Thursday, September 9, 2010

News Feed Comments

Who are “the experts”?

August 1, 2010   Filed under Blog, Uncategorized  

One of the features of Eloquent Science is the “Ask the Experts” columns. (The idea for these sections came from a discussion with Prof. Tracey Holloway, University of Wisconsin.) I don’t say much about who these people are in the book, but you may be interested to know a little more. Y. Hancock is a … read more

  • Share/Bookmark

If a tree falls in the forest…

July 5, 2010   Filed under Blog, Featured, Potpourri, Uncategorized, Writing  

This month’s issue of the Annals of Improbable Research answers the question of whether a tree falling in the forest will make a sound if no one is around to hear it. The answer is yes (Melchior 2010). Moreover, the bigger the tree, the louder the sound. What I like about this article is that … read more

  • Share/Bookmark

Use of first person in writing (a cross-disciplinary thought experiment)

May 10, 2010   Filed under Blog, Uncategorized, Writing  

I recently attended a workshop on writing across the disciplines at the University of Manchester run by Alex Baratta. The group spent a lot of time discussing how each of our own disciplines uses the first person in academic writing. After the discussion went on for a while, I offered the following model. What does … read more

  • Share/Bookmark

Book Review: How Not to Write a Novel

May 8, 2010   Filed under Uncategorized  

How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them–A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide The cover of the book (British version) caught my eye. Then the title. Then the tagline: “200 mistakes to avoid at all costs if you ever want to get published.” I was curious about how many lessons could be … read more

  • Share/Bookmark

Bad Writing and Bad Thinking

April 22, 2010   Filed under Blog, Uncategorized, Writing  

Russ Schumacher pointed me to this article from the The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Bad Writing and Bad Thinking” by Rachel Toor. Call me simple-minded, call me anti-intellectual, but I believe that most poor scholarly writing is a result of bad habits, of learning tricks of the academic trade as a way to try to … read more

  • Share/Bookmark

Bob The Angry Flower: It’s vs Its

April 2, 2010   Filed under Blog, Potpourri, Uncategorized, Writing  

  • Share/Bookmark

A great title (Bryan 2005)

March 20, 2010   Filed under Blog, Potpourri, Uncategorized, Writing  

I was recently reminded of this paper by my colleague George Bryan. Bryan, G. H., 2005: Spurious convective organization in simulated squall lines owing to moist absolutely unstable layers. Mon. Wea. Rev., 133, 1978–1997. I love this title. This title has all of Lipton’s five characteristics of an effective title. Informative The title has all … read more

  • Share/Bookmark

Appropriate way to label axes of graphs

March 14, 2010   Filed under Blog, Posters, Presentations, Resources, Uncategorized, Writing  

Prof. Brian Fiedler of the University of Oklahoma recently published an article in Physics Education calling for a change in direction in teaching dimensionless ratios in physics. As he advocates, The tick marks [on an axis of a graph] are pure numbers. Labels with a solidus such as R/µm are orthodox notation for what the … read more

  • Share/Bookmark

The range of reviewer recommendations from crocs to pigeons

March 4, 2010   Filed under Uncategorized  

Explains the evolutionary line of Rejectosaurus. From the A(frican) Blog of Ecology by Raf Aerts: “I’ve just spotted a Revisosaurus major on one of my manuscripts, even though the field characteristics were very close to those of a Rejectosaurus resubmittens (see Fig. 1, blue line).”

  • Share/Bookmark

Bob the Angry Flower speaks out against improper apostrophe use

February 25, 2010   Filed under Blog, Potpourri, Uncategorized, Writing  

  • Share/Bookmark

Next Page »