{"id":186,"date":"2006-04-12T12:29:08","date_gmt":"2006-04-12T12:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/12\/call-for-posts-enough-is-enoug\/"},"modified":"2006-04-12T12:29:08","modified_gmt":"2006-04-12T12:29:08","slug":"call-for-posts-enough-is-enoug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/12\/call-for-posts-enough-is-enoug\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for Posts: Enough is Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back when ScienceBlogs was all new and shiny, I did a couple of posts asking questions of the other bloggers. I got involved with other things after a while, and stopped posting those, so I’m not sure this will still work, but here’s a question for other ScienceBloggers, or science bloggers in general, that I thought of when I was writing about science books<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What topic or phenomenon that’s generally in your area do you really wish people would stop asking you about?<\/p>\n

I don’t mean a major political controversy that you have a strong opinion about, but might be tired of (so no “creationism” answers), but rather some topic that is, for whatever reason, you don’t have a strong opinion about, but random people you meet assume you must be dying to talk about. My answer is below the fold:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For me, the topic I wish people would stop asking me about is string theory, and specifically Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe<\/cite>. It’s not in my field, and in fact, it’s far enough removed from my field that I can barely understand what string theorists are talking about most of the time. <\/p>\n

I haven’t read Greene’s book on the subject, either– I watched some of the TV version, but I dozed off during both nights. I have a copy of the book, but honestly, my pleasure reading time is very limited these days, and I’d rather spend it on other things. (Mostly trashy genre fiction, the trashier the better when things get particularly busy at work…).<\/p>\n

I really don’t have a well-informed opinion on string theory– I have negative opinions of many string theorists<\/strong>, but that’s not the same thing. Most days, I’m fairly happy to assume that there’s something there, otherwise all these smart people wouldn’t be spending so much time on the subject. On the other hand, a lot of what makes it into the popular press just sounds like total gibberish. I’m still undecided as to the ultimate merits of the theory, but as the impact on my life is roughly the same as whether we call Pluto a planet or not, I’m happy to wait to see if it ever intersects with experiment in a meaningful way.<\/p>\n

And yet, the second-most common reaction (after the Physics Face<\/a>) to learning that I’m a physicist is for people to ask me to explain string theory. Or specifically about Greene’s book– that’s the only reason I have a copy, in fact. If people are going to insist on asking, I probably ought to read the damn thing, just to have a better answer than “I don’t know.”<\/p>\n

But really, I’d be happier if they’d just stop asking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back when ScienceBlogs was all new and shiny, I did a couple of posts asking questions of the other bloggers. I got involved with other things after a while, and stopped posting those, so I’m not sure this will still work, but here’s a question for other ScienceBloggers, or science bloggers in general, that I… Continue reading Call for Posts: Enough is Enough<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-physics","category-science","category-string_theory","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}