“The aspect of language use that is most worth changing is the clarity and style of written prose. The human language faculty was not designed for putting esoteric thoughts on paper for the benefit of strangers, and this makes writing a difficult craft that must be mastered through practice, feedback and intensive exposure to good … More Quote of the Day
Of the following sentences, only one is correct. Can you spot the errors in the others? Jadwiga rushed in the house to hide the whiskey before Colbart arrived. Aunt Mable is reticent to speak of her years as a con artist. The cat was laying on the floor next to the empty bird cage. The … More Spot the Errors
“I bet you anything that 10 times out of 10, Nicky, Vinny and Tony will beat the shit out of Todd, Kyle and Tucker.” ― George Carlin
A prevalent stereotype about intellectuals and academics is that while they’re very intelligent in academic matters, they generally lack emotional intelligence (or street smarts, or some other desirable trait). Sure they’re very smart intellectually, but they’re nerdy and can’t relate to people. It’s as though most intellectuals are somewhere on the autism scale, ready to … More The Nerdy Academic Myth
“Some studies claimed to have demonstrated the effectiveness of teaching to learning styles, although they had small sample sizes, selectively reported data or were methodologically flawed. Those that were methodologically sound found no relationship between learning styles and performance on assessments. Willingham and Pashler believe that learning styles is a myth perpetuated merely by sloppy … More Quote of the Day
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/retired-in-victoria-and-the-living-is-slippery/article26825673/ We had long resisted the idea of moving from Edmonton, where we had lived for nearly 40 years, to Victoria, where our son had relocated after graduating. He, our lovely daughter-in-law and wonderful grandson were a big draw, but every time we visited Victoria, I always thought there were just too many flowers. Maybe … More Missing Edmonton
“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” ― Saul Bellow
Several years ago I taught a critical thinking course. I asked students why they thought some people are better at solving problems than others. They came up with a surprising array of reasons: poor diet, lack of exercise, childhood trauma suffered when trying to solve a problem, and bad teachers. In twenty minutes or so … More Intelligence
“If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?” ― Sam Harris
Parallelism is a very important concept in writing. In compound sentences and lists, each part of the sentence should be in equivalent or parallel form. Parallel sentence structures make the relationships between various ideas in the sentence clear. Sometimes your ear can be a guide because sentence structures that are not parallel sound a bit … More Parallelism
No Harm Spilt 