Why 'Skiing Mount Improbable'?

For openers, no, I don't ski. If you had ever seen me, you would understand - I embody gracelessness and occasionally bashing into walls that I should, quite frankly, have seen coming. To me, skiing has fallen into the category of "sports that will likely lead to death". I've always imagined that, should I decide to try to ski, I'd end up like that little white bloke in the Pink Panther cartoons, either smashed into a tree or stuck into the side of a glacier by my skis, at which point the ice would melt and I would fall into a yawning crevasse. In fact, I used to work for a company whose quondam president narrowly escaped permanent paralysis after a skiing accident – which is unusual when the nearest proper mountains are ten hours' drive distant.

Many of you will no doubt be familiar with the writing of Richard Dawkins. To me, he represents all that is best in scientists and science writing. Most recently, I've been reading Climbing Mount Improbable, in which he presents the metaphor of the seemingly impassable mountain, looming high above the potential climber, but with a gentle slope to reach the same heights when approached from the other side, as a method by which to understand evolutionary theory. While I read Professor Dawkins' books with interest and median comprehension, I often feel as though I'm skimming over a breathtaking mental landscape, flashing this way and that, gleaning an idea here, a concept there, cresting another piece of a bigger puzzle just before executing a neat turn and dodging an inconveniently placed tree… So when I was thinking about titles, I thought about the way in which I read, and it seemed most analogous to the apparently effortless motion of a skier travelling cross-country, therefore "Skiing Mount Improbable" it was to be.

So as far as that goes, it is also meant in the very best of good fun. I pictured that rugged but not impassable rock slope that served as the depiction of Mount Improbable in The Root of All Evil?, covered in snow, et voilà. The title is meant to express my feeling that in this era of too bloody much to know and learn, it is still possible, if you set your mind to it, it is possible to learn and understand almost anything (except perhaps, quantum physics and the reason for those fiddly metal and plastic ties that now seem to be in all packaging). It is possible to learn and grow, even long out of school. While I almost certainly won't ever have sufficient expertise to write the next book on the order of The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene, I do have the expertise and skill and the desire to write popular science. That's the mission. That’s the hope. Now it's time to begin.

Self-Justification

First, a rather tongue-in-cheek apology.

Why oh why oh why oh why another blog? When everyone and their dog (or cat, or budgie) already have a weblog of some description, why is there a need for another one?

In my case, I've always eschewed the weblog as a format for writing. It seemed to me that there were enough people pontificating on issues about which I had not-necessarily-dissimilar views, and that my voice might run the risk of being redundant – an irrelevance in the throng. If you don't want to fall into the trap of irrelevance, then it's important to have two things, it seems: you must have a powerful, unique voice, and you must be armed with a strong set of convictions. Most of my favourite blogs do exactly that.

Keeping an online diary cum blog, by contrast, may be either cathartic or exhibitionistic (or possibly both), but unless you have those two key characteristics, it's unlikely to serve any greater end than glorified omphaloskepsis. Let me be quick to say that I'm not pointing fingers, but there are many, many irrelevant blogs out there. Certainly, that's a valid way to spend your time, if you wish (although why not channel that creative energy into something more productive than virtual onanism?). All that notwithstanding, it wasn't my wish to run that risk. Or, as circumstances have clearly changed, it wasn't my wish until recently.

What happened recently, then? Succinctly put, I've recently had an epiphany. It came to me rather suddenly. I was worrying about the things that we all worry about unless we are lucky enough to be happy rocks (the Eccleses of the world). I was worried about life, work, the future, and what the hell I was going to do about them. When it came, then, the epiphany was not in any sense a religious one, rather of the "realising the bleeding obvious thing that was staring me in the face" variety. In a moment, I changed on the basis of this realisation. I was no longer, in my heart, merely a technical writer, one who was not especially enjoying working for a big company. Quite suddenly, I had become a budding science journalist with a number of core issues that interest me, and about which I wanted to write.

Why would I want to write about science? I can boil it down to three simple reasons:

1. The scientific method of seeking an answer to any problem is, in its purest form, the most honest, open, and rational approach to learning more about the world ever devised by humanity.


2. Science is filled with more wonder and amazement than any other human endeavour.


3. There is clearly a need for increased discourse on science.

I'll expand and refine these points in greater detail as time progresses. For now, though, that will work as a nice, comfortable, rationalist manifesto.

There will probably be more about me in the future too, just to warn you. It seems unavoidable in this format, unless the writer is completely devoid of the instinct towards narcisscism. I'm only mildly ashamed to say that I am not that kind of writer.