One of the worst possible, most horrific thing that can happen to an academic is that someone else independently comes to the same conclusions as you do, but publishes them more quickly. It's actually not a terrible thing, because the important thing should be that the good idea comes to life, but there are big egos involved here and my ego really needs its own house.
I'm watching Eszter Hargittai's fantastic talk on internet skills at the Berkman Center at Harvard. Small vomit in my mouth at first, because it seemed she wrote my paper and did a much better job, but we're different enough to complement each other, rather than compete. Whew.
Apt. 11d 
Eszter’s super nice. Do you know her? Plus, she has an Erdös number, so if you co-author with her someday (you should!), you’ll have one too. And not only arouse covetousness among any quants in your department, but have an über-trump for any discussion that tends toward physics envy. “Science? Pah! Math, baby, absolute pure math!”
I obvsly don’t take academia seriously enough because I think things like this.
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Ooh, does having a Erdos number give me street cred here? 🙂 or at least with Doug?
Mine isn’t as low as Hargitai’s (well at least with the link I’ve currently found). Hers is a little bit questionable, though, since its first link is to a news article on recruiting. 🙂
But, at least neither she nor I had to do this:
http://xkcd.com/599/
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I noticed that Herbert Simon has an Erdos number of 3. I spent some time trying to trace that to a political scientist or psychologist, but that road goes through cognitive science and the names no longer pop to mind anymore.
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Wow. You guys are geekier than I am. I had to google Erdos number. Yes, I know Eszter. She’s great.
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well, I had to google “crapulous.”
I love xkcd, though (though someone should convince the author to change the warning).
This one, http://xkcd.com/552/ should be relevant to any policy discussion.
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