Kaj Sand-Jensen: Although scientists typically insist that their research is very exciting and adventurous when they talk to laymen and prospective students, the allure of this enthusiasm is too often lost in the predictable, stilted structure and language of their scientific publications. I present here, a top-10 list of recommendations for how to write consistently…
A 13-page PDF. I wish I could excerpt some of the tables, but I’d have to do a screengrab, and I can’t be bothered this morning. In my “News Writing” class the other day, I had the students take out a piece of paper and write down the names of the five family members from…
In Texas, spiders have learned to cooperate. And I, for one, salute our new arachnid overlords. But Tuesday afternoon, thousands of Texas spiders were back at it, working to rebuild an immense spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park that at one time stretched about 200 yards, covering bushes and trees to create a creepy…
A reader of Google Blogoscoped reveals that Google briefly posted a “confidential” video detailing its plans to compete with Facebook. Google’s recent big social effort is called Mocha-Mocha (or Mocka-Mocka?), and will become the infrastructure for all social stuff across all of their applications. As a part of this, a new feature called Activity Streams…
Pew Research Center Public interest in news has changed slightly over the last two decades, but in a manner that suggests no meaningful trend. The average reading for the Pew News Interest Index did slip during the 1990s from 30% to 23%, a seemingly noteworthy decrease that represents nearly a fourth of the original level.…
Clive Thompon is not writing from the same world where I live. Thirty-six hours? How in god’s name had I managed to spend almost four hours a day inside this game? I should point out that this was not the only game I’d been playing during that time. I’d also been hip-deep in BioShock and…
My five-year-old sat and listened for over an hour while I read the first chapter of Gregor the Overlander and the first chapter of The Hobbit. Earlier that day she had found an old beat-up costume jewelry ring that another kid on the playground said he found in a stream. When the park time was…
A luminous group of anti-Stratfordians write: Not one play, not one poem, not one letter in Mr. Shakspere’s own hand has ever been found. He divided his time between London and Stratford, a situation conducive to correspondence. Early scholars naturally expected that at least some of his correspondence would have survived. Yet the only writings…
Va Tech’s guidelines for evaluating disturbing student writing, as a Word file and as filtered through an analysis by Inside Higher Ed: The document also reflects the tightrope its drafters were walking, leaving ample room for intuition and judgment in identifying disturbing writing and offering a series of questions instructors might find helpful in distinguishing…
Metro.co.uk A trio of vandals are facing trouble after posting a video of themselves smashing up a Lotus Elise on the internet. The three filmed themselves leaping and jumping on the bonnet and roof of the £20,000 sports car, parked in Marylebone, Central London. After originally posting the video on their MySpace pages, the group…
English Original It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the…
Most academic slide shows are dreary affairs. Our students might as well be writing “I will not think outside the box” on the blackboard 100 times. Imagine a conference in which every presenter spoke for exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Is it heaven, or is it a pecha-kucha night? That would leave a lot…
Nick Yee (The Daedalus Project) writes an 8-part post (this quote is from part 2) responding to media reports about “internet addiction.” High school and college students on football teams regularly die during practice (1, 2, 3), but their deaths are dealt with by the media with a very holistic perspective. The media questions whether…
Jennifer Reeger of the Tribune-Review (Pittsgurgh) reports on my colleague’s local (Westmoreland County) history book. “Thank God we do have this beautiful building,” said Mike Cary, professor of history and political science at Seton Hill University and an editor of a book on the courthouse’s history. “People remember Greensburg — they remember that dome when…
The student paper at Southern Illinois University publishes an analysis, assisted by an anonymous source, of evidence of plagiarism in the dissertation written by the SIU president. “I could have made a mistake,” Poshard said. “I’m not saying I didn’t.” The Daily Egyptian recently obtained copies of Poshard’s dissertation and original works from a source…
Nick Montfort, Grand Text Auto: Leonard Cohen Manhattan: Taken. Berlin: Taken. Similar:Puns really matter to us over here in English.I swore I would wield my powers only for…AcademiaDungeons & Dragons & PhilosophyIn one of the most compelling chapters, …ArtNASA's Perseverance lander brought some Easter eggs with it to MarsIt’s a bit of a stretch to…
Morris Dickstein: Book review editors often have difficulty convincing their bosses that the news about books is in the books themselves, not in mega-buck contracts, bestseller chitchat, and profiles of famous authors. Truly conscientious reviewers are not exactly a beloved breed: authors sensitive to criticism detest them, publishers would love to coopt them, and academics…
Via MetaFilter: You’ve got just over two weeks to make it to the John Henry celebration in Leeds, Alabama, where some folks believe the legendary steel driving contest actually took place. Maybe you already made it to John Henry Days in Talcott, West Virginia (or read a fictionalized account), where some more folks claim the…
David Lazarus describes the Time Lady’s end in California. “It was always there,” said Orlo Brown, 70, who for many years kept Pacific Bell’s (and subsequently SBC’s) time machines running in a downtown Los Angeles office building. “Everybody knew the number.” Richard Frenkiel was assigned to work on the time machines when he joined Bell…
Sean McBride: The problem I discovered was that one of the thin walls between the holes had broken and bent down, forming a ramp. When I plugged the DVI adapter into my computer, two of the pins went into the same hole, and the projector could no longer understand the output from my computer. However,…