I’m still struggling to teach scientific writing to a diverse group of PhD candidates that I only see occasionally. My latest attempt is to give them a set of online tools to analyze their genre of target texts (published works and their own work in progress), and to tell me how they like what the [...]
One of the most important elements of good writing is clarity. Unfortunately, English has a lot of potential for ambiguity, which makes it easy to write ambiguous sentences. Great for humor, of course, but not a lot of help when it comes to writing works of science! One example is the use of [...]
Parallelism adds elegance to your writing:
Clumsy: They work with great care and effectively.
Elegant: They work carefully and effectively.
Clumsy: Making contacts is as important as to give a good presentation.
Elegant: Making contacts is as important as giving a good presentation.
Clumsy: We analyzed the extensive data, which was highly complex.
Elegant: We analyzed the extensive, highly complex data.
Clumsy: [...]
Source: New Scientist
science-films
“(Percy Smith) made a gimcrack device made up of a see-saw and two old tin cans. The tin cans slowly filled up with water, and when it would reach the bottom, clunk! it fired the shutter of the camera. And using this extraordinary home-made piece of aparatus, Percy Smith made the very beautiful [...]
Marvin Minsky of the MIT Media Lab and MIT AI Lab has a very pragmatic approach to robotic engineering and artificial intelligence based on systematic redundancy. “I’ve never seen any mechanical device that actually shows any thought about reliability,” he says (4:40) and goes on to explain his approach (from 4:45):
“My theory is that there [...]
Hey, cool: What’s this? What does it do? What can you do with it? How does it work? What are its mechanical or physical properties?
Created by Vancouver Film School student Zack Mathew through the VFS Digital Character Animation program. For a short interview with Zack, visit The man behind the switch Recommended by ebd35 on [...]
When you’re going straight and fast towards a goal you make a beeline for it. And do bees make beelines, too? They sure do. This is no mean feat, but it’s vitally important, because like the geese they’re on a knife-edge energy budget. The straighter their beelines, the less energy they expend. Get a buzz [...]
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