So I gave a TEDx Talk

Enjoy

Things I hate in essays

It is essay writing season again and I'm marking papers.  There are many things I dislike and well, I complain a lot.  So a former student asked if I could make a Top 10 list.  So here is the list, mostly copied and pasted from a facebook post I made.

1. 'In today's society' and variations thereof. It is pretty much useless. Also, in most of the stuff I deal with it is almost a non sequitur. 'In today's society the hippocampus is important in spatial memory' makes little sense.

2. The word 'interesting'. Prove to me something is interesting, I'm the reader, I'll decide if it is. Don't tell me something is interesting.

3. 'The results showed'. 

4. The passive voice.

5. Quoting. It is almost never useful in scientific writing. What quotes tell me is that you don't know what the thing you're quoting means, so instead you decided to use someone else's words.

6. Cliches. (Though I suppose one could argue a top 10 list is a cliche.....)

7. 'In my opinion'. I don't give a shit about your opinion. I want evidence, synthesis and analysis. 

8. Useless detail. Look, I don't need to know the light dark cycle the rats were kept on, of course unless it is say a circadian rhythm experiment or something.

9. 'Since the dawn of time' and variations thereof. First off, it's a fucking cliche, secondly, look, the dawn of time includes more time when there wasn't even an Earth than when there was one. So it is unlikely that the effects of stimulus intensity on learning has been wondered about since the dawn of time. 

10. 'In another study' as a way to start a paragraph. Lazy writing, useless words.

11. 'Dictionary.com' or 'Websters' or 'The OED' or whatever 'defines x as....' Oh man that one bugs me. (Thanks for the to my podcasting buddy Anthony Marco for mentioning that in the commets of the facebook post).

12. Telling me what university the researchers are affiliated with who you are citing. This is almost always useless information. I usually circle that and write 'don't care' in the margin.

13. Utilize rather than use. Use is a perfectly good word. When in doubt, use the shorter word.

14. Apostrophes don't pluralize nouns.  

In Response to 'One Pissed Off Mother'

By now you have probably heard about the horrible excuse for a human being  who wrote a hateful letter to the family of Max, a kid with autism.  I linked there to the story of the letter written by this waste of skin and about how twitter has responded.  More importantly of course, his neighbourhood has responded, they like Max.  He is part of the community.  Seeing other kids high five him on the news, and seeing how they clearly meant it made most of us feel good, and Max seemed into it. 

Most people are pretty good about disabilities nowadays, indeed, our son, Jon, has never had anything bad happen in school from classmates.  There have been misunderstandings (see an earlier post of mine about Jon's art) but generally the school has been excellent.

Today we were out getting a couple of games at EB and the guy there was awesome, he talked to Jon, Jon kept trying to pre order COD:Ghosts, and the guy at EB said 'It is an M rated game, you can't have it without ID'.  It was cool.  (As an aside, the guys at EB here are great with most anyone, I have seen them interact with all types of people with all kinds of disabilites, always with class, good on them).

In our neighbourhood people know Jon, they say hi.  At the mall Jon saw one of his teachers, he said hi, the guy responded all happily 'Hi Jon!'  

So you see 'Pissed Off Mother' you are the one with the fucking problem.  Most everyone else in the society we live in is just fine with people who are different.  

Oh, and from One Proud Father to One Pissed Off Mother, fuck off.

Changing Your Facebook Status Will Change The World (In Case You Can't Tell, I Am Being Sarcastic....)

Red, Black, White, Plaid. 

Remember that from a few years back?  Or was it just yesterday, the damned internet somehow distorts time or something….  Anyway, you remember though right?   It turned out to be some  sort of ‘meme’ (fuck I hate the misuse of a term invented by Richard Dawkins, but I digress) that was supposed to ‘raise awareness’ of breast cancer.  Raise awareness.  I can think of at least two friends off of the top of my head who have had breast cancer.  One of them is dealing with it right now.  I imagine most of us know about the existence of breast cancer.  But no, we need to ‘raise awareness’.  No, I am sorry, we do not.  This sort of bullshit slacktivism makes me want to set fire to every little ribbon worn for every cause ever. (On a side note, the first time I saw this run of colours on a status I thought it was a reference to Babylon 5, man I am a geek....)

Oh but Dave it does no harm.  Bullshit.  This sort of crap makes people think they are doing something when they are doing fuck all.  So, they then, I would argue, think they have contributed somehow.  So, instead of actually contributing to charities, or volunteering their time, they just change their facebook status.

Now, there are legitimate cases where ‘raising awareness’ is actually sensible.  Like putting up a poster for something with actual information.   If you know me you know I wear a cause bracelet.  It is for the Brain Tumor Foundation of Canada.  I lost my Dad to brain cancer a few years ago.  I give money to the brain tumor foundation.  When people ask me what the bracelet is for I tell them about brain cancer, about my Dad, and about how to donate.  It is also a way for me to honour the memory of my father.

Don’t even get me started on ‘for every share of this picture, facebook will donate a dollar to cause x y or z’.  Are you people morons?  Do the math.  (I never said there would be no math).  There are 800 000 000 people on facebook.  Let’s say something actually was shared by 1 percent of fb users.  That would put whoever is supposedly donating, on the hook for 8 million dollars.   Snopes is your friend, use it.

Get out there, give money or time to charities.  The aforementioned Brain Tumor Foundation, the Red Cross and Amnesty International are my three favourites, and they get money from me every year.  But don’t change your facebook status and think you have made a difference.  All you have done is clutter up everyone’s timeline.

Muhammad Ali Did Not Put Quran Verses On His Boxing Trunks

Well, I have not ranted in quite a while, (don’t worry, I am still pretty pissed off…) but nothing has really struck me that much.  Not until a radical right wing nut (you might check out his work with Focus on the Family...) became the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos.

As those that know me know, I am an atheist.  I am comfortable in that, and that has little or nothing to do with my ideas about Mr. Tebow.  What I don’t like is him shoving his religion at me.  Praying before games, fine.  Hell, pray during games (assuming your deity has money on the game, perhaps it will help…)  What I don’t like is the necessity to look at everything from the perspective of religion.  Yes, I know, if one is religious it is a pervasive thing.  Fine.  I DO NOT WANT YOU TO PREACH TO ME.  Don’t put bible verse references on your eyeblack.  Don’t mention god in every interview you do.  You are a damned football player.  Perhaps someday you will be as good a quarterback as say Anthony Calvillo.  AC is a religious guy.  I have heard him thank god a couple of times, notably after the Alouettes won a Grey Cup and he was about to get treated for a potentially life threatening thyroid condition.  However, when after a game AC is asked about the game he talks about, wait for it, THE GAME. 

Bono is a religious guy.  I have seen U2 maybe 6 times.  I have not once heard him mention his religion.  Now there are religious themed songs on the October album for sure.  (Great songs BTW).  But, when he is on Letterman, he does not mention god.

Remember this, Muhammad Ali never put Quran verses on his boxing trunks.  He is a Muslim (the name should have been a dead giveaway…) but what did he do?  Oh yeah he was just the greatest boxer of all time and perhaps the greatest sports personality of the 20^th century.  We all know what Ali talked about when he was asked about boxing.

I will leave you with this.  I wonder how the world would react if a not ready for prime time athlete was an atheist, or a Muslim and went around talking about that, instead of his sport