“Even referees were not infallible.” – L. F. Richardson

Happy 129th birthday (11 October 1881) to Lewis Fry Richardson, who pioneered the first numerical weather prediction and for whom the Richardson number is named. Jim Matthew of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society lent me a copy of his biography Prophet or Professor? by Oliver Ashford. As I was reading it today, I came across the […]

Who wrote the first abstract in a scientific journal article?

I have often wondered how we came to the modern scientific article. One question that I had that I researched, but was unable to turn up anything on was who started the boldface and italics in the reference format for journal volume number and journal name (varies by discipline and by journal). One question that […]

Review in Progress in Physical Geography

Progress in Physical Geography has just published a review written by Dr. Paul Williams (Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading). In summary, I highly recommend this book. The author is well qualified, being both an expe- rienced leader of communications workshops and an award-winning journal editor. The writ- ing is clear (as you […]

History of the Scientific Article

I just finished reading a fascinating book, if you are interested in the history of how scientific literature came to be. It’s called Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present by Gross, Harmon, and Reidy. As the book describes, previous studies of the literature have focused on specific periods, regions, […]

Leonard Cohen on songwriting

Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about the similarities between being a musical performer and being a scientist. I was listening to Leonard Cohen on my way to work the other day, and I was reminded of an interview where he discussed his songwriting process in more depth than you normally hear from an […]

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? 10,000 Hours

Slate.com has had an interesting series of articles (two of them are here and here) about the creativity originating from working in pairs: think Lennon and McCartney, Joel and Ethan Cohen, Richards and Jagger. In the second installment, Joshua Wolf Shenk said about the two Beatles: The nature of John and Paul’s intimacy evolved over […]

Judging a book by its cover

I was pleased to see that Eloquent Science was one of six books selected for review by CAPjournal (CAP=Communicating Astronomy with the Public) as part of an article entitled “Reading about Science Communication.” The review, however, was a mixed bag. Following up from a communication workshop organised by the American Meteorological Society, this book is […]

Why I don’t make copies of my slides available

As I describe in the Preface to Eloquent Science, the book arose out of a workshop that I taught to undergraduates in Oklahoma. The workshop arose over six years, with what were essentially my lecture notes on PowerPoint slides. The slides were wordy and boring. During the talk, the students had paper copies of my […]

10 Tips on How to Write Less Badly

I was recently in Norman, Oklahoma, to present an Eloquent Science workshop, hosted by J.J. Gourley of the NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory. It was a lively and enthusiastic group in attendance, and I thank everyone who participated, bought books, and talked to me afterward. It’s great to know that there’s such interest. Yesterday, J.J. sent […]

National Weather Center Eloquent Science Workshop

NORMAN, OKLAHOMA (27 August 2010): J.J. Gourley of the NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, hosted me for an all-day Eloquent Science workshop at the National Weather Center as part of the NSSL Colloquium Series.

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