Microsoft Word grammar checker FAIL: “A climatology”
Have you every seen that the automatic grammar checker in Microsoft Word flags “a climatology” as incorrect? I checked that “a climatological study” does not trigger the green underline, nor does “climatology” without the article “a”. Maybe it is some kind of check to see if someone says “a biology” not followed by a noun […]
The Golden Rule of Reviewing, applied to grant proposals
A colleague of mine wrote me a while back, I liked your blog entry on the golden rule of reviewing, but I wanted to see if you have thoughts (or know of similar research) regarding the review process for proposals to agencies. It comes to mind because I served on my first [funding agency] panel […]
Even Eloquent Science bloggers get rejected. ;-)
June 9, 2013 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing
The title of this post relates to my post about our university president having her paper rejected. Recently I was informed that a paper that I was coauthor on that we submitted to Nature Geoscience was rejected. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), the paper was at least considered for a […]
The Importance of a Clearly Written and Complete Caption
I never tire of this analogy. For the answer, click here. From Style for Students by Joe Schall.
Why the acknowledgements are important
This recent slate.com article discusses the increasing prevalance of the acknowledgements section in books. It got me thinking about acknowledgements in scientific papers. Some authors use them, others don’t. Some authors thank the reviewers; others don’t. Some authors even thank the Editor; others don’t. Every once in a while you’ll find authors using weather graphics […]
Storm chaser, no. Meteorologist, yes.
June 6, 2013 Filed under Blog, Featured, Uncategorized
The death of four storm chasers in the recent Oklahoma tornado raises issues about the safety of stormchasing, but also how stormchasing is marketed to the public and students. For example, some undergraduate meteorology, environmental science, and geography programs use storm chasing as a tool to market their programs. Even MyMajors.com lists stormchaser as a […]
Avoiding pie charts
Are these individual pie charts easy to get quantitative information from? How about when presented like this? As you can see, obtaining quantitative information from pie charts is near impossible. And, if you want to compare two of them, you can generally tell only the most obvious differences. A more carefully constructed plot using horizontal […]
A proposal for determining session chairs
May 29, 2013 Filed under Blog, Featured, Presentations
Are you organizing a meeting? Here is a proposal that you might try to keep your meeting running smoothly. I got the idea from a brain teaser in a book that I read when I was a kid. The story goes like this. You are wanting to buy the slowest boat, so you place an […]
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The Posture of Tyrannosaurus rex and the Clash of Air Masses
An article in Journal of Geoscience Education by Ross et al. states, “Today’s students were born well after the dramatic scientific reinterpretations of theropod dinosaur stance and metabolism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yet, if asked to draw a picture of Tyrannosaurus rex, most of these students will likely draw an animal with […]
