Failed Blogging Attempts

Ever since I started "blocking" my working hours (more about that later), I haven't been able to find the time to surf the web waiting for inspiration to kick me in the bathing suit area. I also haven't had the time to just sit and stare at a half-finished blog post that requires a bunch of extra effort to finish and edit. I have a few of these posts lurking in my Blogger account, just waiting for the day when the coach (me, in this analogy) is going to put them in the big game (make them available for the world to see).

Now that I think about it, it's pretty sad that I spend so much time on certain posts. It's a bad habit because blogs are supposed to be spontaneous, inane, and annoyingly amateurish. In my defense, some of the posts are about topics that I am relatively uniquely placed to comment on. Nevertheless, I feel that it's a bad habit overall and should be able to crank out a pithy post (if it needs to be pithy). Because blogs are also supposed to be self-indulgent, let's take a look at some recent posts that I started but never finished. Maybe I'll be able to salvage some self-respect by getting something important across.

Infamous Capote
This was supposed to be my big movie review. I also wanted to brag that I've already seen "Infamous", the second movie about Truman Capote's writing of In Cold Blood. I not only saw it in limited release, but I had just finished reading the recent biography of Capote. In this case, I felt like I could actually be of use to the general populace. The problem came when I began to aim for a unique angle to approach the subject that hadn't been touched in some movie reviews. For some weird reason, I started out the post expressing my disgust that the story of the Clutters' murders was being used, maybe exploited, once again for high drama. I don't actually feel disgusted about that. It came off as sanctimonious, and it made me gag when I read it later. It was also a long post because I felt the need to summarize the story of how Capote came to write the book and what happened as he became engaged with the material and people involved.

For what it's worth, Infamous is pretty good movie. It's not quite as focused as Capote (the one with Phillip Seymour Hoffman), but the details were fascinating for someone freshly off reading the biography. It also seemed to nail Capote's character better. My post about it just sucked.

A Fun Order of Magnitude Problem
I had always intended to give non-science readers a glimpse into the mind of physical scientists. In particular, I wanted to talk about how our minds are tuned to work in two modes: approximate and exact. The exact mode is how most people imagine scientists to be. The approximate sense relates to how we often get useful answers and ideas without doing the intense (and occasionally impossible) calculations that an exact approach would require. There's a lot of intuition involved when doing one of these calculations well.

I realized that I was light on the science in the blog. I had also taken a course on order of magnitude approximation where I got lots of practice. I enjoyed the course because the idea was that you try to get answers without doing the hard work. You can apply these techniques to many areas of human endeavor from physics to sociology and often sound like you know something. I trashed the post when it turned out boring for the non-science people and uninspired for the science people. I had it in draft form for too long and just decided to trash it instead of sink more fruitless labor into it. Why force myself to write about science?

Ahh...I feel better. I have exorcised the lurking-post demons.