猴舍里的反思

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本文发表于《大众科学》的前博客网络,反映了作者的观点,不一定代表《大众科学》的观点


经过一年的合作,现在是时候反思和感恩了。 你愿意加入我们吗?

今天标志着“灵长类动物日记”在大众科学博客网络的最新版本以及我与艺术家兼灵长类动物伙伴纳撒尼尔·戈尔德合作的一周年纪念日。周年纪念日对我们人类物种非常重要。几乎所有人类社会都有年度庆祝活动,以反思和纪念过去一年的事件,并为来年带来好运。这样做的原因尚不清楚,但我认为这与试图从我们存在的普遍混乱中创造秩序有关。当然,在美国,这是为了让贺卡公司继续经营下去。

本着纪念的精神,我们都想感谢大众科学的编辑——特别是博拉,他在保持这艘船平稳航行方面发挥了重要作用——感谢他们给我们这个机会,感谢那些才华横溢且支持我们的网络博主,他们的作品经常激励我们,也感谢你们所有人,读者们,你们的反馈使我们的工作如此有意义(但稍后会更多地谈到你们)。


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首先,我想感谢纳撒尼尔,并说过去一年与他合作是多么的快乐。他令人难以置信的艺术作品装饰了我写的每一篇文章,包括对我采访过的灵长类动物学家弗兰斯·德·瓦尔莎拉·布拉弗·赫迪的原创肖像。纳撒尼尔用油彩和墨水创造的视觉效果与我尝试用36个字母数字符号和少量标点符号唤起的视觉效果相同。他的作品非常出色,他的两幅图像“精神健康”“依恋”被选为网络每周图像,我们的合作被强调为未来科学传播的典范。这是一次很棒的旅程。

但现在轮到你了。 效仿Not Exactly Rocket Science 的 Ed Yong,我们想了解一下和我们在一起的灵长类动物,无论你是否关注了每一篇文章,或者这是你第一次来。 请在评论中介绍一下自己。 另外,不要被注册吓到。 你不必使用你的真实姓名,也不必等待登录信息通过电子邮件发送给你。只需注册,然后回到这里登录。

1) 你是谁? 你有科学背景吗? 如果有,是什么吸引你来到这里,而不是选择更充实、更学术性的内容? 如果没有,是什么把你带到这里,你为什么留下来? 请尽情发表你的评论。

2) 告诉其他人关于这个博客,特别是,尝试选择一个不是科学家,但你认为可能对这个博客中的内容感兴趣的人。 当你试图向他们滔滔不绝地讲科学时,有没有家人或朋友给你投来奇怪、可怜的目光? 把他们送到这里,看看他们会怎么说。

3) 你是如何找到我们的? 我对你是如何找到我们,或者定期关注我们,通过 Twitter、Facebook 和/或其他你可能用来整理你的信息流的 RSS 机制之外的机制感兴趣。

4) 你喜欢《灵长类动物日记》的什么? 纳撒尼尔和我这样做主要是因为这是出于对工作的热爱,我们很想听听你对我们过去一年所做工作的欣赏之处。 你还记得哪些帖子或图片? 你在这里看到的工作是否引发了线下对话? 是什么让你回到这里?

至于我过去一年工作的反思,我没有什么可补充的,除了库尔特·冯内古特在他的书《欢迎来到猴舍》中所写的

“我从 1949 年开始成为一名作家。我是自学成才的。我没有任何关于写作的理论可以帮助他人。当我写作时,我只是变成了我似乎必须成为的样子。我身高六英尺二英寸,体重将近二百磅,而且动作不协调,除非游泳。所有借来的肉都在写作。

在水中,我是美丽的。”

我从 2002 年左右才开始成为作家,比他矮两英寸。但其他一切都差不多。

About Eric Michael Johnson

I grew up in an old house in Forest Ranch, California as the eldest of four boys. I would take all day hikes with my cat in the canyon just below our property, and the neighbor kids taught me to shoot a bow and arrow. I always loved reading and wrote short stories, poems, and screenplays that I would force my brothers to star in. A chance encounter with a filmmaker from Cameroon sent me to Paris as his assistant and I stayed on to hitchhike across Europe. Nearly a year later, I found myself outside a Greek Orthodox Church with thirty Albanian and Macedonian migrants as we looked for work picking potatoes.

After my next year of college I moved to Los Angeles to study screenwriting and film production. My love of international cinema deepened into larger questions about the origins of human societies and cultures. I entered graduate school with a background in anthropology and biology, joining the world-renowned department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University to pursue a PhD in great ape behavioral ecology. But larger questions concerning the history and sociology of scientific ideas cut my empirical research short. I am now completing a dissertation at University of British Columbia on the intersection between evolutionary biology and politics in England, Europe, and Russia in the nineteenth century. In 2011 I met the economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen whose work inspired my award-winning research.

My writing has always been a labor of love and a journey unto itself. I have written about the hilarity that ensues once electrodes are stuck into your medial ventral prefrontal cortex for Discover, the joy of penis-fencing with the endangered bonobo for Wildlife Conservation, and the "killer-ape" myth of human origins from Shakespeare's The Tempest to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for Times Higher Education. My work has appeared online for Wired, PLoS Blogs, Psychology Today, Huffington Post, SEED, ScienceBlogs, Nature Network and a host of independent science related websites. I have appeared four times in The Open Laboratory collection of the year's best online science writing and was selected the same number as a finalist for the Quark Science Prize, though better writers have always prevailed. I am currently working on my first book.

If I am not engaged in a writing or research project I spend time with my young son, Sagan. Whenever I get the chance I go on backpacking trips in the mountains of British Columbia or catch the latest film from Zhang Yimou, the Coen Brothers, or Deepa Mehta. To this day one of my favorite passages ever written is from Henry David Thoreau's Walden where he describes an epic battle between ants in Concord, an injured soldier limping forward as the still living heads of his enemies cling to his legs and thorax "like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow." Thoreau helped fugitive slaves to escape while he mused on the wonder and strange beauty of the natural world. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

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