The death of Hypatia and other stuff

dan — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:55:33 +0000

I'm starting this blog entry with no idea what I'm actually going to say. I've never really been sure what the purpose of this blog was. For a while it was meant to help form thoughts for what is rapidly becoming the Never-Ending PhD. Well, today, what I'll do instead is be self-indulgent. More than usual. It's my blog after all; if anyone's reading, apologies - some vaguely connected thoughts follow; they'll all loosely related by a thread of cold icy chill. One chill from telly, one from history, one from the interwebnets, and I guess there's some snow there at the end, as well as the sun being destroyed. Which is must have been, cos it's dark. No real narrative thread.

Interwebnets first: I'm on academia.edu, and it turns out that it emails you when you're googled. This is only slightly more passively narcissistic than googling oneself directly, but it's been quite alarming. It should, of course, have been obvious, but since I decided to use my own surname (rather than my old secret leftie name you'll never ever find), every blog comment or appearance I make is viewable. When someone googles 'dan olner climate change' what do they find? Having not done a thorough survey, I suspect they find someone with inconsistent views, and venting more in comments than I would consider civil. A recent google of my name + 'economics' reveals more than I knew myself about the various places I've been posting, and that my Transitionista sympathies are on clear display. This is stuff to make sociologists wet themselves; we're all seeing each other now, consensually. I don't really feel like I consented, though sticking to my own name seems an honest choice, but it does look like I've ceded privacy by default. I can't recant anything. Luckily there are no awful, drunken diatribes out there - I don't think. Who knows?

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The death of Hypatia and other stuff