Seed gets personal, and asks me to disclose my secrets: Part I


Here’s this week’s “Ask a scienceblogger” question:

How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically?

I don’t know if you can handle the truth, but here it is…

Caffeine. Lots of coffee. And that isn’t sugar I put in it, it’s crystal meth.

Comments

  1. says

    And the crystal meth makes it easier to make those folksy typos and grammatical errors that don’t really matter no-how anyway. (It could, however, actually decrease productivity if it caused you to tangle your multiple arms in knots. That’d be kind of a problem.)

  2. idlemind says

    I’m pleased that you don’t adulterate your coffee with sugar. Only thing worse would be cream (though I guess the various non-dairy “creamers” might be considered worse, they’re all the equivalent of mixing diet coke and single-malt whisky).

  3. says

    Thanks for the elucidation. I’d been pondering this very question since March of last year, when PhaWRONGula was an every-single-post thing. (I swear, sometimes I’d finish heckling one post, hit Reload on pharyngula.com, and TWO MORE POSTS would’ve sprung up. By the time April 1 came around, I was addicted to caffeine, myself.)

    Still, we all love you for it. Most of the time, anyway.

  4. ulg says

    … they’re all the equivalent of mixing diet coke and single-malt whiskey …

    I’ve hated coke since I gave up carbonated drinks (12 yrs and counting). I prefer single-malt whiskey any of 3 ways:
    (a) Straight
    (b) with coffee
    (c) with vanilla ice cream

    Are (b) and (c) criminal?
    (I won’t stop if they are, but I’ll feel an additional warm glow of happiness when I enjoy them.)

  5. says

    Whiskey with ice cream? That’s a new one.

    As for how to be more productive, I wish my eyes were like those of the Overlords in Childhood’s End and could function independently. Then I could read two books at once!

  6. kaleberg says

    Wasn’t England overrun by coffee houses in the 17th century? Wasn’t the Royal Society founded shortly thereafter? There may be more to the caffeine theory of scientific and social progress than meets the casual eye.