Really, why I blog

This is actually the third time I've tried writing this `why I write didactic essays' essay. I think I'm afraid of inspecting my actual motivations too closely. On the one hand, a didactic essay places the author above the reader, in a `look what I know and you don't' kind of way. On the other hand, if the essay is effective, the author and reader are on an even footing at the end of the essay, since both now have equal ownership of the content. A hard call there.

Being useful has always been a concern of mine. The world has put a whole heap of effort and NSF funds in to me, and I don't really feel that I ever really repaid it, in an amorphous, collective sense. By the usual measure of being useful, i.e., getting paid, I'm a good negative $960/month right now.

I've sent a book proposal to (name of publisher). They should get back to me this week, maybe. I'm gonna be heartbroken if it's not accepted.

Anyway, when people go to a movie, I always ask them to take notes and act it out for me when they get back. This is not a dumb joke: I would be f.ing delighted if anybody did this. E.g., Miss JAM of Alexandria, VA gave me a detailed play-by-play of the musical `Wicked', including brief musical figures, and I was delighted. Not only did I get the content of the story, which I wouldn't have had the attention span to sit through, I also got to enjoy the affective fun of having a pal tell the story instead of watching attractive strangers from New York acting the thing out. Similarly with seminars: I'd always try to get the executive summary from pals who'd gone, and would always volunteer to give the executive summary for those seminars I'd attended.

In other regards, this has always been sort of my ideal manner of transferring information: struggling with primary sources or textbooks, and then telling pals all about it. It's efficient and fun, when everybody is willing to play along; it also either appeases my desperate desire not to be beneath others (like my professors) or my desperate desire for an egalitarian society (among my peers).

Conversely, my brain is filled with heaps upon heaps of useless information, and something about explaining it to a pal makes it feel less useless when they agree that it's interesting and useful. For those few moments when we sit in mutual admiration of a fact about the world, my life of collecting dumb information doesn't feel like a complete waste.

I attempted to explain one of my favorite facts, the Central Limit Theorem, to Miss STA of Prague, Czech Republic, and she was actively not interested. I almost cried.