.

I was concerned briefly that DM really thought I was suggesting the troll should be banned, but I didn't say anything. For one thing, he was delivering an excellent lesson. I didn't want to interupt. And there are always more chances to talk about trolls and how they should be handled.

[sigh] Always.

But when it keeps coming up, I get more concerned.

Fascinating. And by this may we conclude that those who may have the privilege of ignoring said clueless idiots' obnoxiousness in case they are redeemable are themselves proving to be bad allies? Is it letting down in the crunch to fail to come to the same conclusions as those with said finite time and energy?

For the record, DM, no.

As I said above, I think it's silly to expect or even want monolithic behavior from people supporting diversity. Yes, there are times when a massed voice is helpful, but aside from that, well, it's a lot like my take on science communication. The people we need to reach, in the mainstream or in other marginalized groups, are not monolithic. We need as many ways to reach them as there are people to be reached.

In addition to places for people to sit and rest outside the line of fire, we need both carrots and sticks, and it's really hard for the same person to provide both at the same time. So as far as I'm concerned, as long as you can handle all the mixed metaphors, I'm happy to apply the pressure and allow you to show someone which way they need to move to get out from under it.

That's what allies are for.

That Kind of Weather

This is the kind of weather:

• Where you walk outside, breathe in and immediately cough, because your lungs are smarter than you are.
• Where your eyelashes freeze together, or to your scarf if they're that long.
• Where you instantly detect the smallest shift in wind direction.
• Where you get brain freeze--from the outside.
• Where your cheeks get chafed by the frost on the inside of your scarf.
• Where your nose doesn't even run until you get back inside.

For me, this is the kind of weather where I want to get on a plane and go some place warmer for just a few days. Today, right about now, in fact (I hope), that's what I'm doing.

I'm headed off to North Carolina for ScienceOnline09 and to experience the region's idea of cold. I hear it will be below freezing at night. I'm positively bouncing with the excitement of meeting everyone, but I'm trying to do it very carefully.

I wouldn't want to slip on the ice and have to stay home.

Science and Fiction--Recommended Reads

This is my last summary of responses to the questions Peggy and I posed in November. Today's question was posed to both science bloggers and science fiction writers.

Are there any specific science or science fiction blogs you would recommend to interested readers or writers?

The short answer is "yes." Here's the long answer:

Science and Technology
Astrobiology Magazine Science news relevant to the possibility of life on other worlds.
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Bad Astronomy Phil Plait on astronomy and general skepticism.
BBC News One of the few large media outlets that still has broad science coverage.
Biology in Science Fiction Peggy Kolm finds the science in science fiction and vice versa.
Blogging on Pseudo-Science Database Aggregating skeptical posts on junk science.
Carnival of Mathematics Blog carnival: mathematics, including math in pop culture.
Carnival of Space Blog carnival: space and astronomy.
Centauri Dreams Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities.
Cocktail Party Physics A group blog lead by by Jennifer Ouellette that looks at interesting science and pop culture.
Cognitive Daily Fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition.
Cosmic Variance A group blog of physicists and astrophysicists talking about whatever interests them.
Deep Sea News All things wet and wild. At least those found underwater.
denialism blog Stamping out anti-science.
Dinosaur Tracking Brian Switek finds dinosaurs everywhere.
Discover Blogs Discover's blog swarm.
DrugMonkey A primer in the politics of funding and publishing in biology.
Encephalon Blog carnival: neuroscience and psychology.
Four Stone Hearth Blog carnival: anthropology and archaeology.
Geoblogosphere Feed A combined feed of geobloggers.
The Great Beyond The Nature news feed (many blogs also listed individually).
The Giant's Shoulders Blog carnival: history of science and classic science papers.
Greg Laden's Blog Archaeology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, politics. Oh, and robots.
Highly Allochthonous Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism.
Knight Science Journalism Tracker A review of science news stories as they make the MSM rounds.
Laelaps Brian Switek blogs about evolution. With cool pictures.
Mendel's Garden Blog carnival: genetics.
Mind Hacks Neuroscience, psychology, and the workings of the brain.
More Grumbine Science Robert Grumbine looks at climate science and whatever other science strikes his fancy.
NASA's Image of the Day
Nature News The latest science news from the journal Nature.
Neuroanthropology Encouraging exchanges among anthropology, philosophy, social theory, and the brain sciences.
New Scientist The magazine's online home.
Pharyngula Read PZ Myers. Everybody's doin' it.
Real Climate Climate science from climate scientists.
Research And Media Network Bringing people together to improve communication of research findings.
Research Blogging Aggregating posts on peer-reviewed research.
SciDev News, views and information about science, technology and the developing world.
ScienceNOW The latest science news from AAAS & the journal Science.
SciTalk UK organization that hooks up writers with scientists.
Science Not Fiction The science of futurist technologies—and cool TV shows, books, movies, toys, and video games.
Seed Magazine Science and culture.
Seed ScienceBlogs The sciborg (many blogs also listed individually).
Sentient Developments George Dvorsky's blogs about transhumanist perspectives on science, philosophy, ethics and the future of intelligent life.
Slashdot The great repository of all things geeky.
Space.com Putting all your space news in one place.
Tangled Bank Blog carnival: science and medicine.
Technovelgy Database of technology in science fiction, and news about science and technology related to SF.
Tetrapod Zoology Darren Naish talks about dinosaurs and whatever other creatures fascinate him today.
Thus Spake Zuska Suzanne Franks highlights the position of women in the sciences and engineering.
Uncertain Principles Chad Orzel, physicist and SF fan.
Universe Today Space news and home of the Carnival of Space.
Wired Magazine Not your grandfather's tech news, unless you're my niece.
why I hate theropods Nick Gardner finds the paleobiology news that others miss.
Worldchanging Collecting news and resources on environmental sustainability.
xkcd If you don't know why, you haven't read it yet.

