ESL - Catabatic

What makes 'good science journalism'?

Aug 25, 2022 3 min read

From 'Your Doppelgänger Is Out There and You Probably Share DNA With Them', The New York Times, August 23, 2022: Dr. Esteller also suggested that there could be links between facial features…

On referring to female officers as 'madam sir'

Aug 9, 2022 4 min read

Culture English language ESL female police officers gender bias linguistic relativity madam sir Sapir-Whorf hypothesis sexism Whorfianism

ET Lifestyle published a Twitter thread this morning about police officers referring to female superior officers as “sir” or as “madam sir”. I do find the practice offensive, because it signals an…

Why scientists should read more

Aug 29, 2020 5 min read

Scicomm active voice Casimir effect communication complexity English as second language ESL first language grammar Learning mainstream media meaning making passive voice physics quantum physics reading science communication science journalism scientific knowledge teaching wisdom

The amount of communicative effort to describe the fact of a ball being thrown is vanishingly low. It's as simple as saying, "X threw the ball." It takes a bit more effort to describe ho…