Thermodynamic diagrams for free

Upon packing up my house in Oklahoma, I discovered a small stash of Skew T–logp thermodynamic diagrams that I had saved when Charlie Crisp cleaned out his office at NSSL. (I also have a huge stash of blank U.S. surface maps, in case anyone is interested in them.) Geraint Vaughan at Manchester had been lamenting […]

How science progresses (a cynical viewpoint)

This is one of the most hilarious movies I’ve seen about how science works (or doesn’t work, as the case may be). Although it is a discussion between two physicists, you can imagine your favorite subdisciplines in your own field interacting this way.

New “Eloquent” article now published

Following up on a previous post, “Occluded fronts and the occlusion process: A fresh look at conventional wisdom” has now been published in BAMS. Download it here.

Offensive and Defensive Writing: The Secret to Getting Your Manuscript Published?

In a recent email conversation with my friend John Knox, he mentioned a game that he played by trying to spot the parts of the text in a scientific article that the author added specifically to address reviewers’ concerns. I have to admit to playing the same game at times. John’s point was that the […]

Dump the tilde

I am an Assistant Editor at the Electronic Journal of Severe Storms Meteorology. As we have no paid staff, we depend upon authors to send us manuscripts that are near-ready to publish. The rest of the work we do ourselves, including much of the layout, technical and copy editing, and Web pages. For all that, […]

Denotation versus Connotation

In Eloquent Science, I mention understanding the difference between denotation (the literal meaning of a word) and connotation (the idea or feeling that the word evokes in the listener). This idea hit home recently when I was co-writing a proposal with a British colleague. He had written the word “envisage”, which I thought sounded a […]

Writing Advice from William Safire

Dave Jorgensen sent me this wonderful piece of writing advice from author, columnist, and presidential speechwriter William Safire. 1. No sentence fragments. 2. It behooves us to avoid archaisms. 3. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration. 4. Don’t use no double negatives. 5. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, “Resist […]

Flattering review in Polar Research

Kevin R. Wood of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington, has written a flattering review in Polar Research. Here are some excerpts. …at the time of my first reading of Eloquent science, I was rewriting a paper that had not, shall we say, passed gracefully through the […]

Are students prepared for university-level writing?

Kim Brooks has this essay “Death to High School English” published in Salon.com. She details her experiences with finding students who don’t know the basics of writing: composition, structure, thesis statements, grammar, punctuation, and plagiarism. My own experiences here in the UK with final-year environmental-science majors were remarkably similar to hers, so the problem isn’t […]

Why does nothing this interesting ever happen at any conferences I attend?

From the Huffington Post: Guerrilla improv troupe Improv Everywhere struck again last month at GEL Conference, the annual gathering of tech/social media/business voices in New York City. With the help of GEL founder Mark Hurst, the covert entertainers pulled off one of their signature “Spontaneous Musicals” at the top of Hurst’s presentation. Just as he […]