The PIFFLE
In my mind, the PIFFLE, Personal Information File For onLine
Evaluation, or Pretentious Indulgent Fiction For Lifetime Exaggeration, or
something like this, is a cross between an academic CV and a
blog. The CV is usually just a basic list of paper and book
titles that gives an overall glimpse of a person's
contributions. The blog is a more detailed commentary, but
usually on current issues. The PIFFLE can be summaried as
CV + BLOG
= PIFFLE
One can summarise a lifetime's work, and readers (should there be any) can
look at as little or as much of this as they wish.
An important aspect of the PIFFLE is the attempt to summarise the work
in a readable way. This is difficult to do in papers, where
one is under pressure to eliminate any personal aspect from the writing
in order to provide an 'objective' account of the experiments or
calculations. Readability in the PIFFLE takes precedence over
exactitude. Personal opinions are allowed. One is
allowed to use the forbidden word "I", rather than the royal "we" that
sounds so out of place in single-authored papers. It also gives one a
chance of explaining away the papers one is most embarrassed
about. And regardless of whether there are readers or not,
the principal benefit is for the author in forcing himself/herself to
think about an overview of the work.