Yakkity-Yak

I had the pleasure the other day of talking with science writer Jennifer Ouellette, blogger at Cocktail Party Physics, who also happens to be a black belt in jujitsu (!), and Sean's wife. The conversation was recorded for Bloggingheads.tv, which is a (to me) peculiar project to record bloggers talking to each other. I admit to being baffled that people actually want to listen to bloggers talk into their computers. However, people seem to actually watch these discussions, and given that I enjoy talking about science (and had never had the opportunity to meet Jennifer before), it seemed like a fun thing to do. If you're interested, the discussion is here: While I enjoyed the actual discussion, I confess to finding it disconcerting to have a recording of myself floating around the internet. I still have a bit of the anxious 13 year old stuck in my head, replaying years-old conversations where I wish I hadn't said something, or said something different. The rational 40 year old part of me knows these conversations were long forgotten by everyone but me, but with the internet, they're actually not. Instead, people can replay them over and over, and (even worse) comment on whether or not I misused a particular word (I did -- I said "spurious" when "serendipitous" would have been more appropriate), or whether or not it's distracting that a hunk of my hair tends to fall down and cover my one non-functional eye. It's like my middle school nightmares actually coming true. I've progressed enough in the intervening two decades that I'm not paralyzed or depressed over it, but the desire to get everything just right, and feeling faint flips in the stomach when you fall just a little bit short, has never completely gone away.