In which blame is assigned...

Perhaps blame is too strong a word. But I am a believer in the honoured tradition of giving credit where it's due, so I wanted to talk a little bit about where I got the idea for this journal.

One inspiration was Neil Gaiman's journal. Gaiman started the journal while writing his book American Gods to give people an insight into the process of writing and publishing. I was already interested in giving people insight into just what it is we do as scientists. I had planned on doing in a series of essays on a website. Gaiman's journal, and learning about the software he used, gave me a much better way of doing the same thing.

I was also stirred to action by the recent death of Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionist and science writer extraordinaire. Gould's writings were inspirational. One of my earliest articles, in The Skeptical Enquirer, was inspired by Gould's book Wonderful Life. We've lost one of the most exceptional science communicators in recent memory, and there's a lot of work to do in that field. I make no claim to be in Gould's league, but every bit helps.

Finally, I've learned that I'm a journalist by inclination. Not "journalist" in a "breaking news" kind of way, but I've had success with small, regular writing projects. Whether it was short, weekly entertainment reviews and cartoons in The Meliorist (newspaper at uni I did my first degree), or a weekly Usenet newsgroup strategy column for a trading card game called "Zen's Card of the Week". That gives me hopes that this journal will run for a good while.

And if I'm lucky, maybe I'll even say a few interesting things occasionally.