Watching the political debate last night brought this quote to mind. It’s not meant to be snarky. But I do think it’s true. If you cannot be the master of your language, you must be its slave. If you cannot […]
Michael Edward Johnson
Posts by Michael Edward Johnson
Mahalo
Jason Calacanis, serial entrepreneur, just launched Mahalo, a search engine where users get hand-crafted portal-like results for common search queries. It’s based on the theory that many people are searching for the same things, that search engine spam is making […]
Quote of the Week: May 27
Via John Hawks, a paper entitled Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly. Here’s the abstract: Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly-complex words. However, a majority of undergraduates admit […]
Quote of the Week: May 13
At the University of Bristol in England, gene-chip analysis — the marriage of DNA chemistry and silicon electronics — shows that the same variety of wheat expresses its genes very differently depending on whether it’s grown in conventional or organic […]
Quote of the Week: May 6
I’m debating whether my blog should be a politics-free zone. I’m leaning toward “yes” right now, but if you have a preference feel free to say so in the comments. In the meantime, a little lighter quote of the week […]
A Modest Proposal (Political Ads)
The content of political ads in the U.S. is very, very loosely regulated. Unlike every other sort of advertisement, political candidates can (at least in most circumstances) make blatantly false or misleading statements with blanket immunity in the name of […]
Modern Dragons, Now With 20% More Umlauts
CHiLLi.cc, an Austrian youth magazine, is running a short article on Citizendium written by yours truly! You can check it out in its original English form or the German translation. It’s a good summary of the differences between Citizendium and […]
Quote of the Week: April 29
From “Scientific Success: What’s Love Got to Do With It?” via gnxp.com: Several years ago, Satoshi Kanazawa, then a psychologist at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, analyzed a biographical database of 280 great scientists–mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and […]
Quote of the Week: April 22
I’m going to make a strong statement– I think Ray Kurzweil’s “The Singularity is Near” was probably the most important book written in 2005. If you’re at all curious about what sorts of- and what degree of- technology the future […]
Quote of the Week: April 15
Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he adopts an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed because he is wondering how to […]