If you decide to contribute these layman's explanations to Science Gist, I can guarantee you will earn yourself at least one user of the day award :P
Award: https://twitter.com/ScienceGist/status/367559501349543936/ph...
On a scientist's desk: https://twitter.com/RobBeagrie/status/367918271095242752/pho...
Good luck!
At the beginning of my Master's degree, I was quite careful about making notes about every paper I read, but as I gained more background and started focussing on doing on my own work, I'd read papers only enough to get what I needed out of them (fortunately I have a good enough memory that when I needed something I'd already read about, I could often find the paper -- and I was religious about at least saving all the papers I read). Doing it publicly might keep the motivation up.
Eh, maybe. Publicly criticizing the work of others in an informal venue where you don't have the benefit of editing/peer review could potentially make you look foolish while also alienating potential future collaborators/colleagues/reviewers.
Edit: Ah, okay, I just found your homepage. I look forward to reading your writings!
The following week will be; "Oral Treatment Targeting the Unfolded Protein Response Prevents Neurodegeneration and Clinical Disease in Prion-Infected Mice" Moreno et al (Sci Transl Med 9 October 2013: Vol. 5, Issue 206, p. 206ra138
And after that something from Don Cleverland (UCSF)'s lab, as I saw him speak not that long ago and he blew my mind.
That being said, I'd also (probably) take requests!
You know what? I wish that you get rich with that! Everbody would benefit from more openness in Science. I hate that many many publishers squeeze scientists out like parasitic worms and also cash on us and other scientist who just want to read the paper. They rip us off in the range of $5-$300 per paper and do that with mostly keeping 100% of the profit.
Their industry damaging business model: A←parasite-publisher→B
Breaking Bad: With an open business model: A←→B←→C←→D …
For the next 52 weeks, I'm gonna try to write a layman's explanation (with some amount of appropriate background) about a paper every week. I suspect these will center around my work, but I also suspect the act of thinking about the kind of stuff I do in a more general sense will be a valuable learning experience, and who knows, maybe someone else will learn something too!