Humour

There is much that can be put in here but to kick a good opener is John Levi Martin's reflections on sociology as a science.

That piece is located on the Improbable Research site. There is a journal and they award IgNobel prizes for achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think. Len Fisher has won an IgNobel Prize and there is a transcript of his brief account of humour in science. In this short piece he notes:

Arthur Koestler said that comic discovery is ‘paradox stated’ while scientific discovery is ‘paradox resolved’.

A challenge. Here is a blog post from some time back: if programming languages were religions. Your task should you choose to accept it is to develop a collection around: if educational theories/methodologies were a religion. Well, of course, we know that for those who use/profess these ideas, they probably are. But step back, have a think and see what you can come up with.

Publication

Before you attempt any kind of publication, you should visit the Journal of Universal Rejection site.

Impress with your writing

There are some academics who choose to use the odd word in their papers which has not enjoyed a lot of use over time. There used to be a rule that only one such word per piece but then along came the post-modern. Nevertheless, there are useful resources which might provide you with just the right word, e.g. the Grandiloquent Dictionary.

The Washington Post used to have a list of their annual neologism winners1. There is a copy here. Should none of these options meet your needs, you could try taking any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supplying your own, new definition. A good sample is available at the same site, e.g.

Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

If by now you are not inspired to add some of the pearls you have stumbled upon then it is likely that you are a Frisbeetarian2.

There is an excellent series of PhD comics by Jorge Cham. Well worth a visit.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License