pen name or real name ?

As can be easily perceived, this blog is written using a pen name. As the question arises every now and then why I choose this form of publishing creations, this may be a good opportunity to give some reasons. The following link summarizes very nicely the pros and cons of pen-naming, and it is worth a read, in my mind, for every writer contemplating whether to publish under his real identity, or a fictitious one.
As I'm clearly in favor of anonymity, I'll summarize the reasons for using a pen name:

• enables hiding personal traits, such as gender, age or other aspects like a funny name (gender mask worked excellently for legendary James Tiptree jr. when she tried to penetrate a mainly-male field of writing - science fiction);
• eases shifting genres;
• assists the immensely quick and wonderfully productive writers in being taken seriously by readers, without their scary output being considered against them;  
• enables several writers to co-operate efficiently (currently not the case in this blog); 
• enables who have another career or whose writing may cause them embarrassment (or worse) if publicly connected with their true identity; 

And my personal favorite (and admittedly, a variation of the last reason): using a pen name helps people who find the process of taking stuff out of their drawer and putting it into the public reaches an emotionally difficult one, as it gives a special protection from the harder possible impacts of criticism thanks to the protection of the veil of anonymity.

And of course, let us not forget that one is able to copyright one's work while using a pen name.