Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Who am I? (Modern) and more about this blog

 I'm originally from North Carolina and moved to Iowa for grad school. This past year was the first one in the Ph.D. program there. I'm a vertebrate paleontology student. I'm currently working on SCA stuff and wedding planning in between writing up some of my research, so updates will be sparse.

So now that you know where I'm coming from, you can guess why, as I mentioned in my first post, I will be including references in my posts about Sarmatians. As a scientist, I reference any facts and supposition I state that were not my own discovery. It's an incredibly useful way to write and I get frustrated when I look things up on the internet and am expected to take things as true when I have no idea who wrote it, where they got their information, and how reliable they are. That's why I'm making this blog. I want others interested in this culture to be able to feel at least semi-confident that they can trust what they read here.

In science, there's a system of peer review. The system has its own flaws, but it also has the advantage that only occasionally do crackpot ideas get through to publication. Blogs aren't peer reviewed, so this is where you come in. If you come upon something related to Sarmatians which I haven't discussed, a book or article not on my book list,  have a different interpretation, or disagree with something I said, please discuss it in the comments or contact me in some other manner (especially if you actually study this subject as a career!).

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