Science Fiction
AboutSF.com A science fiction resource center.
The Alien Next Door Musings of Nina Munteanu, SF writer and ecologist.
Ambling Along the Aqueduct SF from a feminist point of view.
Angel Station Walter Jon Williams, author, game designer, kenpo maven, scuba fiend, and fantasy Iron Chef.
Beyond the Beyond SF writer Bruce Sterling blogs at Wired.
Charlie's Diary Writer Charlie Stross on, well, everything.
Cyberpunk Review Robots and cyborgs in news and entertainment.
Eat Our Brains A different brain (and writer) for every day of the week.
Ecstatic Days Writer and editor Jeff VanderMeer.
Feminist SF--The Blog! Books, movies, comics, games, reason, & ranting.
Feminist SF Blog Carnival
Futurismic A group blog about near-future science fiction and fact.
GalacticMu SF with an extra dose of snark.
Hero Complex The LA Times genre blog, with an emphasis on TV and movie news.
Hindi Science Fiction In Hindi.
io9 Attack of the 50-foot blog.
Lablit Dedicated to the portrayal and perceptions of real laboratory culture in fiction, the media and across popular culture.
Lakeshore Prolific writer Jay Lake blogs slightly less prolifically.
Mike Brotherton SF writer and astronomer.
No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons (Reloaded). Peter Watts keeps the focus on science and fiction.
People of Colour SF Carnival
Post-Weird Thoughts News, reviews and interviews.
Schlock Mercenary The comic.
Science and Entertainment Exchange Providing entertainment industry professionals with access to top scientists and engineers.
SFNovelists A collective of professional speculative fiction writers write about writing.
Sf Signal News, reviews and the Mind Meld (including several relevant to this discussion).
SF Writer Writer Robert J. Sawyer.
Tobias Buckell Online
tor.com The publisher provides a place to geek about all things fantasy and science fiction.
The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide It's not pretty, and hasn't been updated recently, but it's still an excellent way to find SF with specific themes.
Whatever Writer John Scalzi talks about science fiction, politics, geekery and, well, you know.

Science Art
The Art Department Blog of Tor Art Director Irene Gallo.
bioephemera A miscellany of incredibly cool stuff.
BLDGBLOG Finding a remarkable amount of science in architecture.
The Filter Art, video and other media "to help you, help others 'get' science."
The Flying Trilobite Glendon Mellow's art in awe of science.
Gurney Journey An art blog by the writer and illustrator of Dinotopia.
Paleo-Future Futurist predictions from the past.
Pruned Landscape architecture and urban planning.
Raptor's Nest Paleobiologist Manabu Sakamoto sketches his subjects.
seedbyte Garden design, garden organizations and individuals who stand out in the garden community.
Warren Ellis A steady stream of art, science and weirdness.
When Pigs Fly Returns Zachary Miller on dinosaurs, art and dragons.

As always, links to all the responses and the summaries to all the questions can be found at the conference wiki. And a huge thank you to everyone who participated.