An FAQ, pronounced phonetically, is very fun to say. “faq”.
It’s also an acronym for Frequently Asked Questions. If you have a question that you would like to ask a mad scientist, check to see if it’s here before bothering me. Together, we make these a little less frequently asked.
If you have a question, please message me on Twitter and I will get back to you eventually maybe. I read comments on this blog, but may miss some.
This page will be updated as I receive more questions.
faq
A: Yes, if you can figure out how to contact me. But I reserve the right to decline if I am not confident in my knowledge of the subject, am not interested, or don’t happen to have time at the moment. I am a very busy supervillain you understand. Though I will tell you if I can’t help. If I ghost you it’s because I’ve forgotten to check my messages.
This policy may change in the future.
A: Yes, it is a free country after all. Even if you live in a not-free country, there probably isn’t anything stopping you from doing that. There are generally different rules for citing blogs than normal articles and books, so you should check your preferred style guide (unless you use CSC, then you’re shit out of luck ‘cause their style guides are shit). I also use a pseudonym, which further complicates things. Here’s an example of how you might cite me in MLA:
The Mad Scientist [Sam Erkon] “Title of Post.” Ravings of a Mad Scientist, date blog post was published, URL.
In text: (The Mad Scientist)
And in APA:
The Mad Scientist (Year, Month, Date of post). Title of blog post. Ravings of a Mad Scientist. URL.
In text: (The Mad Scientist, Year)
Though, I wouldn’t recommend actually doing that. Not because the content of my blog is inaccurate (though given that I am only human and don’t have any experts helping me it probably is). It would be like citing Bill Nye the Science Guy.
But I do think that if you are writing something and putting it on the internet it should be properly cited. That doesn’t stop me from neglecting to cite half of the stuff I talk about, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Scholars in STEM fields, and even some humanities, are pretty salty about having to read dry boring literature all day. So they judge others based on how boring and difficult to interpret their sources are. They compete amongst themselves for who can make the most jargon-filled and terse papers so that anyone who wants to know something needs to take an entire college course just to comprehend it. I’ve taken this course so you don’t have to.
A: That wasn’t a question.