There’s time for one more debate here, about my Earth Day column, but first an announcement: After three years of experiments, TierneyLab is shutting down. I’ll still be testing ideas in my Findings columns and in other articles for The Times, and you can keep up with them by following me on Twitter. You can also keep trying the weekly math puzzle at its new home starting next Monday at The Times Wordplay blog.
I’ll miss our debates here — well, most of them, anyway — but I like to think we can have even better ones now that I’ll be concentrating on my columns and on longer articles (and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to dispute them). As much as I enjoyed doing the blog, I found myself wanting the opportunity to delve more deeply into subjects. Contrarianism tends to be time-consuming.
When I was working on a column last year about the science of concentration, I got some advice from Winifred Gallagher, the author of “Rapt”: At the start of your workday, ignore all short-term distractions (e-mail, blogs, etc) and devote 90 solid minutes to your most important project. It seemed like an excellent rule, but I kept violating it because my day always began with a blog in need of filling. I realized other writers managed to balance blogs with longer articles, but I finally decided that sort of multitasking was beyond me.
So this is the last post. I welcome any thoughts you have on my latest Findings column about lessons for Turqs, which is Stewart Brand’s term for scientifically inclined greens. Is Turq a good term, or do you have a better one in mind? Are there other lessons that environmentalists should have learned since the first Earth Day?
I also welcome any general thoughts you have on the Lab, and I want to thank you for all the wisdom and wit and passion you’ve shared over the past three years here. Special thanks go to the scientists who provided posts and quizzes for Lab readers, and to my Times colleagues who contributed posts and helped run the Lab, notably Jim Gorman, the blog’s editor, and Thomas Lin, Sarah Graham and Ken Chang.
One of the great joys of the Lab was watching readers solve the math puzzles by working together in a collaboratory, as it was described by one of the early solvers: the incomparable Pradeep Mutalik. Once it became clear how brilliant Pradeep was at both solving and creating puzzles, I was happy step aside and let the Quiz Wiz handle the Monday Puzzle. Thanks, Pradeep, for all the clever mathematical and linguistic pleasures pleasures you’ve provided (and thanks for your very kind farewell puzzle). Thanks also to Justin Thyme, for all the deft puzzle illustrations plus the wonderful TierneyBlab meta-blog. To repeat, you can enjoy their puzzles and illustrations every Monday at Wordplay , and you can follow me on Twitter.
Now, any parting shots?