TheBigUpshot

This being the first post to the Big Upshot, I am going to do a meta-post and try to set out some goals. You can have a look at our mission, but this is a little more personal.

Why even start this project? Over the last year or two, I’ve really been inspired by a number of sites. Among many great sites, Ze Frank’s year-long video blog experiment stands out, and the community that grew up around it was wonderful. The TED talks that have been appearing on a regular basis are worth watching, and their unabashed intellectualism is inspiring in its own right. I admit to a certain prideful desire to see something like that grow up around something I create.

Aside from the inspiration that these great web creators’ have given me, another part of my reason for getting into this is that I would like to try to make a little extra money; as a graduate student, my stipend is enough to live, but not to do some of the things I would enjoy. So I make the unabashed admission: I am here to make a business as well.

I think that my strange life of Science and Irony is something about which it might be useful for people to read. My situation (poor grad student, 12 hour work days, surrounded by interesting people) throws a lot of the minutiae of life into stark relief. So maybe that’s valuable. But I also think it’s healthy to read a perspective from which we can all have a good laugh.

So here is today’s big upshot: it’s my goal to share some perspectives I find interesting and funny and maybe that will be useful for you and you’ll buy me lunch.

-Peter

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