Michael Quinion, the British etymologist, documents the meaning and derivation of words and phrases in the English language.
Covering etymology, grammar and neologisms (among others), my favourite aspect of World Wide Words (where he “writes on international English from a British viewpoint”) is the front page Sic! section highlighting common—yet amusing—errors:
Charlotte Metcalf’s food column in the Spectator for 13 September: “If anything, luxury food sales are rocketing and appear to be recession-proof. Mary Adams, buyer at Fortnum & Mason, says: ‘Grouse are literally flying off the counter.’”
With the media frenzy over the LHC’s ‘first beam’ eventually abating, Slate looks at the failing of science journalists to write coherent and accurate articles on this and other scientific topics of interest to the general public.
No one ever said writing about particle physics was easy—the field of quantum mechanics shares a kind of proverbial inscrutability with rocket science, and nonscientists are understandably reluctant to dig in. But the best way to meet that challenge is to address it head-on, with clear analogies and straightforward language. The puzzles of the subatomic world […] are interesting and entertaining in their own right; dressing them up in florid language only adds another layer of confusion between the author and the reader.
On the whole, the best writing about physics for a general audience seems to come from physicists, not journalists. This isn’t due to the fact that physicists understand the subject matter better—if anything, people who spend all day in the lab are often the worst at explaining the big picture. Rather, they’re better at writing about physics because they don’t try so hard to make you care. They don’t believe their readers must be seduced with colorful wordplay or end-of-the-world melodramas. Journalists writing popular treatments of subatomic physics could take a lesson from the scientists: Tell it straight and have a little faith that the subject matter itself—a major advance in our understanding of the cosmos—can generate its own wonder and excitement.
Author of The New York Times’ Consumed column, Rob Walker, dissects a Weekly Standard article discussing the first presidential debate between Obama and McCain to answer the question: what’s the difference between rhetoric and cognitive dissonance?
Both can result in points of view that are so biased that they have no connection to reality. But one involves communicative sleight of hand to mislead the reader/listener, while the other involves a deeper form of dishonesty: Dishonesty with the self.
It all comes down to: “we tend to bend what we see to fit our existing perceptions and biases — no matter how much dissonance there is between new facts and previously held convictions. […] It is hard to change a mind that is already made up.”
Know the concept but just can’t find the word—or similar words—for it? A thesaurus is no use. A dictionary’s just torture.
Help is here in the form of the reverse dictionary; I’ve got a feeling this is going to come in handy quite often.
MathWorld—a division of Wolfram Research, the creators of Mathematica—was temporarily shutdown in late 2000 due to a copyright dispute over a book based on the website.
Eric Weisstein’s commentary on the shutdown reveals a lot not just about being on the receiving side of an unfounded lawsuit, but also about publishing and its apparent change from a book-lovers’ business, to one run by people “unashamed to treat information as a commodity”.
It is no secret that one consequence of the explosion in the popularity of the internet and related electronic technologies is that many battles will be fought over how information is created, stored, and accessed. It is equally clear that we all have a stake in how these battles are decided.